David Bedford, who died on October 1 aged 74, was a musical polymath, a composer whose output varied from arranging Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells to important Modernist works for the Proms; he also worked with Kevin Ayers’s cult 1960s band The Whole World and produced compositions for community choirs.
David Bedford
Yet to suggest that he lived only two musical lives — one pop, the other classical — would fail to do justice to his vision, talent and dedication. Boogie and ballad would blend into a single Bedford work as easily as modernism and rock, or classical and pop. If asked to identify the pinnacle of his career, he would reply simply: “The piece I’m working on at present.”
This breadth was at least partly inspired by financial imperatives: by the end of his life Bedford had seven children from three marriages, and if a commission came with a pay packet he rarely turned it down.
One of his last works, for example, was The Wreck of the Titanic, written for school choirs in Cumbria, Lancashire and Liverpool after being commissioned by local authorities in the region. It premiered in Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall last year. Previous commissions had seen Bedford write for an orchestra made up of deaf children; compose music for film and television; and score Schoenberg-influenced avant-garde creations heard on Radio 3.
The Cheltenham Festival had been one of the first of many to recognise these Modernist talents, and in 1967 had commissioned Trona, an instrumental work. Thirty years later the Norfolk and Norwich Festival, of which Bedford was composer in residence, gave him the opportunity to write A Charm of Joy and (in 1998) the opera The Prostitutes’ Padre, based on the 1930s story of the Rector of Stiffkey.
Even the department store John Lewis commissioned an oboe concerto (in 1998, performed by Nicholas Daniel); while a percussion concerto for Evelyn Glennie in 1999 created a good deal of noise at the time. Two years later Bedford collaborated with Arthur C Clarke on The City and the Stars, a sci-fi-inspired choral work heard at the Festival Hall.
Classical work was only the half of it. His orchestration of Tubular Bells gave Virgin Records the fillip it needed in the early days of Richard Branson’s musical enterprise, and he also worked on scores for Deep Purple, Elvis Costello and the faux-ska band Madness (who “didn’t know the first thing about music”).
In taking his skills as a classical composer to popular music (rather than the other way around), Bedford was something of a pioneer. “I think I was the first crossover musician to come over from the classical side,” he told an interviewer two years ago. “I remember a fellow classical composer suggesting I should buy an inferior grade of manuscript paper now I was working in rock music. Nowadays everybody’s crossing over all the time.”
David Vickerman Bedford was born in Hendon, north London, on August 4 1937. His grandparents included Herbert Bedford, a composer, painter and author, and Liza Lehmann, who wrote Edwardian parlour ballads, notably There are Fairies at the Bottom of my Garden. David’s mother, Lesley Duff, was a member of Benjamin Britten’s English Opera Group and sang in the original Albert Herring and The Rape of Lucretia. His brother, Steuart, would become an important conductor and continue the family link with Britten.
By the age of seven David had learnt notation and was writing his first opera. He took up the oboe while at Lancing College and, after working as a porter at Guy’s Hospital (in lieu of National Service, being a conscientious objector), studied composition under Lennox Berkeley at the Royal Academy of Music. A scholarship took him to Venice for lessons with Luigi Nono, the Modernist composer.
Returning to England in the early 1960s, he realised that he was unlikely to earn a living as an avant-garde composer and so became a full-time teacher. Indeed, he continued teaching in secondary schools until 1980, well after achieving commercial success.
A score for the rock-opera From Marie Antoinette to the Beatles in 1968 led him to Kevin Ayers, who was in need of an arranger for his debut solo album, Joy of a Toy. Bedford was asked to be the keyboard player on tour and soon found himself working with Oldfield, The Whole World’s bass guitarist.
The Garden of Love, for pop band and orchestra, was one of Bedford’s early crossover works and was first heard at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, performed by The Whole World and the London Sinfonietta. Other works from that time include Oh My, a Dixieland-type number that was heard on the Old Grey Whistle Test.
Oldfield released the album Song of the White Horse, which included Bedford’s Star Clusters, Nebulae and Places in Devon (for brass and choir), on his Oldfield Music label, but the distributor went bankrupt and very few copies left the warehouse. In the meantime, John Peel put his Dandelion record label at Bedford’s disposal, inviting him to “do anything you like”. The outcome was Nurses Song With Elephants, a mixture of classical ensemble with poetry and voices.
Bedford and Oldfield were at the same time working with Virgin and, in 1974, Bedford’s solo album, Star’s End, became the bestselling classical album of the year. But, as he once recalled: “I was on the road playing keyboards with these bands, fighting off the groupies, and then the next night I would be in the Festival Hall doing some plinky-plonk music to an audience of about four.”
Everyday objects appealed to Bedford’s more eccentric side. A 1960s work included 1,000 balloons being scraped and rubbed, while a 1972 piece for Pierre Boulez’s Roundhouse Proms involved members of the audience playing 100 kazoos, but the great Frenchman rejected the work. A symphony in 2002 based on legends surrounding the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, his adopted home town, required the use of pans, cheese graters and boxes of dog biscuits.
