Gwyn Pritchard

Gwyn Pritchard (born 29 January 1948 in Richmond, Yorkshire, England) is a British composer, ensemble and festival director, and teacher.

Life Pritchard was born in Yorkshire and brought up on a farm near Marlborough, Wiltshire. His parents were not musicians, but his family inherited a piano when he was 11 and he began to teach himself to play and to compose. At 13 he also took up the cello, developing quickly, and in 1966 he was accepted to the Royal Scottish Academy in Glasgow to study the instrument with Joan Dickson, and composition with Dr Frank Spedding. In the late 1970s performances of his Objects in Space and Mercurius at London’s South Bank attracted national and international attention.

The composer Alwynne Pritchard is his daughter.

Career In 1979 Pritchard’s music was performed at the Warsaw Autumn Festival for the first time, As well as Poland these include Switzerland, where he has an ongoing association with several ensembles based in Basel; Italy, where he founded the Reggello International Festival of Contemporary and Classical Music in 2003;

In 1979 he was a featured composer, alongside Witold Lutosławski, at the International New Music Week, Southampton, Portrait concerts have been given by in Salzburg (2011) by the Österreichisches Ensemble für Neue Musik, in Chur (2016) by Ensemble ö! and in Gdańsk (2019) at the NeoArte Festival.

Pritchard is also active as a new music promoter. In 1982 he founded the Uroboros Ensemble, a group that has given world premieres of works by David Bedford, Joe Cutler, Michael Finnissy, Gerhard Stäbler, James Weeks and John Woolrich, among others, as well as of several pieces by Pritchard himself. Performers who have played with Uroboros include Joby Burgess, Roger Heaton, Darragh Morgan, Christopher Redgate and Paul Silverthorne. As well as the Reggello festival, Pritchard co-founded the London Ear Festival of Contemporary Music in 2013 with the Italian composer Andrea Cavallari. He was awarded a Composers' Fund Award by the PRS Foundation in 2017 to support the composition of his orchestral work Forest.

Selected works

Orchestral

Concerto for Viola and Orchestra (1967, rev. 1984) Spring Music (1972) Mercurius (1979) La Settima Bolgia (1989) The Firmament of Time (2008) Forest (2017)

Ensemble and chamber

Ensemble Music for Six, flute, clarinet, piano, violin, viola, cello (1976) Nephalaxius, string quartet, 2 percussionists (1977) Objects in Space, clarinet, harp, percussion (1978) Earthcrust, 8 percussionists, piano (1980, rev. 2015) Moondance, solo clarinet, string trio, percussion (1982) Lollay, lollay, cor anglais, bass clarinet, piano, percussion, viola, cello (1983) Madrigal, flute, oboe/cor anglais, clarinet, percussion, harp (1987–8) Janus, flute and clarinet Wayang, flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, cello (1993) Demise, 3 percussionists, piano (1994) Features and Formations, flute, clarinet, violin, cello (2003) The Fruit of Chance and Necessity, solo cello, chamber orchestra (2004) Nebuale and Episodes, alto sax, violin, cello, percussion (2005) Song for Icarus, flute, violin (2006) Nightfall, flute, clarinet, violin, cello (2011) Kommos, solo oboe, string quartet, double bass, piano (2011) String Quartet no.1 (Conflux II) (2011) Evolution, flute, clarinet, violin, cello (2014) Colouring In, recorders, pan flute, percussion, viola, accordion (2015) Quintet, sax, trombone, cello, accordion, piano (2018) Realms Apart, clarinet, string quartet (2018) String Quartet no.2 (2019) Pacing, alto flute and harp (2019)

Solo instrumental

Five Short Pieces for Piano (1975) Sonata for Guitar (1982) Dramaloque, percussion (1984) Raum greift aus, piano (1996) From Time to Time, piano (1999) Capriccio inquieto, oboe (2006) Two Movements for Solo Viola (2007), transcribed for violin (2007) Ricorrenza, cello (2009) Capriccio fluido, oboe (2010) Tide, piano (2014)

Vocal

Enitharmon, mezzo soprano, piano (1973) To Jardenna, flute, percussion, narrator (1978) Forse mi stai chiamando, soprano, cello (1997) In the Silence of Turned Earth, solo soprano, solo violin, strings (2010) Three Songs of Mass and Motion, soprano, accordion, double bass (2014) Catfish in Autumn, soprano, baritone (2016) … What’s it all about?, female voice, electronics (2016)