Robert Sherlaw Johnson was a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

, pianist

Pianist

A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...

 and music scholar

Musicology

Musicology is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture...

. Sherlaw Johnson was one of that group of post-war British musicians whose work reflected wider European interests in new ideas, techniques and aesthetics. While his work and influence were wide-ranging, he is particularly noted for his advocacy and performance of the music of Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...

.

Biography

Sherlaw Johnson was educated at Gosforth Grammar School in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, at King's College, Durham

Durham University

The University of Durham, commonly known as Durham University, is a university in Durham, England. It was founded by Act of Parliament in 1832 and granted a Royal Charter in 1837...

, and 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...

, London, where he was the recipient of a Charles Black award. He used this to travel to Paris, where he studied piano with Jacques Février

Jacques Février

Jacques Février was a French pianist and teacher.Jacques Février was born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the son of the composer Henry Février. He studied with Édouard Risler and Marguerite Long at the Paris Conservatoire, taking a premier prix in 1921...

 and composition with Nadia Boulanger

Nadia Boulanger

Nadia Boulanger was a French composer, conductor and teacher who taught many composers and performers of the 20th century.From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but believing that her talent as a composer was inferior to that of her younger...

, and attended Olivier Messiaen’s classes at the Conservatoire de Paris

Conservatoire de Paris

The Conservatoire de Paris is a college of music and dance founded in 1795, now situated in the avenue Jean Jaurès in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, France...

. In 1971 he was awarded the degree of DMus by Leeds University and in 1984 was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Music. He also received a DMus from Oxford in 1990, in recognition of his work as a composer.

Sherlaw Johnson taught at Leeds University (1961-3), Bradford Girls' Grammar School (1963-5), University of York

University of York

The University of York , is an academic institution located in the city of York, England. Established in 1963, the campus university has expanded to more than thirty departments and centres, covering a wide range of subjects...

 (1965–70) and Oxford University (1970–1999), where he was music Fellow at Worcester College

Worcester College, Oxford

Worcester College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. The college was founded in the eighteenth century, but its predecessor on the same site had been an institution of learning since the late thirteenth century...

. In 1985 he was visiting professor of composition at the Eastman School of Music

Eastman School of Music

The Eastman School of Music is a music conservatory located in Rochester, New York. The Eastman School is a professional school within the University of Rochester...

, University of Rochester

University of Rochester

The University of Rochester is a private, nonsectarian, research university in Rochester, New York, United States. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The university has six schools and various interdisciplinary programs.The...

. Notable composition pupils include Stephen Oliver and Robert Saxton

Robert Saxton

-Biography:After early advice and encouragement from Benjamin Britten, Robert Saxton took private composition lessons with Elisabeth Lutyens. He went on to study with Robin Holloway at Cambridge University, with Robert Sherlaw Johnson as a post-graduate at Oxford University, and later with Berio....

 (who succeeded Sherlaw Johnson at Worcester College).

Sherlaw Johnson was to the last an enthusiastic campanologist

Campanology

Campanology is the study of bells. It encompasses the physical realities of bells — how they are cast, tuned and sounded — as well as the various methods devised to perform bell-ringing....

. He died while ringing bells at the historic tower of Appleton, south-west of Oxford.

He married the painter Rachael Sherlaw Johnson (née Clarke) in 1959. They had two daughters and three sons.

Influences and interests

Sherlaw Johnson's time in Paris exerted its mark on his professional development. He came to be known for his performances and recordings of Messiaen's piano and (as accompanist) vocal music. The insight this gave him is evident in his monograph on the composer, which remains a standard English-language text on its subject. Some of his own earlier compositions show the influence of Messiaen, Varèse

Varese

Varese is a town and comune in north-western Lombardy, northern Italy, 55 km north of Milan.It is the capital of the Province of Varese. The hinterland or urban part of the city is called Varesotto.- Geography :...

 and Boulez. His work subsequently moved in a more individual direction, but his continuing sympathy with the European musical avant garde is evident in his interest in serialism

Serialism

In music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...

, fractal music and extended performance techniques. These interests can be seen in works such as Green Whispers of Gold and Praise of Heaven & Earth, for voice, piano and tape. He also wrote and lectured on mathematics and music, and founded the Electronic music

Electronic music

Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...

 Studio at Oxford University.

Religion was another significant influence on Sherlaw Johnson's work. A convert to Roman Catholicism, he wrote a number of functional liturgical works. Several of these were for Spode Music Week

Spode Music Week

Spode Music Week is the name of an annual residential Music school that places particular emphasis on the music of the Roman Catholic liturgy. It is a registered charity in England...

, an annual Catholic music course which he directed for many years.

The continuing influence of Sherlaw Johnson's geographical origins is evident in compositions, such as the Northumbrian Symphony and his opera, The Lambton Worm, that utilise material from the North-East of England. He also gained much personal satisfaction from playing the Northumbrian pipes

Music of Northumbria

Here Northumbria is taken to mean Northumberland, the northernmost county of England, and County Durham. The region possesses a distinctive style of folk music with a strong and continuing tradition...

.

Sherlaw Johnson's interest in bells and bell-inspired music (he rang regularly at his local church at Stonesfield

Stonesfield

Stonesfield is a village and civil parish about north of Witney in Oxfordshire.The village is on the crest of an escarpment. The parish extends mostly north and north-east of the village, in which directions the land rises gently and then descends to the Glyme at Glympton and Wootton about to the...

) is also evident in some of his own compositions.

Sources and external links

• http://reporter.leeds.ac.uk/459/obit_full.htm Times
  The Times
  The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
  
   obituary.
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,398265,00.htmlGuardian
  The Guardian
  The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
  
   obituary.
• http://www.musicaltimes.co.uk/archive/0004/johnson.html 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...
  
   obituary.
• http://www.oup.co.uk/music/repprom/sherlaw/ Entry for Sherlaw-Johnson on the Oxford University Press
  Oxford University Press
  Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
  
  web site. Includes a catalogue of works and a discography.