Patric Standford was born in 1939 in Yorkshire and died on 22 April 2014. He studied at the Guildhall School of Music with Edmund Rubbra and Raymond Jones and played the violin and viola in the orchestras, learning conducting with Lawrence Leonard and Norman del Mar. He won the 1964 Mendelssohn Scholarship and extended his studies, first with a year in Italy with Gianfrancesco Malipiero and then in Poland with Witold Lutosławski. After gaining a Masters degree at London University, he became involved in commercial music writing and arranging for films, television and West End shows. During this time he made several recordings as a conductor of light music, created an album, Autumn Grass, for the exploratory instrumental pop group Continuum, and ghost wrote and directed ‘classical’ style pieces for, among others, Rod McKuen.
During the 1970s he established himself as a concert composer with his 1st Symphony (The Seasons) which was awarded the Premio Cittá di Trieste, a Cello Concerto (an homage to Brahms written whilst Composer in Residence at the Brahms summer house in Baden-Baden), and, significantly, the oratorio Christus Requiem, first heard in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, and which subsequently attracted wide critical acclaim, including the Yugoslavian Government Arts Award following a performance in Skopje.
His 3rd Symphony (Toward Paradise) was awarded the 1985 City of Geneva Ernest Ansermet Prize and first performed there by the Suisse Romande Orchestra. In 1997 he received the First International Composers’ Award of Budapest for his choral masque The Prayer of Saint Francis, and two years later he was awarded first prize at the Belgian International Clarinet Fest for his Clarinet Quintet, adding to a lively and extensive chamber music output. Symphony No 5 was commissioned for the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in 1986. His choral works have attracted many European performances, and he was a frequent visitor to France, Finland, Hungary, Estonia, Venezuela and New Zealand as a jury member for international choral and contemporary music festivals, and as a lecturer and conductor.
Standford taught composition and orchestration at the Guildhall School of Music until 1980 when he was appointed Head of Music at the Leeds University College at Bretton Hall, and he later joined the composition faculty at Huddersfield University. His book Projects: a course in musical composition was published by Stainer & Bell in 1991. He played a major role in many organisations, including acting as Chairman of the Composers’ Guild of Great Britain (1977-1980) and Chairman of the British Music Information Centre (1980-1993). He was a council member of the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund, a board member of the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (1983-1996) and served as a Trustee of the Hinrichsen Foundation for over twenty years, taking over as the organisation's Chairman in the early years of this century. He had a reputation as an entertaining lecturer and occasional radio broadcaster, and was an active writer, music critic and journalist. He made multiple visits to universities and conservatoires in Europe and USA as a conductor, and to direct composition seminars and workshops.
CD recordings of his music include the Ballet Suite Celestial Fire on ASV (Light Music Discoveries 3) and A Christmas Carol Symphony on Naxos. A recording of orchestral works (First Symphony, Cello Concerto and Prelude to a Fantasy) is available [British Music Society BMS441CD] and was recorded in Autumn 2011 by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under the direction of David Lloyd-Jones with cellist Raphael Wallfisch.
In Memoriam Zoltan Kodaly: Winners of the First International Composers’ Competition features Standford’s winning piece The Prayer of St Francis, whilst most recently, his Recorder Quintet was released as part of The Recorder Collection: The Proud Recorder by John Turner and the Manchester Chamber Ensemble.
