(James) Frederick Stocken (born 1967) is a British classical composer, organist and musicologist.
Stocken's music first reached a wide audience with Lament for Bosnia, which was released on CD (becoming the number one best-selling classical CD in Tower Records' London store during early 1994). He conducted the work at the opening of the Permanent Holocaust Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum with the strings of the Royal Academy of Music, and also in Sarajevo with the Sarajevo Philharmonic Orchestra. As the sleeve-notes to the CD explain, the work was also dedicated to Stocken's maternal grandmother, Rosa Bechhöfer, who was murdered in Auschwitz.
Other commissions for large forces include a ballet - Alice - written for the State Theatre in Gießen, Germany, and an orchestral mass - Missa Pacis - commissioned for the Brompton Oratory in London. His Violin Concerto was performed by the violinist Adam Summerhayes with the Surrey Sinfonietta in St John's Smith Square.
Stocken's First Symphony was commissioned by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vernon Handley in the Royal Albert Hall, London and broadcast on Classic FM (UK). His Second Symphony, 'To the Immortal Memory', was premiered at St John's Smith Square, London, by the Young Musicians Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Blair.
Stocken has also written organ works and sacred choral compositions. Commissioners include Chichester Cathedral, The Southern Cathedrals Festival and The Worshipful Company of Musicians.
Stocken's father was British; his mother was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany.
Stocken was a chorister of Southwell Minster, a pupil at Chetham's School of Music in Manchester, and Organ Scholar of St Catharine's College, Cambridge. He also studied the organ with Peter Hurford, passing ARCO with five prizes, and FRCO with three prizes. His doctorate is from the University of Manchester for research on nineteenth-century harmonic theory relating to the music of Anton Bruckner. Howard Ferguson and Margaret Hubicki were compositional mentors in the early years of his career.
Alongside composing, Stocken is an organist and was Organist of St George's Cathedral, Southwark for a decade. He teaches organ at the Royal Academy of Music Junior Academy, having also taught supporting studies in the organ department of the Senior Academy, and for the Royal College of Organists. He is the author, with Anne Marsden Thomas, of The New Oxford Organ Method (Oxford University Press, 2020), amongst other books.
