British composer (born 1954)
Dame Judith Weir DBE HonFRSE (born 11 May 1954[1]) is a British composer serving as Master of the King's Music. Appointed in 2014 by Queen Elizabeth II, Weir is the first woman to hold this office.[2]
Life and career
Weir was born in Cambridge, England, to Scottish parents. She studied with John Tavener while at the North London Collegiate School[3] and subsequently with Robin Holloway at King's College, Cambridge, graduating in 1976. Her music often draws on sources from medieval history, as well as the traditional stories and music of her parents' homeland, Scotland. Although she has achieved international recognition for her orchestral and chamber works, Weir is best known for her operas and theatrical works. From 1995 to 2000, she was Artistic Director of the Spitalfields Festival in London. She held the post of Composer in Association for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra from 1995 to 1998.
Weir was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1995 Birthday Honours for services to music.[4] She received the Lincoln Center's Stoeger Prize in 1997, the South Bank Show music award in 2001 and the Incorporated Society of Musicians' Distinguished Musician Award in 2010. In 2007, she was the third recipient of the Queen's Medal for Music. She was a visiting distinguished research professor in composition at Cardiff University from 2006 to 2009.
On 30 June 2014, The Guardian stated that her appointment as Master of the Queen's Music,[5] succeeding Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (whose term of office expired in March 2014), would be announced;[6] this was officially confirmed on 21 July.[7] She was appointed for a decade.[8] In May 2015, Weir won The Ivors Classical Music Award at the Ivor Novello Awards.[9]
Weir is a member of the Incorporated Society of Musicians.[10] In 2018 she was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh[11] and was made an Honorary Fellow of Royal Holloway, University of London, in 2023.[12]
She was promoted Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2024 New Year Honours for services to music.[13]
Music
Weir's musical language is fairly conservative, with a "knack of making simple musical ideas appear freshly mysterious".[14] Her first stage work, The Black Spider, is a one-act opera that was premiered in Canterbury in 1985, loosely based on the short novel of the same name by Jeremias Gotthelf. She has subsequently written one more "micro-opera", three full-length operas, and an opera for television. In 1987, her first half-length opera, A Night at the Chinese Opera, was premiered at Kent Opera. This was followed by a further three full-length operas: The Vanishing Bridegroom (1990); Blond Eckbert (1994, commissioned by English National Opera[15]); and Miss Fortune (Achterbahn) (2011). Her opera Armida, an opera for television, was premiered on Channel Four in the United Kingdom in 2005. The work was made in co-operation with Margaret Williams.[16] Weir's commissioned works most notably include We are Shadows (1999) for Simon Rattle and woman.life.song (2000) for Jessye Norman. In January 2008, Weir was the focus of the BBC's annual composer weekend at the Barbican Centre in London. The four days of programmes ended with a first performance of her new commission, CONCRETE, a choral motet. The subject of this piece was inspired by the Barbican building itself – she describes it as 'an imaginary excavation of the Barbican Centre, burrowing through 2,500 years of historical rubble'.[17]
The first public performance of Weir's arrangement of "God Save the Queen" was performed at the reburial of King Richard III at Leicester Cathedral on 26 March 2015. She was commissioned to compose an a cappella work for the state funeral of Elizabeth II on 19 September 2022, and wrote a setting of Psalm 42, "Like as the hart".[18]
In 2023, Weir was one of twelve composers asked to write a new piece for the coronation of Charles III and Camilla.[19] Her composition for orchestra, Brighter Visions Shine Afar, was performed before the ceremony began.[20]
Media from Commons