[3] While Morris instilled an interest in counterpoint and music from past centuries, such as that of the madrigalist Thomas Morley, Hadley and Hopkins provided more practical tuition.
After returning to London in the spring of 1950, his music increasingly attracted performances and broadcasts by prominent players (including flautist Geoffrey Gilbert, oboist Evelyn Barbirolli, harpist Maria Korchinska, violinist Neville Marriner, violist Watson Forbes, the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble), and conductors such as Leslie Woodgate, Paul Steinitz and the composer Gerald Finzi.
In 1959, four years after writing his first pieces for the instrument he married Jane Clark, herself a harpsichordist and an authority on François Couperin.
[2] He first came to write for the guitar—an instrument with which Dodgson is perhaps especially associated—in the early 1950s when Alexis Chesnakov, a Russian actor exiled in Britain, requested some folksong settings.
[3] Recorder player John Turner remembers him as "Enthusiastic, ebullient and quick-witted... extremely voluble, with a strong, distinctive voice, an ever-present smile, much old-world courtesy, and an idiosyncratic gait.
One of the few recent composers to write idiomatically for the harpsichord, clavichord and harp,[4] he may be the first since the eighteenth century to have written for baryton trio.
In addition to a large number of solo works, among which are six virtuoso piano sonatas, this includes ensemble pieces and two concertos.
[2] Dodgson's many contributions to the recorder repertoire include "Shine and Shade", a jazzy virtuoso piece from 1975, written for one of his students, the composer Richard Harvey.
His one full-scale opera, Margaret Catchpole – Two Worlds Apart, is in four acts and features a heroine who has been dubbed a "female Dick Turpin".
His two chamber operas, the farcical Cadilly and Nancy the Waterman, were first performed with puppets (at the Purcell Room in 1969) and have also been fully staged (in St Albans in 2002 and 2007).