William Mathias Catalogue

William Mathias
William Mathias was born in Whitland, Dyfed in
1934 and died in 1992. He began to compose at an
early age, studying first at the University College of
Wales, Aberystwyth, taking his BMus with first-class
honours, and subsequently on an Open Scholarship in
composition at the Royal Academy of Music. He was
elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in 1965,
and gained the DMus of the University of Wales in 1966.
In 1968 he was awarded the Bax Society Prize under the
Harriet Cohen International Music Awards, and in 1981
the John Edwards Memorial Award. From 1970-1988
he was Professor and Head of the Music Department at
the University College of North Wales, Bangor. He was
known as a conductor and pianist, and gave or directed
many premières of his own works. In 1972 he founded
the North Wales Music Festival at St Asaph Cathedral
and remained its artistic director until his death.
A house composer with Oxford University Press since
1961, his compositions cover an extraordinarily wide
range. Early success include the Clarinet Sonatina
at the 1957 Cheltenham Festival (followed within a
year by broadcasts in France and Poland), and the
Divertimento for String Orchestra which, following its
London première, was quickly taken up as far afield as
Prague and California. He has made a highly significant
contribution to twentieth-century organ music, and his
church music and carols are still regularly performed
worldwide. Works such as the Symphonies, Clarinet
Concerto, Harp Concerto, Improvisations for Harp, Laudi,
Piano Concerto No.3, Ave Rex, Riddles and This Worlde’s
Joie have entered the repertory; the Organ Concerto
scored a great success in the 1984 BBC Proms, and Lux
Aeterna has been hailed as one of the finest British
choral/orchestral works this century.
Mathias’ musical language embraced both instrumental
and vocal forms with equal success, and he addressed a
large and varied audience both in Britain and abroad. He
was awarded an Honorary DMus by Westminster Choir
College, Princeton in 1987 and he was made CBE in the
1985 New Year’s Honours. In 1992, the year of his death,
Nimbus Records embarked upon a series of recordings
of his major works.
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