Composer Alun Hoddinott was born in Bargoed in 1929. His compositional talents developed early, and he won a university scholarship at the age of 16. After graduating from Cardiff University, he studied for some years with the Australian composer and pianist Arthur Benjamin. Hoddinott was awarded the Walford Davies prize for composition when he was 24, and achieved his first national success a year later, when his Clarinet Concerto was given its first public performance at the Cheltenham Festival by Gervase de Peyer and the Hallé Orchestra, under Sir John Barbirolli. In 1951 he was appointed lecturer in music at the Welsh College of Music and Drama. He later became lecturer at Cardiff University and was made professor and head of department there in 1967. Among his many awards were the John Edwards Memorial Award (he was the first recipient), the Arnold Bax Medal for composers, the Hopkins Medal of the New York St David's Society and the CBE. He was an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music, and a fellow of the Royal Northern College of Music. Hoddinott achieved a mastery of composition which embraces almost every musical medium. His strong creative urge, stimulated by a tremendous variety of eminent performers, is reflected in a substantial body of works. Essentially chromatic, his music often showed a dark Celtic intensity, manifested in his nocturnal slow movements. As former professor of music at Cardiff University, and artistic director of the Cardiff Festival (which he co-founded with his friend, the pianist John Ogdon), he had considerable influence in awakening interest in contemporary music in south Wales. He also formed close and regular contacts in both the USA and Germany. In 1997, during the Machynlleth Festival, he was given the Glyndwr Award for an outstanding contribution to the arts in Wales. In 1999 he received a lifetime achievement award from the Arts Council of Wales, along with fellowship of the Welsh Music Guild, and a medal from Queen Elizabeth II at the official opening of the Wales Millennium Centre. In 2004, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales undertook a year-long season of Hoddinott's work to celebrate the composer's 75th birthday. In 2005, he was made a fellow of the Welsh Music Guild in recognition of both his major contribution to Welsh music and also his support and membership of the Guild for over 50 years. That same year he produced a fanfare to be performed at the wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles.  He had previously composed music to mark the prince's 16th birthday. [Hoddinott with Prince Charles in photo at right] On 1 March 2007, following the world premiere of his song cycle Serenissima, at Cardiff's St David's Hall, it was announced that the new recording space and performance hall of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales was to bear Hoddinott's name, making him the first Welsh composer to have a major concert venue named in his honour. BBC Hoddinott Hall, which opened in the Wales Millennium Centre in 2008, allows an audience of up to 350 to enjoy performances involving the full orchestra and chorus that were not able to be staged at BBC Wales' studios in Llandaff. Hoddinott's work has been performed all over the world by luminaries ranging from Sir Geraint Evans and Dame Gwyneth Lewis to Mstislav Rostropovich and John Ogdon. Alun Hoddinott died on Wednesday 12 March 2008 at Swansea's Morriston Hospital. --  BBC Wales Music (with additions)

In June of 1994, a couple of months before his sixty-fifth birthday, I contacted the composer and asked if he would mind speaking with me on the telephone.  He accepted immediately and I made the call from Chicago..........




Alun Hoddinott:    It’s amazing that one can do an interview at this distance, isn’t it?

Bruce Duffie:    It is.  And it sounds like we’re talking next door to one another.

AH:    There seems to be no time lag.

BD:    Right.  It’s very clear and it’s immediate, so it’s wonderful.  It makes my job rather interesting.  I can chat with people no matter where they are.

AH:    [Laughs]  It must be.

BD:    As a matter of fact, the other side of this particular cassette that I’m using has an interview with Peter Sculthorpe.  [See my Interview with Peter Sculthorpe.]

AH:    You phoned him in Australia?

BD:    Yes.  I talked to him several months ago and did a sixty-fifth show for him!

AH:    Aha!  He’s a very interesting composer, isn’t he?

BD:    Yes, he is; as are you!

AH:    [With an almost audible blush]  Oh, well...

