Стивен Доджсон: Жизнь и творчество британского композитора

British composer and broadcaster (1924–2013)

Stephen Cuthbert Vivian Dodgson (17 March 192413 April 2013) was a British composer and broadcaster. Dodgson's prolific musical output covered most genres, ranging from opera and large scale orchestral music to chamber and instrumental music, as well as choral works and song. Three instruments to which he dedicated particular attention were the guitar, harpsichord and recorder. He wrote in a mainly tonal, although sometimes unconventional, idiom. Some of his works use unusual combinations of instruments.

Stephen Dodgson was born in Chelsea, London in 1924, the third child of John Arthur Dodgson, who was a symbolist painter and nephew of Campbell Dodgson, and his wife, who was born Margaret Valentine Pease and also an artist. He was distant cousin of Lewis Carroll. He was educated at Berkhamsted School in Hertfordshire and at Stowe School in Buckinghamshire. In 1942, he was conscripted into the Royal Navy and took part in anti submarine warfare escorting convoys in the Battle of the Atlantic. On returning to London, he studied composition privately for a year with Bernard Stevens before enrolling at the Royal College of Music in 1946, officially to study the horn (under Frank Probyn), but in practice he was able to focus on composition under the guidance of R. O. Morris, Patrick Hadley and Antony Hopkins. Recorder player John Turner remembers him as "Enthusiastic, ebullient and quick witted extremely voluble, with a strong, distinctive voice, an ever present smile, much old world courtesy, and an idiosyncratic gait." he may be the first since the eighteenth century to have written for baryton trio. He wrote concertos for instruments ranging from the viola da gamba to the bass trombone. His later works for the instrument include the Concerto Chacony (2000) with string orchestra, and a Capriccio Concertante No. 2 (2005) for the unusual combination of recorder, harpsichord and string orchestra. His orchestral output features a set of nine Essays for orchestra (five of which were recorded on a Dutton CD by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under David Lloyd Jones), Other commercial recordings of cycles of Dodgson's works include the seven piano sonatas played by Bernard Roberts and the eight string quartets performed by the Tippett String Quartet.

Note: For more extensive listings of works by this prolific composer, see .