Roger Marsh (born 10 December 1949) is a British composer and retired academic.[1]
Born in Bournemouth, he studied in London with composer Ian Kellam at the London College of Music, and then at the University of York with Bernard Rands and Wilfrid Mellers.[2] After two years further study at the University of California, San Diego, Marsh was appointed lecturer at the University of Keele in 1978, becoming head of department in 1985. He returned to York University in 1988, where he became Professor of Music the following year.[3] He was visiting composer at Harvard in 1993. In 1994 Marsh and his wife, the singer Anna Myatt, co-founded and directed the music theatre ensemble Black Hair.[4] Marsh retired from York in 2019, retaining the title emeritus Professor of Music.[5]
He is best known for his ensemble and vocal music, often including elements of performance art and music theatre, influenced by Stravinsky and (through Bernard Rands) by Berio.[6] He has worked with many contemporary music vocal groups, such as Electric Phoenix - an offshoot of Swingle 2 - Singcircle and Vocem. One of his first pieces to gain wider attention was Not a soul but ourselves (1977) for amplified vocals, setting a passage from Finnegans Wake. It was recorded by Electric Phoenix in 1982, and more recently by Paul Hillier’s Theatre of Voices in 2011.
Stepping Out, for piano and orchestra, was commissioned for the Proms in 1990, where it was performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Martin Roscoe, piano. As with the later orchestral work Espace (1993), Stepping Out explores unconventional spatial possibilities in music.[3]
Between 2002 and 2006 Marsh composed vocal settings of all fifty of the Pierrot lunaire: rondels bergamasques cycle of poems by Albert Giraud. As with his many close readings of texts by James Joyce, Marsh is deeply interested in bringing out the meaning of the dense, symbolist texts.[7] He has expressed dislike for modern settings of texts in which the words are inaudible.[8]
His music is published by Chester Novello and Peters Edition, London.[9]
Music theatre activities began in the 1970s at York, where a group of like-minded composers - Marsh, Richard Orton, Steve Stanton and Trevor Wishart - were working with music students and staff (rather than trained actors) to stage adventurous performance works. Marsh's contributions included the solo piece Dum, performed inside a cage or at a lectern with many metal objects by (among others) Alan Belk of Vocem and the composer himself.[2] With his wife Anna Myatt he was associated with Midland Music Theatre in Birmingham as a director and performer.[3]
Humour and irony are important elements, as shown in a series of works derived from Old Testament stories and themes presented in contemporary terms, such as the dramatic oratorio Samson (1984 - closer in style to Japanese Noh drama than the European oratorio), the melodrama The Song of Abigail (1985) and the extended drama The Big Bang (1989) - subtitled "Tales of love and intrigue; a kaleidoscope of sex and violence".[6]
For the Naxos record label Marsh has produced scholarly rigorous and dramatically performed audiobooks of Joyce's Ulysses (1994 abridged, 2004 unabridged), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1995) and Finnegans Wake (2021, unabridged), as well as three books of Dante's Divine Comedy.[10]
Recordings