Gavin Gordon (composer)
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Gavin Gordon (24 November 1901{{spaced ndash}}18 November 1970) was a Scottish bass singer, actor and composer, best known for his 1935 Hogarthian ballet The Rake's Progress.
Biography
Gavin Gordon was born in Ayr, Scotland in 1901, as Gavin Muspratt Gordon Brown.[http://www.talkingscot.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1630&start=0 Talking.Scot.com] He went to Rugby School then studied music at the Royal College of Music in London under Ralph Vaughan Williams and other teachers.
His ballets A Toothsome Morsel (1930), Regatta (1931), The Death of Hector and The Scorpions of Ysit (1932) did not remain in the repertory. More lasting fame, however, was accorded to The Rake's Progress (1935), based on the sequence of seven pictures by William Hogarth known as A Rake's Progress. His ballet suite Les Noces Imaginaires has been issued on a Heritage label CD, played by the BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by Barry Wordsworth.
Gavin Gordon also wrote some orchestral works, including parodies of old-style dances such as Four Caricatures and Work in E major.[http://www.musicweb-international.com/garlands/108.htm Music Web International] There is also music for a musical based on Dick Whittington, and incidental music for the play The Man Behind the Statue, based on Simón Bolívar, written by Peter Ustinov and directed by Robert Donat.
As a singer, he appeared in the stage production of My Fair Lady.[http://landofllostcontent.blogspot.com/2010/04/gavin-gordon-composer-few-first-musings.html British Classical Music: The Land of Lost Content]
Gavin Gordon died in London in 1970, aged 68.
References
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Sources
- Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th ed, 1954
- Bruce R. Schueneman, William Emmett Studwell: [https://books.google.com/books?id=w2mL2XKbPqIC&dq=gavin+muspratt+gordon&pg=PA45 Minor ballet composers: biographical sketches of sixty-six underappreciated composers]
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Category:British ballet composers
Category:British operatic basses
Category:Scottish male film actors
Category:Alumni of the Royal College of Music
Category:People educated at Rugby School
Category:20th-century Scottish male actors
Category:20th-century Scottish male opera singers
Category:20th-century British composers
Category:20th-century Scottish musicians
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