Gervase Alan de Peyer (11 April 1926 – 4 February 2017) was an English

clarinettist This article lists notable musicians who have played the clarinet. Classical clarinetists * Laver Bariu * Ernest Ačkun * Luís Afonso * Cristiano Alves * Michel Arrignon * Dimitri Ashkenazy * Kinan Azmeh * Alexander Bader * Carl Baermann ...

and conductor.

Professional career

Gervase Alan de Peyer was born in London, the eldest of three children of Everard Esmé Vivian de Peyer, and his wife, Edith Mary ( Bartlett). He attended

Bedales School Bedales School is a co-educational, boarding and day independent school in the village of Steep, near the market town of Petersfield in Hampshire, England. It was founded in 1893 by John Haden Badley in reaction to the limitations of conven ...

,Gervase de Peyer homepage
and was awarded a scholarship to the

Royal College of Music The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, UK. It offers training from the undergraduate to the doctoral level in all aspects of Western Music including performanc ...

, where he studied clarinet with Frederick Thurston and piano with Arthur Alexander. Towards the end of World War II, when he was aged 18, he joined the

Royal Marines Band Service The Royal Marines Band Service is the musical wing of the Royal Navy and an independent element of the Royal Marines. It currently consists of five bands plus a training wing – the Royal Marines School of Music at HMS ''Nelson'' – and its ...

. He returned to the Royal College of Music after the war and subsequently studied in Paris with Louis Cahuzac. In 1950 he was a founding member of the

Melos Ensemble The Melos Ensemble is a group of musicians who started in 1950 in London to play chamber music in mixed instrumentation of string instruments, wind instruments and others. Benjamin Britten composed the chamber music for his '' War Requiem'' for th ...

for which he continued to play until 1974. Their recordings of chamber music for both

woodwind Woodwind instruments are a family of musical instruments within the greater category of wind instruments. Common examples include flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, and saxophone. There are two main types of woodwind instruments: flutes and re ...

s and strings were reissued in 2011, including the works for larger ensembles which were the reason to found the ensemble, such as Beethoven's

Septet A septet is a formation containing exactly seven members. It is commonly associated with musical groups but can be applied to any situation where seven similar or related objects are considered a single unit, such as a seven-line stanza of poetry. ...

and

Octet Octet may refer to: Music * Octet (music), ensemble consisting of eight instruments or voices, or composition written for such an ensemble ** String octet, a piece of music written for eight string instruments *** Octet (Mendelssohn), 1825 compos ...

, Schubert's

and Ravel's '' Introduction and Allegro'', played with Osian Ellis (harp), Richard Adeney (flute),

Emanuel Hurwitz Emanuel Hurwitz (7 May 1919 – 19 November 2006) was a British violinist. He was born in London to parents of Russian-Jewish ancestry. He started playing the violin when he was five years old, and took up a scholarship at the Royal Academy of ...

and

Ivor McMahon Ivor McMahon (1924–1972) was an English violinist. He played with notable orchestras including the Philharmonia Orchestra and the English Chamber Orchestra and is best known for playing second violin in the Melos Ensemble. Career In ...

(

violin The violin, sometimes known as a '' fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone ( string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument ( soprano) in the family in regu ...

Cecil Aronowitz Cecil Aronowitz (4 March 19167 September 1978) was a British viola player, a founding member of the Melos Ensemble, a leading chamber musician and an influential teacher at the Royal College of Music and the Royal Northern College of Music. ...

(

viola ; german: Bratsche , alt=Viola shown from the front and the side , image=Bratsche.jpg , caption= , background=string , hornbostel_sachs=321.322-71 , hornbostel_sachs_desc=Composite chordophone sounded by a bow , range= , related= *Violin family ...

) and

Terence Weil Terence Weil (9 December 1921 in London – 25 February 1995 in Figueras) was a British cellist, principal cellist of the English Chamber Orchestra, a founding member of the Melos Ensemble, a leading chamber musician and an influential teache ...

(

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a bowed (sometimes plucked and occasionally hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually tuned in perfect fifths: from low to high, C2, G ...

).Melos Ensemble – Music among Friends

EMI EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British Transnational corporation, transnational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in March 1 ...

website; accessed 5 February 2017 From 1956–73 he was principal clarinet of the

London Symphony Orchestra The London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) is a British symphony orchestra based in London. Founded in 1904, the LSO is the oldest of London's symphony orchestras. The LSO was created by a group of players who left Henry Wood's Queen's Hall Orc ...

. He was a founding member of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York in 1969 and played with them for 20 years. He conducted the

English Chamber Orchestra The English Chamber Orchestra (ECO) is a British chamber orchestra based in London. The full orchestra regularly plays concerts at Cadogan Hall, and their ensemble performs at Wigmore Hall. The orchestra regularly tours in the UK and internationall ...

, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Melos Sinfonia; he directed the London Symphony Orchestra Wind Ensemble and was the associate conductor of the Haydn Orchestra. In 1959 he began teaching at the Royal Academy of Music. De Peyer played first performances of concertos by Arnold Cooke, Sebastian Forbes,

Alun Hoddinott Alun Hoddinott CBE (11 August 1929 – 11 March 2008) was a Welsh composer of classical music, one of the first to receive international recognition. Life and works Hoddinott was born in Bargoed, Glamorganshire, Wales. He was educated at Gowe ...

Joseph Horovitz Joseph Horovitz (26 May 1926 – 9 February 2022) was an Austrian-born British composer and conductor best known for his 1970 pop cantata ''Captain Noah and his Floating Zoo'', which achieved widespread popularity in schools. Horovitz also compo ...

Thea Musgrave Thea Musgrave CBE (born 27 May 1928) is a Scottish composer of opera and classical music. She has lived in the United States since 1972. Biography Born in Barnton, Edinburgh, Musgrave was educated at Moreton Hall School, a boarding independ ...

Elizabeth Maconchy Dame Elizabeth Violet Maconchy LeFanu (; 19 March 1907 – 11 November 1994) was an Irish-English composer. She is considered to be one of the finest composers Great Britain and Ireland have produced. Biography Elizabeth Violet Maconchy was b ...

, William Mathias and

Edwin Roxburgh Edwin Roxburgh (born 1937) is an English composer, conductor and oboist. Roxburgh was born in Liverpool. After playing oboe in the National Youth Orchestra, he won a double scholarship to study composition with Herbert Howells and oboe with T ...

. He premiered the ''Fantasy on an American Hymn Tune'' Op.70 for clarinet, cello and piano by

Kenneth Leighton Kenneth Leighton (2 October 1929 – 24 August 1988) was a British composer and pianist. His compositions include church and choral music, pieces for piano, organ, cello, oboe and other instruments, chamber music, concertos, ...

, commissioned by de Peyer, William Pleeth and

Raphael Wallfisch Raphael Wallfisch (born 15 June 1953 in London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames i ...

and played by them at the Cheltenham Music Festival in 1975, and

Miklós Rózsa Miklós Rózsa (; April 18, 1907 – July 27, 1995) was a Hungarian-American composer trained in Germany (1925–1931) and active in France (1931–1935), the United Kingdom (1935–1940), and the United States (1940–1995), with extensi ...

's Sonata for Clarinet Solo op. 41 in New York in 1987.

Selective discography

* '' Judith Blegen & Frederica von Stade: Songs, Arias & Duets'', with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Columbia, 1975

Professional career

Selective discography

References

Further reading