Hymnfest (Director's Score)

'Alan Ridout composed this Duo Concertant whilst he was still in Canterbury finishing the work on 6th October 1986. The first performance was given by myself and the pianist Vanessa Latarche at Herne Bay Music Club in 1987. Alan Ridout was born in West Wickham in Kent attending Haberdashers' Aske's School then in Hampstead. A precociously gifted musician by the age of 12 he had already written over one hundred works and passed his Grade VIII Piano with distinction. He then studied at the Guildhall School of Music and the Royal College of Music in London under Herbert Howells Gordon Jacob Peter Racine Fricker and Michael Tippett. Inhis autobiography 'A Composer's Life' (1995) he refers to his time at the Guildhall from the age of 15 as 'the happiest time of his life' since he had known from childhood that all he wanted to do was to compose. In 1958 he was awarded a Netherlands Government Scholarship to study with Henk Badings who introduced him to electronic music and a wide range of European music. Leaving the RCM aged 20 he became Director of Music of a preparatory school in Kent. Teaching was to remain important to him throughout his life. In 1964 he became Professor of Theory and Composition at the Royal College of Music and he also taught at the Universities of Birmingham Cambridge and London and at the Cathedral Choir School and King's School Canterbury where he lived in the precincts of the Cathedral. It was during my time as a schoolboy at King's Canterbury that I got to know Alan as a teacher and friend. He made a great impression on me both as a teacher of harmony and composition and as a composer from the musical 'outside world'. Whether in his beautiful works for choirs his instrumental works or the entertaining theatre pieces his music communicates with almost na ve simplicity and honesty. The Duo Concertant was one of a number of works I commissioned around this time as a companion