The Manchester School

In early-1950s Manchester, a group of musicians and composers studying at the Royal Manchester (now Northern) College of Music changed the trajectory of British music. Harrison Birtwistle, Peter Maxwell Davies (above), Alexander Goehr, Elgar Howarth and John Ogden became collectively known as The Manchester School. These iconoclastic ‘enfants terribles’ rejected the English pastoral school and adapted the central European avant garde. Though eventually embraced by the establishment – Maxwell Davies was appointed Master of the Queen’s Music – they maintained their uniquely Mancunian attitudes to music making.