MusicObituaryJohn Gardner obituary
Composer in the English romantic traditionJohn Gardner, who has died aged 94, was one of the English composers who defied the serialist tide of the 1950s and 60s, sustaining the romantic tradition still to be found in the music of Vaughan Williams, Gordon Jacob and William Walton. The urbane wit and impeccable craftsmanship of Walton in particular found an echo in Gardner's music.
There was a price to be paid for keeping faith with the style that suited him best: Gardner was viewed by the musical establishment as a prolific engineer of music that possessed little more than utilitarian or pedagogical value. However, his output of around 250 works, including three symphonies and six operas, is consistent in quality, and includes a number of works of real distinction. He wrote for nearly every medium, with some unusual combinations of instruments.
Born in Manchester, Gardner was an only child, and his father, a doctor, was killed in action towards the end of the first world war. He grew up in Ilfracombe, Devon, and was educated at Wellington college, Berkshire, and Exeter College, Oxford, where he was organ scholar, studying with Sir Hugh Allen, Ernest Walker and RO Morris. Gardner then became director of music at Repton school, Derbyshire. After the second world war broke out, he joined the RAF in 1940 and was successively a dance-band pianist, warrant-officer bandmaster and aerial navigator.
On demobilisation he joined the staff of the Royal Opera House, primarily as a repetiteur, and in 1947 completed his First Symphony, conducted at the 1951 Cheltenham festival by John Barbirolli, with great success. Two significant commissions came the following year: the oratorio Cantiones Sacrae, premiered at Hereford Cathedral for the Three Choirs festival, and the ballet Reflection for the Edinburgh festival a few weeks later.
However, these early successes were not sustained, and Gardner found himself marginalised by more radical, pan-European trends. In 1952, he joined the staff of Morley College, south London, eventually becoming its director (1965-69); for three decades from 1956 he was professor of harmony and composition at the Royal Academy of Music; and from 1962 to 1975 he was director of music at St Paul's girls' school, west London. He produced a steady stream of works primarily for performance by school and college groups.
In 1957, his second opera, The Moon and Sixpence, after Somerset Maugham, was produced at Sadler's Wells theatre, north London, and he also completed his Piano Concerto, which followed in the grand romantic tradition. Gardner's facility as a vocal and choral composer grew in works such as his Ballad of the White Horse (1959), Herrick Cantata (1961) and Stabat Mater (1993). His love of polyphony and its baroque development are apparent in his orchestral and instrumental pieces. A fascination with jazz rhythms and the style of the jazz pianist Bill Evans found its way into a number of his shorter pieces.
One of his most popular works, the brief but effective carol Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day (1965), appears on a number of Christmas CDs. Recordings in recent years have included his brief but condensed Third Symphony (1989), with a sumptuously remote and nocturnal slow movement, and his Oboe Concerto, Flute Concerto and Petite Suite for Recorder and Strings. To mark Gardner's 90th birthday in 2007, Naxos issued a recording of his Piano Concerto with Peter Donohoe as soloist and his First Symphony, with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by David Lloyd-Jones.
Of the later operas, The Visitors was heard at the 1972 Aldeburgh festival and Tobermory (after Saki) at the Royal Academy in 1977 under Steuart Bedford. Gardner continued to compose well into his 80s, and indeed conducted the premiere of his Irish Suite a few days after his 80th birthday. In 1976 he was appointed CBE.
He married Jane Abercombie in 1955. She died in 1998, and he is survived by their son, Christopher, and daughters, Lucy and Emily.
John Linton Gardner, composer, born 2 March 1917; died 12 December 2011
John Gardner: Pavan for guitar, Op 123
This article was amended on 22 December 2011. It originally gave John Gardner's date of birth as 21 March 1917. This has been corrected.
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