Jack Van Zandt looks back on the life of composer Anthony Gilbert who died two years ago
July 5th marks the second anniversary of the passing of celebrated composer and longtime Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) composition professor Anthony ‘Tony’ Gilbert (1934-2023), who was born in Southeast London on 26 July 1934.
He attended Gunnersbury grammar school, where he demonstrated an exceptional ability with foreign languages, and from there he was accepted to study at the Institut Français in London. Also as a student, he had a keen interest in music and had studied piano. As a young adult he decided he wanted to learn to compose, and in 1956, he entered Morley College, studying with Anthony Milner and then later with Mátyás Seiber and Alexander Goehr.
He also went to Tanglewood in the USA where he studied with Gunther Schuller. During these years he worked as a translator, publisher and teacher, including a time at Schott’s London office in the early 1960s, at first in the warehouse and later as a music editor. In the 1970s he became more involved with teaching and was made Head of Composition at Manchester’s RNCM in 1973, where he remained until his retirement in 1999. He also taught in Australia for a period in the 1980s at what is now known as the Sydney Conservatorium.
I met Tony Gilbert in the late 1970s when I was Alexander “Sandy” Goehr’s TA and musical assistant in Cambridge. Tony had been one of Goehr’s first students in the late 1950s and they remained close friends for the rest of Tony’s life. Sandy introduced me to him in London at a concert and he invited me to visit him at the Royal Northern College of Music. I went to Manchester very soon thereafter and stayed with Tony and went to his lectures and other events at RNCM over a few days.
He was a wonderful teacher and many of his devoted students have gone on to successful music careers. We became friends and I would try to make it to as many of his performances as I could and he came to one or two of mine as well. After I moved to Ireland in 1983 and travelled back and forth from there to my native USA, I rarely saw him, but we did keep in touch with the occasional letter, and we would sometimes see each other at a concert when I was in the UK.
In the early 2020s, as I was writing a book with Goehr, Composing a Life: Teachers Mentors and Models, I was in touch with Tony by phone and email and we did a lot of catching up. He sent me his self-published 2021 memoir, Kettle of Fish: Musical Memoirs of a Maverick Composer, which I read with great interest, and he was a big supporter of my book project with Sandy.
I asked him to contribute a short memory of his time as a student of Goehr’s for the book, which he did with great enthusiasm. It was probably the last thing that he wrote. We were planning to meet in Manchester when the book was published and he very much wanted to come to the book launch at RNCM on 23 October, 2023. Sadly, he died a few months before and our reunion was not to be.
I always felt that Tony and I had a strong personal and musical connection, having both been students of Sandy Goehr and having many twists and turns in our life experiences. Like me, he also had many outside interests and influences and was very much a synthesis composer, as am I. He was a great person to bounce ideas off of, and he would be straight with me if he thought I could do something better. I would say, in fact, that without my realizing it at the time but in retrospect, Tony, who was twenty years my senior, was very much a mentor to me.
As for Tony’s music, count me as a fan. He was uncompromising in that he did exactly as he wanted as a composer, and the results were often surprising and always wonderful. He was a great model for a young composer like me who followed him in the 1970s and 80s. Some of his works I remember from this time which attracted me were Nine or Ten Osannas for chamber ensemble, his one-act opera The Scene Machine, and his Crow-Cry for the London Sinfonietta. I have had the pleasure of hearing several of his subsequent works over the years, including string quartets, piano sonatas, orchestral pieces, a violin concerto On Beholding a Rainbow, and smaller chamber and vocal works, such as Beastly Jingles, with texts by Jorge Luis Borges, also a favorite poet of mine.
Gilbert’s idiosyncratic music has a European modernist sensibility influenced by his love and studies of Indian music, as well as jazz—qualities evident in his work throughout his life. His very substantial catalogue includes work in every category written for many prestigious performers, ensembles and festivals, including pianist Margaret Kitchin, The Fires of London, London Sinfonietta, the Lindsay Quartet, Staatstheater Kassel, Cheltenham Festival, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Radio, and a number of works, including a concerto, Igorochki, for recorder virtuoso John Turner. There are several recordings of his music available from NMC, Prima Facie, and other labels. His music is published by Composers Edition, Schott and University of York Music Press.
I will remember my treasured friend as a very kind and generous man who made a difference in my life and who will continue to live on through his music and many pupils and friends all over the world.
Jack Van Zandt (b. 1954) is a Grammy-winning composer of music for concerts, film and TV, and a music educator and writer. He is based in Los Angeles and Ireland. He attended the College of Creative Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara, and Cambridge University, and studied composition with Alexander Goehr, Thea Musgrave, Peter Maxwell Davies and Peter Racine Fricker. His book with Alexander Goehr, Composing a Life: Teachers, Mentors and Models, was published by Carcanet in October 2023. His music is published by Composers Edition.
Photo courtesy of Composers Edition where you can find more information about Anthony Gilbert.