Among the various positions he held, Bedford was composer in association with the English Sinfonia from 1996 and chairman of the Performing Rights Society from 2001, where he was enthusiastic in championing the rights of composers to be paid when their works were performed.
He recalled a row with the tax man, who insisted that Bedford’s purchase of CDs did not qualify as a business expense on the grounds that Bedford would listen to them for pleasure. Bedford countered that listening to more music was the last thing he would do to relax. “At the end of a working day I just want to watch films on telly or whatever, to give my brain a break, so I joked to the taxman: 'Surely you don’t read books about income tax for pleasure?’ I thought I’d scored a point, but the poor chap looked quite reproachful. 'Oh yes I do,’ he said.”
David Bedford was thrice married: in 1958 to Maureen Parsonage, with whom he had two daughters; in 1969 to Susan Pilgrim, with whom he also had two daughters; and in 1994 to Allison Powell, with whom he had a son and two daughters.
In taking his skills as a classical composer to popular music (rather than the other way around), Bedford was something of a pioneer. “I think I was the first crossover musician to come over from the classical side,” he told an interviewer two years ago. “I remember a fellow classical composer suggesting I should buy an inferior grade of manuscript paper now I was working in rock music. Nowadays everybody’s crossing over all the time.”
David Vickerman Bedford was born in Hendon, north London, on August 4 1937. His grandparents included Herbert Bedford, a composer, painter and author, and Liza Lehmann, who wrote Edwardian parlour ballads, notably There are Fairies at the Bottom of my Garden. David’s mother, Lesley Duff, was a member of Benjamin Britten’s English Opera Group and sang in the original Albert Herring and The Rape of Lucretia. His brother, Steuart, would become an important conductor and continue the family link with Britten.
By the age of seven David had learnt notation and was writing his first opera. He took up the oboe while at Lancing College and, after working as a porter at Guy’s Hospital (in lieu of National Service, being a conscientious objector), studied composition under Lennox Berkeley at the Royal Academy of Music. A scholarship took him to Venice for lessons with Luigi Nono, the Modernist composer.
Returning to England in the early 1960s, he realised that he was unlikely to earn a living as an avant-garde composer and so became a full-time teacher. Indeed, he continued teaching in secondary schools until 1980, well after achieving commercial success.
A score for the rock-opera From Marie Antoinette to the Beatles in 1968 led him to Kevin Ayers, who was in need of an arranger for his debut solo album, Joy of a Toy. Bedford was asked to be the keyboard player on tour and soon found himself working with Oldfield, The Whole World’s bass guitarist.
The Garden of Love, for pop band and orchestra, was one of Bedford’s early crossover works and was first heard at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, performed by The Whole World and the London Sinfonietta. Other works from that time include Oh My, a Dixieland-type number that was heard on the Old Grey Whistle Test.
Oldfield released the album Song of the White Horse, which included Bedford’s Star Clusters, Nebulae and Places in Devon (for brass and choir), on his Oldfield Music label, but the distributor went bankrupt and very few copies left the warehouse. In the meantime, John Peel put his Dandelion record label at Bedford’s disposal, inviting him to “do anything you like”. The outcome was Nurses Song With Elephants, a mixture of classical ensemble with poetry and voices.
Bedford and Oldfield were at the same time working with Virgin and, in 1974, Bedford’s solo album, Star’s End, became the bestselling classical album of the year. But, as he once recalled: “I was on the road playing keyboards with these bands, fighting off the groupies, and then the next night I would be in the Festival Hall doing some plinky-plonk music to an audience of about four.”
Everyday objects appealed to Bedford’s more eccentric side. A 1960s work included 1,000 balloons being scraped and rubbed, while a 1972 piece for Pierre Boulez’s Roundhouse Proms involved members of the audience playing 100 kazoos, but the great Frenchman rejected the work. A symphony in 2002 based on legends surrounding the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, his adopted home town, required the use of pans, cheese graters and boxes of dog biscuits.
Among the various positions he held, Bedford was composer in association with the English Sinfonia from 1996 and chairman of the Performing Rights Society from 2001, where he was enthusiastic in championing the rights of composers to be paid when their works were performed.
He recalled a row with the tax man, who insisted that Bedford’s purchase of CDs did not qualify as a business expense on the grounds that Bedford would listen to them for pleasure. Bedford countered that listening to more music was the last thing he would do to relax. “At the end of a working day I just want to watch films on telly or whatever, to give my brain a break, so I joked to the taxman: 'Surely you don’t read books about income tax for pleasure?’ I thought I’d scored a point, but the poor chap looked quite reproachful. 'Oh yes I do,’ he said.”
David Bedford was thrice married: in 1958 to Maureen Parsonage, with whom he had two daughters; in 1969 to Susan Pilgrim, with whom he also had two daughters; and in 1994 to Allison Powell, with whom he had a son and two daughters.
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