Thomas Wilson

The large output of composer Thomas Wilson has inspired a host of younger composers as well as the sobriquet "the father of Scottish music." The first musician to be elected to the fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, he is one of Scotland's most honored composers. Wilson was born in Trinidad, Colorado, U.S.A., on October 10, 1927. Wilson's parents were British, and the family moved to Glasgow, Scotland, when Wilson was 17 months old. Except for a sojourn in France, he would spend his entire student and working life in Scotland, mostly in the Glasgow area. Wilson attended St. Mary's College, Aberdeen. After serving in the Royal Air Force from 1945 to 1948, he went on for music studies at the University of Glasgow, where he earned a doctoral degree. In 1957, he became a lecturer there, a Reader in 1971, and the holder of his own named Personal Chair in 1977. For much of his career, he was heavily involved in the institutional structures of Scottish and British composition, serving as chairman of the Composers' Guild of Great Britain from 1986 to 1989 and holding various other executive positions. Wilson had a large output, with more than 100 surviving works, as well as others from before 1958 that he destroyed. His music fell into classical forms and was for traditional instruments, but his writing was generally atonal or dissonant, and he made use of contemporary techniques such as aleatoric music. His works in the 1960s and1970s responded to the period of political tensions in which he found himself. Wilson wrote five symphonies, two operas, a ballet, a large variety of vocal music and chamber music, major choral works including the Missa Pro Mundo Conturbato (which has no Credo), soundtracks for BBC Radio presentations, and more. He fulfilled commissions from major British performing organizations, including the Henry Wood Proms, the Scottish Opera (which commissioned his Confessions of a Justified Sinner, 1975), and the Edinburgh Festival. Wilson's music was often played abroad as well. In 1990, he was named Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Wilson died in Glasgow on June 12, 2001, having completed his Symphony No. 5 three years before. More than 20 of Wilson's works have been recorded, including the last four of his symphonies and several examples of his substantial body of music for solo guitar. In 2020, a new recording of his Symphonies Nos. 2 and 5 was released by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under Rory Macdonald.
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