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composer equally at home with the children's choirs and rock bands

composer David Bedford, who died of lung cancer at the age of 74, an employee of a wide range of styles and media in a half-century career that saw move from young iconoclasts suppliers eclectic music for all seasons and needs. In 1963, as a student of Luigi Nono's late in Venice, wrote two poems for choir, normative texts by Kenneth Patchen. It remains one of his most compelling, with a recording on the Deutsche Grammophon label Avantgarde. Bedford later works to maintain a certain flexibility of the rating and an open mind on the instrumentation. "The boxes of dog biscuits are as good as the maracas," he suggested.

fascinated by astronomy, gave many of their titles to work with stars and space. He became an avid reader of science fiction during his time as a janitor at Guy's Hospital in London in 1956, instead, as a conscientious objector, regular national service. The novel by Arthur C. Clarke this year, the city and the stars, was the basis of a cantata for chorus Crouch End Festival, which began in 2001 and 83 years with the Clarke film, reading a story from the ,. movements

Bedford was born in Hendon, north-west London, into a musical family. His grandmother, Liza Lehmann, was a composer and his mother, Lesley Duff, was a singer with the group English Opera end of 1940, in collaboration with Benjamin Britten, and later, the brother of Bedford, Steuart, became a normal conductor in Aldeburgh. After college Lancing, West Sussex, David studied with Lennox Berkeley at the Royal Academy of Music in London, then in 1961, Nono. Upon his return to London, which initially attracted a lot of their lives through school education. This was the first impulse to his compositions, many children and amateur artists.

For a while, he remained something of a modernist, if a very lyrical. Music instrumentalists Albion Moonlight (1965), for soprano and sextet, with words of Patchen, are called to interpret the word "sklitter." The tentacles of the dark nebula (1969), also based on Clarke and written by the Peter Pears tenor and string sextet, used some exquisite "extended" techniques for string instruments.

Even when it became more common, the music can still be freely Bedford experimental procedures for the use of improvisation. Unorthodox performance techniques have been integrated into concert works happily, key-wind sounds, scraping with a fingernail for strings, singers are invited to imitate instruments, and even inhalation of helium gas to be heard their voice in a tone of hysteria - in the Song of White Horse (1978), for children's choir and orchestra.

Sometimes kazoos and metronomes have been deployed with 100 kazoos (1971), for 11 players, the instruction to interpret some of the images included in the score, ranging from maps of the stars of illustrations suitable for books for children, brought the composer Pierre Boulez in conflict with the first planned pilot of the room, and had to wait to get the address of someone more able to identify with a sense of humor of the composer. Bedford Bias for the bizarre and ridiculous has never been questioned. In the decade of 1970, which was reflected in job titles such as the song of the nurse with the elephants, the settings of William Blake for the singer and guitar 10 (1971), published in the tooth to Lion John Peel seal.

the end of 1960, Bedford moved into pop music, working with Kevin Ayers and his rock band in the world. I remember well the first of The Garden of Love (1970): a song, again inspired by Blake, for chamber ensemble and Ayers group. It includes the saxophonist Lol Coxhill, and the duo of Coxhill-Bedford has made recordings of vaudeville and British music hall songs. Another band member was Mike Oldfield, whose great success of the album Tubular Bells was released in 1973: Bedford attended his first performance, and held the position for an album below, tubular bells orchestra (1975). Your participation in the pop world led him to compose several concept albums, including The Ballad of the Ancient Mariner (1975) and Odyssey (1976).

contributions to the repertoire for wind band include paintings Sun Rainbows in big waves (1982), commissioned by the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Skilled and unskilled musicians-combined in works such as seascapes (1986) for symphony orchestra with school-age children, and stories of Dreams (1991), written for 40 deaf children and orchestra. Students sinking of the Titanic, a work also involved extensive celebrate the centenary of the sinking in 2012.

With his first wife, Maureen Parsonage, Bedford had two daughters with his second, Susan Pilgrim, two daughters, and the third, Allison Powell, a son and two daughters. The first two marriages ended in divorce. He is survived by Allison, her children and Steuart.

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