WRITINGS
David Matthews: Essays, Tributes and Criticism edited by Thomas Hyde
Plumbago Books, 2014, 320pp
ISBN: 9780956600769
Available in both hardback and paperback from Boydell & Brewer
‘Thomas Hyde – who has edited this book’s content with astute thoroughness – considers the function of melody and its corresponding context on a composer whose concern for what he himself terms the vernacular has continued to inform his thinking in ever more focused and productive ways… It amounts to a finely assembled and engrossing tribute to a composer whose creativity shows no signs of abating… and that wears its academic credentials with deftness and not a little understatement.’
Gramophone Magazine (November 2014)
‘The unpretentious clarity of Matthews’s own writing is thrown into relief by (more essay-like) ‘criticisms’ from such insightful writers as Arnold Whittall, Hugh Wood and Edward Venn.’
BBC Music Magazine (December 2014)
‘Any admirer of David Matthews’ music or, indeed, British music in general, will want this book, touching as it does on so many other composers and musical issues.’
The Classical Reviewer
Selected Articles by Thomas Hyde
‘Hugh Wood (1932-2021) – A Personal Reflection’, British Music, Vol.43, February 2022, pp. 175-86
‘Bourgeois, Derek (1941–2017)’ in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2021.
‘Michael Tippett: The Biography; The Pre-History of ‘The Midsummer Marriage’’ [books review], Twentieth-Century Music, Cambridge University Press, Vol.17(2), 2020, pp.269-76.
‘Locked Linked Listening – a Covid Diary’, Musical Opinion Quarterly, July – September 2020, pp.29-32.
‘Phillip Cooke: The Music of James MacMillan’ [book review], Musical Opinion Quarterly, April – June 2020, pp. 30-32.
‘William Mathias: The Student Composer, Real and Imagined’, British Music, Vol. 39/40, September 2018, pp. 34-52.
‘How I turned the Profumo scandal into a one-singer Opera’, Gramophone.co.uk, 1 August 2017.
‘Timothy Craig Harrison: The Great Charter, Musical Opinion Quarterly, October 2015, p. 34.
‘Walking on the Wire: my new Violin Sonata’, Musical Opinion Quarterly, October 2014, pp. 19-20.
‘David Matthews, Melody and a Sense of Place’, David Matthews: Essays, Tributes and Criticism, Plumbago Books, 2014, pp. 198-207.
‘My Organ Music: Playing with Chants’, The Organ, November 2012, pp. 40-1.
‘Hugh Wood: an 80th birthday appreciation’, Musical Opinion, May/June 2012, pp. 29-30.
‘An Interview with Robert Saxton’, Musical Opinion, July/August 2010, pp. 20-1.
‘Visions of Reality: David Matthews at 60’, The Musical Times, Spring 2003, pp. 33-9.