Norman Demuth was an English composer and musicologist, remembered largely for his biographies of French composers.

Although Demuth studied for a time at the Royal College of Music

Royal College of Music

The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire founded by Royal Charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, England.-Background:The first director was Sir George Grove and he was followed by Sir Hubert Parry...

 (after having been a combatant in World War I), he was essentially self-taught. Greatly sympathetic to French music, he wrote a number of books on the subject; these include studies of César Franck

César Franck

César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck was a composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher who worked in Paris during his adult life....

, Paul Dukas

Paul Dukas

Paul Abraham Dukas was a French composer, critic, scholar and teacher. A studious man, of retiring personality, he was intensely self-critical, and he abandoned and destroyed many of his compositions...

, Albert Roussel

Albert Roussel

Albert Charles Paul Marie Roussel was a French composer. He spent seven years as a midshipman, turned to music as an adult, and became one of the most prominent French composers of the interwar period...

, Vincent d'Indy

Vincent d'Indy

Vincent d'Indy was a French composer and teacher.-Life:Paul Marie Théodore Vincent d'Indy was born in Paris into an aristocratic family of royalist and Catholic persuasion. He had piano lessons from an early age from his paternal grandmother, who passed him on to Antoine François Marmontel and...

, Charles Gounod

Charles Gounod

Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.-Biography:...

, Maurice Ravel

Maurice Ravel

Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...

, and French opera.

Between 1929 and 1935 Demuth was conductor of the Chichester Symphony Orchestra. From 1930 he taught at the Royal Academy of Music

Royal Academy of Music

The Royal Academy of Music in London, England, is a conservatoire, Britain's oldest degree-granting music school and a constituent college of the University of London since 1999. The Academy was founded by Lord Burghersh in 1822 with the help and ideas of the French harpist and composer Nicolas...

, and latterly at the University of Durham. Among his pupils was Gordon Langford

Gordon Langford

Gordon Langford is an English composer, arranger and performer. Although well known in the brass band community as a composer and arranger, he is less well known as a composer of orchestral music, despite winning an Ivor Novello award for his March from the Colour Suite in 1971.Born in Edgware,...

, whose surname was originally Colman (and who changed the name on Demuth's advice). Langford has expressed regret at the complete current neglect of Demuth's achievements as a composer.

Selected compositions

• Two Piano Pieces (1942)
• Viola Concerto (1951)
• Symphony for string orchestra (1952)
• Concerto for alto saxophone and military band
• Prometheus (ballet)

Selected books and articles

• Ravel (1947)
• Albert Roussel: A Study (1947)
• Anthology of Musical Criticism (1947)
• César Franck (1949)
• Vincent d'Indy 1851-1931: Champion of Classicism—A Study (1951)
• A Course in Musical Composition (4 volumes) (1951)
• Musical Trends in the 20th Century (1952)
• Musical Forms & Textures: A Reference Guide (1953)
• French Piano Music: A Survey with Notes on its Performance (1959)
• French Opera: Its Development to the Revolution (1963)

Press Notices

"Norman Demuth's Viola Concerto (1951) also received its first performance, with Herbert Downes as soloist. Designed in two linked sections, one slowish, the other quick, it made an impression through
its capable workmanship and sense of purpose but did not offer much of imaginative distinction. A certain monotony of rhythm and texture was acutely felt, especially in the opening section, which is a rather
busy meditation whose concertante viola part is inclined to fuss and fidget." (Hugh Ottaway, in 'Broadcast Music', The Musical Times, Vol. 98, No. 1368 (Feb., 1957), p. 78

External links

• Obituary of Vaughan Williams by Demuth in The Musical Times
  The Musical Times
  The Musical Times is an academic journal of classical music edited and produced in the United Kingdom. It is currently the oldest such journal that is still publishing in the UK, having been published continuously since 1844. It was published as The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular until...