Jonathan Dove CBE is one of the world’s leading composers of vocal music. Since his breakthrough opera Flight, commissioned by Glyndebourne in 1998, he has composed almost thirty operatic works as well as song cycles and choral works. His commitment to creating music for everyone has led to works for children and community singers, including Tobias and the Angel and The Monster in the Maze.
He grew up learning the piano, organ and viola before studying composition with Robin Holloway at Cambridge. His early professional experience as a freelance accompanist, repetiteur, animateur and arranger gave him a deep understanding of singers and the complex mechanics of the opera house.
My earliest musical memory is …
My mother playing the piano in the living room as her three children drifted off to sleep. She worked hard as an architect, and as a mother, so this was the only time she had to herself, playing Handel’s ‘Largo‘, Debussy’s ‘Claire de lune’, or perhaps something from ‘Oklahoma!’. In the morning, I would try to play, from memory, what I’d heard her playing the night before, and that’s how it all started.
A poet everyone should discover is…
Judith Wright, an Australian poet to whose work I was introduced by Samling’s Director Karon Wright (no relation), and whose poems I set in ‘Man, Woman, Child’. Her life spans most of the 20th Century. She writes lyrically and directly, with wonderful vitality, about life and love and nature. Setting her words to music, I discovered that the clarity and appeal of her writing is deceptive: it has hidden depths, and takes the reader or listener further than they were expecting.
The last live performance I heard was…
A beautifully condensed version of ‘Hansel and Gretel’ actually performed in a wood, by Waterperry Opera. It was completely enchanting. Singers emerged from the trees, or started singing in the distance somewhere behind the audience; one even accompanied himself on the accordion, which was quite a coup.
My perfect summer evening is…
Somewhere Mediterranean, eating outdoors until late. But if I’m in London, a light picnic before an opera in Holland Park, or a Prom.
The character from my operas who I’d most like to have dinner with is…
Karl Marx! (‘Marx in London’, 2018) It would be fascinating, possibly maddening and probably bewildering. Although he wrote so much about money, he never seemed to have any, so I would have to pay the bill, of course.
The place I dream of travelling to is…
All of Latin America, when my Spanish is a little stronger…
The best thing about composing vocal music is…
Hearing wonderful singers produce sounds I can only dream of making. It feels as though I am singing with their voices.
My advice to young singers performing my songs is…
Use all of your imagination: see everything you are singing about in your mind’s eye, and bring all of your feelings into the performance.
I hardly ever mark dynamics or expression for the singer, as I want your musical performance to be shaped by your individual response to the words, and to the stories they tell. Not everything is in the notes: the music needs you, too.
Images: Jonathan Dove at Samling Artist Programme, photo credit Mark Pinder