BD:    I want to talk about a lot of things, so we will just get at it.  A number of recordings of your music have been made.  Are you basically pleased with them?

AH:    Yes.  I’m even more pleased with the more recent recordings, because obviously recording technique has improved.  Some of my first recordings were made in the early 1960s and went onto vinyl disks, of course.  I think that the new developments in compact disks make for a much better quality sound now.

BD:    Is it because it’s clearer and you can hear more detail?

AH:    Yes.  One thing I’ve found very interesting with the Nimbus Records is they simply use one microphone.  I find the results of that are quite startling.

BD:    You mean a single stereo mike?

AH:    Yeah.  I think it’s a specially designed one that they’ve done themselves, but it picks everything up and gives a very balanced sound.  With the old recordings, you had several microphones dotted around the orchestra, so that the level of sound could be controlled sectionally.  Sometimes that leads to a bit of distortion.  But I find the concept of a single microphone gives you a much better balance and overall picture of the music.

BD:    So you really have to rely on the conductor to get the balance right, and then with the correct placement of the single mike, it’ll be correct?

AH:    Yes.  And the other thing that I find is good about the Nimbus sessions is that they make the record as though it were an actual performance.  It

BD:    When you’re writing with the pen on the paper, are you always in control of where that pen goes?

AH:    Not always.  In many ways I’m an instinctive composer.  When I’m writing I’m sketching, and then I work from sketches.  But there are certain areas that just seem to happen.  And once the work is planned and all sketched out, there are these areas where one’s instinct or imagination takes over, and you end up with something on the page that perhaps you didn’t quite expect.

BD:    When you’re working with it and tinkering with it and you’re getting it all down, how do you know when it is right?

AH:    I like to think that I know when it’s okay!  I’ve got the shape of the pieces in my mind before I actually start with the notes, and I know the kind of sound I want to get.  It’s a question of getting the right notes on paper to give the sound that I’ve heard in my mind, because I do hear what I’m writing.  I think that some of this very complicated music

BD:    I assume that most of the works you write are on commission?

AH:    Yeah.

BD:    When you are given a commission, how do you decide whether to accept it or turn it aside?

AH:    Let me answer that in a different kind of way.  When you’re a young composer, you have to accept commissions as they come, and write what the commissioner wants.  The important thing about a commission — apart from the financial side — is the fact that you’ve got a performance date.  For young composers, performance is of vital importance.  Young composers must get performances early on in their career, so that they learn from this.  But what I’ve found is that as one becomes more established, you can say, “I would like to write this kind of piece,” in response to the commission.  Obviously, if a violinist gives you a commission, you write a violin piece, but I think that one can determine the kind of piece that is needed.  So it’s a bit of both.  One writes in response to a particular commission, but the kind of work that appears is up to me.

BD:    You’ve written sonatas and symphonies and operas and songs.  Do you try to balance it so that you go from one to the other, or does it come in clumps?

AH:    No, it tends to come in, as you say, in patches.  With writing operas, I wrote five in about, oh, I suppose, seven or eight years because I particularly wanted to do it at that time.  And when I was writing the operas, I didn’t write much else.  I haven’t written an orchestral piece now for about five or six years because I really haven’t felt like doing it.  I’ve been writing more instrumental pieces now.  And I like writing for my friends, so if one of them asks me to write a piece for a concert that he’s giving, I’ll do it.

BD:    But then are you looking forward to getting back to another symphony, perhaps?

AH:    One day, perhaps, but I find that I get problems, sometimes, with titles.  Symphony Number Ten sounds just a bit boring, so for the last few large orchestral pieces I’ve tended to go away from just a plain title, and call them something else.  Anything can be a symphony now; you can say it’s a symphony or a concerto for orchestra...

BD:    Is this to put the audience more in a different frame of mind when they sit down to listen to it?

