John Beckwith CM (March 9, 1927 – December 5, 2022) was a Canadian composer, writer, pianist, teacher, and administrator.

[1][2] Born in Victoria, British Columbia, he studied piano with Alberto Guerrero at the Toronto Conservatory of Music in 1945.

He also wrote 17 books, the last of which - Music Annals: Research and Critical Writings by a Canadian Composer - was published shortly before his death in 2022.

Among his notable pupils were Brian Cherney, Gustav Ciamaga, Omar Daniel, John Fodi, Clifford Ford, Ben McPeek, James Rolfe, Clark Ross, Matthew Davidson, and Timothy Sullivan.

[7] In 2006, his biography In Search of Alberto Guerrero was published by Wilfrid Laurier Press (issued in Spanish translation in 2021).

Beckwith's autobiography, Unheard Of: Memoirs of a Canadian Composer, was published by Wilfrid Laurier Press in 2012.

While the majority of his works are settings of Canadian texts for voice, he also wrote for orchestral and chamber groups as well as solo instrumental pieces and choral music.

Beckwith was a modernist[9] whose eclectic compositional vocabulary was sustained "by a broad palette of idioms, colours, and by the availability of a rich variety of forming procedures.

[11] He often collaborated with Canadian writers when setting text for voice including James Reaney, Jay Macpherson, Margaret Atwood,[12] bpNichol, Georges Sioui, and Dennis Lee;.

cummings, John Millington Synge, Samuel Beckett, and poems of the Tang dynasty translated by Witter Bynner.