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John Arthur Casken (born 15 July 1949) is an English composer. Casken was born in
Barnsley Barnsley () is a market town in South Yorkshire, England. It is the main settlement of the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley and the fourth largest settlement in South Yorkshire. The town's population was 71,422 in 2021, while the wider boroug ...
,
West Riding of Yorkshire The West Riding of Yorkshire was one of three historic subdivisions of Yorkshire, England. From 1889 to 1974 the riding was an administrative county named County of York, West Riding. The Lord Lieutenant of the West Riding of Yorkshire, lieu ...
, England. While at Barnsley Grammar School in the 1960s his music teacher played a recording of Berg's Violin Concerto, which had a lasting influence. He studied composition at the
University of Birmingham The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a Public university, public research university in Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingham (founded in 1825 as ...
with John Joubert and Peter Dickinson. He attended the Warsaw Academy of Music between 1971 and 1972, where he studied with Andrzej Dobrowolski but also met and became friends with Witold Lutosławski.Whittall, Arnold
'Elegies and affirmations: John Casken at 60'
in ''The Musical Times'', No 1909 (Winter 2009), pp. 39-51
He has lectured at the universities of Birmingham (from 1973) and Durham (from 1981), and between 1992 and 2008 he was Professor of Music at the
University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The University of Manchester is c ...
. Casken's students include Michael Alcorn, David Jennings and James MacMillan. Casken lives in Northumberland. He has acknowledged the landscape as a significant influence on his work. Works such as the orchestral ''Orion Over Farne'' (1984), the unaccompanied choral work ''To Fields We Do Not Know'' (1985), (described as "a Northumbrian elegy"), the orchestral song-cycle ''Still Mine'' (1992), the ensemble piece ''Winter Reels'' (2010) and the choral ''Uncertain Sea'' (2014) have all drawn inspiration from Northumberland. Casken has also composed two operas: ''Golem'' (1988), which has been revived frequently, and ''God's Liar'' (2000), the latter based on Tolstoy's novella '' Father Sergius''. His Cello Concerto of 1991 was written for Heinrich Schiff. The Violin Concerto was premiered at the 1995 Proms with Dmitri Sitkovetsky as soloist, and the Oboe Concerto ''Apollinaire’s Bird'' (written for Stéphane Rancourt) and Trombone Concerto ''Madonna of Silence'' (written for Katy Jones) were premiered by the Hallé Orchestra in 2014 and 2019 respectively. There is also the Symphony ''Broken Consort'' (2004), performed at the 2004 Proms, a Concerto for Orchestra (2007), and a Double Concerto for Violin, Viola and Orchestra ''That Subtle Knot'' (2013). Casken has written much chamber music, including three string quartets, the first in 1982. The Piano Trio (2003) uses themes from the opera ''God's Liar'' as its source material. He wrote ''Rest-ringing'', unusually scored for string quartet and orchestra, for the Lindsay Quartet in 2005. Recent work has shown a renewal of interest in musical theatre, with the melodrama ''Deadly Pleasures'' for narrator and small ensemble, based a poem by D M Thomas concerning the life of
Cleopatra Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator (; The name Cleopatra is pronounced , or sometimes in both British and American English, see and respectively. Her name was pronounced in the Greek dialect of Egypt (see Koine Greek phonology). She was ...
, and a monodrama, ''Kokoschka’s Doll'', premiered at the Cheltenham Festival in 2017, about Alma Mahler's relationship with the painter Oskar Kokoschka. A CD of ''Kokoschka’s Doll'' was released in 2020.


References


External links


John Casken at Schott Music LimitedJohn Casken website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Casken, John 1949 births Living people 20th-century English classical composers 21st-century English classical composers Academics of the University of Manchester Academics of Durham University Academics of the University of Huddersfield English opera composers English male opera composers Alumni of the University of Birmingham 20th-century English male musicians 21st-century English male musicians