AH:    I think it could be important because if an audience is listening to a symphony, they’ve got the whole weight of the nineteenth century symphony in their minds already.  Probably they’re expecting a new symphony

BD:    You have written quite a bit of vocal music.  Tell me the joys and sorrows of writing for the human voice.

AH:    I find vocal music is the most difficult music for me to write because I don’t like experimenting with vocal technique.  There’s quite a lot of that thing going on, and a voice is limited in what it can do physically; then, of course, every singer is different, so every performance you get of a vocal piece is going to be different.  There are distractions with vocal writing.  One is words, of course.  I find that nearly all the best words have been set, anyway!  But the diction of singers is not terribly clear.  How often do you go to a song recital and hear the words that are being sung?  That’s quite a problem.  Balance is another problem.  On the other hand, when you do get a beautiful singer who projects the words and the music, the experience is one of the best you can get.

BD:    Is it all worth it?

AH:    I find it so, although I have to say that after writing several vocal pieces, I turned back to a string quartet with extra enjoyment!  [Both laugh]  The other thing is with choral pieces particularly, it’s difficult to write very chromatic music, because the voice simply can’t skip around to produce the words and produce the beautiful sound.  So there are problems.  I find it very interesting to perceive what the most often sung choral pieces of the twentieth century are, pieces like Carmina Burana, which might be difficult but they’re essentially diatonic.  This seems to be the kind of music that the voice copes with better.

BD:    Does that mean you don’t have to have quite such beautiful sounds in an orchestral piece or a clarinet sonata?

AH:    The thing is that the fingers can go around anything, you know.  And the standard of performance these days is really terrific!  If you’re asked to write an instrumental piece, you can simply forget about anything like technical difficulties for the performers.  They can get their hands around anything!

BD:    The technical ability certainly has continued to grow.  Has the musical ability also continued to grow?

AH:    I think this stays on a fairly even level.  If one hears recordings of someone like Kreisler, for example, I think this is the most beautiful violin playing I’ve heard, and nobody is every going to surpass that!  This can lead you into very interesting thought

BD:    You’re about to hit your sixty-fifth birthday.  Are you at the point in your career that you expected to be at that age?

AH:    [Laughs]  I don’t know.  I don’t think about it much.  I just go on from day to day, writing as I have to!  There are obviously some disappointments; some pieces haven’t worked particularly well, and then there are other pleasures.  Next month, for example, at the Cheltenham Festival, my Clarinet Concerto is being played, exactly forty years after it was written.  It was first played there in 1954, so one gets some pleasure in thinking that a piece has stayed in the repertoire for forty years!

