Alan Ridout

Biography

Alan Ridout (9 December 1934 – 19 March 1996) was a British composer and teacher.

Life

Born in West Wickham, Kent, England, Alan Ridout studied briefly at the Guildhall School of Music before commencing four years of study at the Royal College of Music, London with Herbert Howells and Gordon Jacob. He was later taught by Michael Tippett, Peter Fricker and (under a Dutch government scholarship) Henk Badings.
He went on to teach at the Royal College of Music, the University of Birmingham, the University of Cambridge, the University of London, and at The King's School, Canterbury. He also broadcast musical talks on the radio.
Alan Ridout lived for much of his life in Canterbury, but after a serious heart attack in 1990 he moved to France, settling in the town of Vitré, Brittany, before moving on to Caen at the very end of his life.

Music

Ridout's style is mostly tonal, though in younger life he wrote some microtonal works.
His works include church, orchestral and chamber music, often intended for amateurs and children. Much of the church music came out of a collaboration between Ridout and Allan Wicks, organist and master of the choristers at Canterbury Cathedral which began in 1964.
The six string quartets, composed over a period of nine years (1985-1994), are adventurous and varied in form and mood, but "not so testing as to be outside the scope of the good amateur ensemble". There are also a large number of concertinos for solo instruments with piano or string accompaniment often written especially for students or friends. He also wrote pieces for unaccompanied instruments such as Caliban and Ariel (1974), for unaccompanied bassoon, a musical recreation of two Shakespeare characters from The Tempest. It was first performed in Canterbury by Laurence Perkins (then a student) and has been frequently performed (and recorded) by him since.
Alan Ridout worked regularly with the Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra (LSSO). His Three Pictures of Picasso, originally written for the National Youth Orchestra, was performed by the LSSO at a De Montfort Hall concert conducted by Rudolf Schwarz in 1964 with the composer present. His second symphony, also for the LSSO, was dedicated to Michael Tippett to mark his 60th birthday (though Ridout did not hold Tippett in high regard). The symphony was first performed in 1965 and also featured in the television programme Overture with Beginners (see video link below).
The 1967 Leicestershire Schools Music Festival included a number of LSSO commissions and in May that year Ridout's dance drama Funeral Games for a Greek Warrior made its debut at De Montfort Hall. In July 1967 the LSSO made its first commercial disc for the Pye Golden Guinea label and Ridout responded to a request for a short work for inclusion on the disc by composing a lively Concertante Music. The work's debut took place on a record rather than at a public concert. Concertante Music was then taken on the LSSO tour of Denmark and Germany in September 1967 (see external video link below).
Recent academic studies of Ridout's music include Andrew Plant's monograph The Higher Storie: Alan Ridout's music for counter-tenor (2022) and Nicholas Bannan's Signs of the times: the Canterbury children’s operas of Alan Ridout (2022).
Ridout's musical archive was bequethed by him to Ampleforth Abbey in Yorkshire whose library now holds a comprehensive catalogue of his manuscripts. A few of previously unpublished works held by the library have in recent years been made available for publication by the Trustees of Ampleforth Abbey bringing his work to a new audience.

Video

Sir Michael Tippett and Eric Pinkett rehearse Ridout's 2nd Symphony with the Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra in 1965 on YouTube
A complete performance of Concertante Music on YouTube