Sir Peter Maxwell Davies

Once an enfant terrible of the classical music scene, composer and conductor Peter Maxwell Davies emerged in the 1960s as openly gay, politically left, decisively anti-establishment and boldly avant-garde. Yet he went on to be knighted by the Queen in 1987, and served as her official music master between 2004 and 2014. Born into a working-class family in Salford in 1934, Davies showed an affinity for music at a young age. He attended the Royal Manchester College of Music, where his classmates included Harrison Birtwistle, continuing his studies at Princeton University with Roger Sessions and Milton Babbitt. In 1972 he moved to the remote Orkney Islands, where he led a hermit-like existence, living for long periods without running water or electricity. He composed prolifically in many styles and instrumental contexts, often within a single work—most famously in his Missa Super l’Homme Armé (1968, rev. 1971), where he implanted a foxtrot within liturgical music. Davies had a particular interest in musical theatre, and his 1969 cycle Eight Songs for a Mad King featured a young Julius Eastman on vocals. His compositions frequently veered between lush lyricism and harsh dissonance, and between social protest and evocations of the sea. He died of leukaemia in 2016, aged 81.