BD:    One last question

Alun Hoddinott Prodigy who became a prolific composer and patriarchal figure in Welsh music The composer Alun Hoddinott, who has died aged 78, was the genial father-figure of Welsh music: he, more than anyone, directed its postwar path to full professionalism and creative renewal. A fitting recognition of his unique role in the cultural life of the nation was the announcement on St David's Day last year that the new home of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales at the Wales Millennium Centre is to be named BBC Hoddinott Hall - Neuadd Hoddinott y BBC. Its opening in 2009, in what would have been his 80th birthday year, will now be a poignant celebration of the distinguished doyen who was always a modest gentle giant and never the grand old man. Born at Bargoed, Glamorganshire, Hoddinott began his musical career as a child-prodigy violinist, and in 1946 was a teenage founding-member of the National Youth Orchestra of Wales playing the viola, traditionally a composer's preferred string instrument. Already composing prolifically at Gowerton grammar school, he always said that his musical thinking was that of a string player and never a pianist. It was therefore fitting that his last work was called Music for String Quartet, premiered at London's Wigmore Hall on the day of his death. Although he dismissed the idea that he was a prolific composer, Hoddinott was in fact legendary for his capacity to compose at full stretch to tight deadlines, and his vast and versatile catalogue runs to nearly 300 individual works, which include six operas, 10 symphonies and over 20 concertos. The BBC in Wales gave the first studio performance of his Clarinet Concerto in 1949, when Hoddinott was still a student at Cardiff University. This was the work that brought him international recognition when it was publicly premiered at the 1954 Cheltenham festival by Gervase de Peyer, the Hallé Orchestra and Sir John Barbirolli, with a Proms performance by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sir Malcolm Sargent the following year. The fluent neoclassical style of this work ensures that it is still played regularly (with a new recording by Robert Plane due for imminent release), but by 1954 Hoddinott's musical language had developed beyond recognition into the much darker, brooding and aggressively rhythmic idiom which characterised his early maturity. Together with its nocturnal intensity and dense chromatic colouring, there is a distinctive edge to this music which marks it out from anything previously composed in Wales (or the rest of Britain) and which can be heard at its finest in the orchestral Variants of 1966 and the middle-period symphonies (Nos 2, 3, 4 and 5, 1962-73). Lecturing posts at Cardiff College of Music and Drama (1951-59) and the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire (1959-65) led to a readership at the University of Wales. Then, in the pivotal year of 1967, Hoddinott became professor at what is now Cardiff University, while simultaneously establishing the Cardiff Festival of 20th Century Music (initially with his close friend the pianist John Ogdon). For the next 20 years, he created a remarkable synergy between the two, which led to the building of a magnificent new music department in 1970 and the enticing to Cardiff not only of leading musical figures like Olivier Messiaen, Benjamin Britten, Michael Tippett, Karlheinz Stockhausen and André Previn - but also of the artists Barbara Hepworth and John Piper (among many others) as contributors to a climate of cultural freethinking. It felt as if musical life in Wales had suddenly been catapulted into a different dimension, and the stimulus of having an international composer with all his contacts living and working in the city spearheaded the gradual efforts by the BBC Welsh Orchestra and Welsh National Opera (WNO) to develop into full-scale organisations, despite the lack of adequate buildings. Hoddinott contributed several challenging new scores to the orchestra's growing repertoire and, in 1973, his first opera, The Beach of Falesá (after Robert Louis Stevenson), was premiered by WNO, the company's first proper full-length commission, with the great baritone Geraint Evans in the leading role. But Hoddinott also commissioned most of his composer colleagues - older, contemporary, younger and both from Wales and beyond - to write new works and gave encouragement and support with typical generosity: Peter Pears once described him in a diary entry as "a Father Christmas of a man". On his retirement from all administrative duties by 1989, his 60th birthday year saw a prodigious succession of premieres, including two piano sonatas, the Proms orchestral piece Star Children and the Seventh Symphony, culminating in the cello concerto Noctis Equi for Mstislav Rostropovich with the London Symphony Orchestra. Next day this piece was recorded at Abbey Road studios, London, with the composer repeatedly embraced as "Alunchik" by the Russian. In 1999, he wrote a docu-opera for the touring company Opera Box about the workers' buyout of the Tower colliery, Cynon Valley, four years earlier. Richard Morrison of the Times wrote of the premiere of Tower that this "rumbustiously partisan opera... won cheers in Swansea, even if the London critics sniffed". Hoddinott was shy and often retiring in public, but warm and gregarious in company and revelled in his friendships. His homes in Cardiff, and later on the Gower peninsula, were ablaze with colourful canvases and sculptures by Piper, Tom Nash, Kyffin Williams and John Elwyn, and his wine-generous hospitality was proverbial. But central to every aspect of his life was his wife Rhiannon, of whom Pears wrote that "her beauty was such that wars could have been fought over her". Her devotion ensured his physical and creative well-being; she survives him, with their son Ceri. · Alun Hoddinott, composer, born August 11 1929; died March 11 2008 --  Geraint Lewis, The Guardian, Friday 14 March 2008     (with photo added for this website presentation)

This interview was recorded in Chicago on June 24, 1994.  Portions (along with recordings) were used on WNIB approximately two months later, and again in 1999.  This transcription was posted on this website in 2011.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here.

Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001.  His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.