John McCabe (composer)

[1] Guy Rickards praised him as "one of Britain's finest composers in the past half-century" and "a pianist of formidable gifts and wide-ranging sympathies".

[1] McCabe began studying composition with British composers Humphrey Procter-Gregg at Manchester University and with Thomas Pitfield at the Royal Manchester College of Music (now the Royal Northern College), and later, in 1964, at the Munich Hochschule für Musik he continued studying composition with German composer Harald Genzmer and others.

[5] Guy Rickards considers McCabe's early works to have been overlooked because he was perceived as a pianist rather than a composer.

[2] One of his early successes was the orchestral song cycle Notturni ed Alba, soprano and orchestra (1970), based on a set of poems in medieval Latin about the theme of night, which was described as "an intoxicating creation, full of tingling atmosphere and slumbering passion".

[7] But it was not until the 1990s that he came to be viewed primarily as a composer, with the successes of the piano scoreTenebrae (1992–93), which marked the deaths in 1992 of musicians Sir Charles Groves, William Mathias and Stephen Oliver, and was written for Barry Douglas; his 4th symphony, Of Time and the River (1993–94); and his third ballet Edward II (1995),[4] which permitted David Bintley's choreography to win the 1998 TMA/Barclays Theatre Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance.

[1] McCabe's style evolved gradually from an initial lyrical constructivism through a serialist phase, with a fascination with repetitive patterns leading to a more complex combination of processes to achieve more subtle forms of continuity.

[2][7] He had a long-lasting association with the Presteigne Festival, an annual classical music event held in Powys County, Wales.

[20] McCabe wrote guides to the music of Haydn, Bartók and Rachmaninoff, and a book on contemporary English composer Alan Rawsthorne.