John Maxwell Geddes
Composer whose music evoked the beauty of the Highlands
JOHN MAXWELL GEDDES, who has died aged 76, was a Scottish composer whose music captured the breathtaking beauty of the Highlands in pieces such as Callanish IV for solo cello, and ventured into other galaxies with orchestral works such as Voyager; if his music at times sounded somewhat brash it was nevertheless atmospheric.
The Callanish pieces, most written for a solo instrument, use Scottish themes such as the haunting dissonance of Gaelic psalm singing. Voyager, however, is part of a triptych that includes Lacuna and Ombre, works which explore the awe and mystery of the universe.
While some of his music was traditional in structure, such as his three symphonies, other pieces ventured into electronic techniques. Even his big orange cat Leo made an appearance in Leo Dreaming, in which Maxwell Geddes used a computer to simulate the creature’s feelings as he dreamt of chasing birds.
Maxwell Geddes was also a passionate believer in musical education, a cause he championed through his work. Postlude for Strings was part of a backlash against the closure in 2009 of Castle Toward, a stately home in Argyll and Bute used for residential courses by youth orchestras from Glasgow and the west of Scotland. Like Haydn’s Farewell Symphony, a protest work of another era, the players in Maxwell Geddes’s orchestra depart from the stage one by one, leaving only the conductor beating time to a sea of empty chairs. “If you don’t support music education, this is what happens,” he said.
John Maxwell Geddes was born in Maryhill, Glasgow, on May 26 1941, the son of a soldier who before the war had been a joiner.
His maternal grandfather was a piano teacher and, although John was not the recipient of lessons, he listened as a procession of local youngsters received tuition, soon picking up their tunes and techniques.
He was educated locally, taking violin classes before switching to oboe and saxophone, and played with Glasgow Schools Orchestra, which he would later conduct.
He studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and took further lessons at the Royal Danish Conservatoire in Copenhagen with the eccentric composer Niels Viggo Bentzon, who once set him the task of writing a piece to be performed by an egg. Such conceptual thinking helped Geddes to compose works such as Find Two Stones, which can be performed by anyone who has two stones to bang together – but only on certain dates over the course of a century, which themselves form a rhythm. After its last iteration, in August 2012, he received postcards from people who had taken part all over the world, some of them on Mount Fuji in Japan.
He taught in Glasgow schools, spent a year at the University of Oregon, and since 1986 had worked at the Academy.
His advice to younger composers was: “Try to have humility and drive and energy. That’s what makes a composer.”
In 1964 Maxwell Geddes married Lily Blain, a fellow music student. She survives him with their daughter and two sons.
John Maxwell Geddes, born May 26 1941, died September 7 2017