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Home | Archive
| Winter 2000 | In memoriam
Robert Sherlaw Johnson 1932–2000
Overshadowed in recent years by the influential Manchester
triumvirate of Birtwistle, Goehr and Davies, Robert Sherlaw Johnson
was none the less, as composer, pianist, author and teacher, a vital
and indispensable force in British musical life. One of the most
advanced British composers of his generation, counting Messiaen,
Boulez and Varèse as lodestars, and a tireless and virtuoso
exponent of contemporary piano music, he succeeded in alerting British
music-lovers to the brave new soundworlds of the European mainland
and beyond. And as a gifted teacher, largely at Oxford, where he
introduced an electronic music studio, he exerted a beneficial and
abiding influence on many young composers and performers.
A Northerner by birth and upbringing, Sherlaw Johnson studied firstly
at the Royal Academy of Music during the late 1950s, following this
with lessons in Paris with Jacques Fevrier for piano, Nadia Boulanger
for composition, and attendance at Messiaen’s famous classes.
Upon his return to England, he embarked on his fruitful career as
composer and pianist. A Second String Quartet won the 1969 Radcliffe
Music Award, and he joined Oxford University Press’s distinguished
roster of composers. The 1970s were perhaps the pinnacle of Sherlaw
Johnson’s career. It was then that he recorded, for Argo, much
of Messiaen’s piano and vocal music, including the Catalogue
d’oiseaux and Vingt regards, and, with Noelle Barker, the
major song-cycles; published his seminal book on that composer (now
in its third edition); and wrote an opera, The Lambton worm
(the subject of an MT article).
If the 1980s and 90s saw Sherlaw Johnson retreating from the limelight
somewhat, he nevertheless continued to compose and perform as tirelessly
as ever, inspired by a devout Roman Catholic faith and an abiding
interest in mathematics. Thus was he able to perceive connections
between such seemingly disparate aspects of music as plainsong, electronics,
extended piano techniques and campanology. It was during a bell-ringing
session in the tower of Appleton church in Oxfordshire that he was
suddenly taken.
Robert Sherlaw Johnson: born 21 May 1932; died 3 November
2000.
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