Joyce Music: Peter Maxwell Davies

An audience shouldn’t listen with complacency
—Peter Maxwell Davies, 1985

Peter Maxwell Davies
(1934–2016)

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies was Britain’s most celebrated twentieth-century composer not named “Benjamin Britten.” Born in Lancashire in 1934, from the time “Max” saw The Gondoliers at the age of 4, he knew he wanted to be a composer. Studying at the Royal Manchester College of Music, Maxwell Davies formed a lifelong friendship with Harrison Birtwistle, whose radical operas would electrify the British stage and earn Birtwistle a knighthood of his own. Both were founding members of New Music Manchester, one of the most influential avant-garde groups in England. Max continued his studies in Rome, the United States, and Australia. In 1966 he settled in the Orkney Islands, beginning an association with that region that lasted his whole life.

Throughout the 60s and early 70s, Maxwell Davies cultivated an image as a musical iconoclast, shocking audiences with theatrically deranged, high-concept pieces like Eight Songs for a Mad King and Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot. Max boasted a larger-than-life personality—an openly gay atheist, his discordant music was deliberately confrontational. He parodied religion, satirized British culture, and embrace environmental activism. In 1971 he composed the soundtrack to Ken Russell’s The Devils, one of the most controversial films of all time. Nevertheless, as the 70s matured into the 80s, Maxwell Davies surprised his listeners by producing a series of increasingly tonal symphonies and concertos. He also developed a reputation as a first-rate conductor.

Like so many British “bad boys” from the Sixties, Max found himself becoming, well, respectable. No longer an enfant terrible writing outré songs about “Sin! Sin! Sin!” and eyeballs turning into “blackcurrant jelly,” Max was earning critical acclaim for beautiful and mysterious works such as The Lighthouse and the Strathclyde Concertos. He received a CBE in 1981 and a full knighthood in 1987. In 2004, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies was appointed Master of the Queen’s Revels, a post whose very name seemed an ironic commentary on his aesthetic approach to the monarchy. Throughout the early 2000s Max devoted much of his time to a series of string quartets he referred to as “a novel in ten chapters.” Composing right up to his deathbed, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies succumbed to leukemia in 2016.

Editor’s Note
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies is one of my favorite composers. I first learned about Max from Ken Russell’s The Devils, a film which occupies a permanent place in my Top Five list. While Max’s earlier works are pretty mind-blowing—my favorite being Vesalii Icones—the pieces that really hooked me were The Lighthouse (1980) and Strathclyde Concerto No. 5 (1991). If you’re unfamiliar with Max’s work, just listen to the first act of The Lighthouse. It represents a wonderful transition between his atonal avant-garde period and his later, more Brittenesque compositions. Also, it’s about a mysterious occurrence at a lighthouse—a great setting for an opera, a Robert Eggers movie, or a Doctor Who episode!

Joyce-Related Works

Missa super “L’homme armé” (1968/71)
A parody of a fifteenth-century mass, loosely inspired by Ulysses.

Additional Information

Wikipedia Maxwell Davies Page
Wikipedia’s page on Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.

Maxwell Davies Interview
Bruce Duffie interviews Max in 1985.

The Guardian Guide to Peter Maxwell Davies’ Music
The Guardian, 20 August 2012. Tom Service’s excellent introduction and overview of Max’s oeuvre, with numerous links.

Maxwell Davies Obituary
New York Times, 14 March 2016. A very informative tribute by Margalit Fox.

Author: Allen B. Ruch
Last Modified: 19 June 2024
Joyce Music Page: Bronze by Gold
Main Joyce Page: The Brazen Head
Contact: quail(at)shipwrecklibrary(dot)com