Nicholas Jones and Richard McGregor, The Music of Peter Maxwell Davies (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2020), ISBN: 978-1-78327-483-3 (hb).

Abstract

Any account of recent British musical history is inconceivable without the towering legacy of Peter Maxwell Davies (1934–2016). A handful of iconic works – Eight Songs for a Mad King, Vesalii Icones and the opera Taverner – dominate accounts, although one does not need to scratch far beneath the surface to unearth a tremendous wealth of creative endeavour, from string quartets, to symphonies, concertos, choral works, and music for amateurs. Davies, the irreplaceable British modernist, left his mark on every major musical genre. Throughout his prolific musical career, Davies attracted scholarly interest – particularly in the field of music analysis. Indeed, the high complexity of many of Davies’s compositions invites analytical reading alongside the substantial and tantalizing sketches, which afford abundant insights into the compositional process. He enjoyed dedicated studies from early career scholars as far back as 1972 (a study of his choral music by M. C. Preheim was completed when Davies was still in his thirties) and a wealth of doctoral dissertations, some of which were to launch distinguished academic careers. The ability to grapple with Davies and his musical contexts is highly valued. Recent years have witnessed the publication of Perspectives on Peter Maxwell Davies (2000), Peter Maxwell Davies: A Source Book (2002), Peter Maxwell Davies Studies (2009), and British Musical Modernism (2015), which complement older biographies of Davies by Griffiths (1982), Seabrook (1994), and Smith (1995). The scholarly field more generally is dominated by articles and book chapters: Davies’s music has been paid particular attention in the journals Tempo and TheMusical Times. It is surprising, though, that recent book-length analytical