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Members' Directory Member Profile
Members' Directory Member Profile 
Jack Cannon
Professional
| Location: | London |
| Composer/Lyricist: | Composer |
| Genre: | Concert |
| Representation: |
Kronos Press 25 Ansdell Street London 020 7937 6768 |
Biography
Philip Cannon was born in Paris in 1929 of Franco-British parents. The family moved to Falmouth, Cornwall (1936) where Cannon was educated at the Grammar School. He began learning the violin and piano in the early Forties and was soon writing music, mainly piano pieces.
In 1944 he won the senior prize for violin at the Cornwall Music Festival, whose adjudicator later introduced him to Imogen Holst at Dartington Hall, Devon where, at the age of 15 (1945), he produced a String Quartet which so impressed Miss Holst that arrangements were made for him to reside there as her composition pupil.
Two years later he won a composition scholarship to the Royal College of Music where his professors were Gordon Jacob and Vaughan Williams. He also had a few (independent) lessons for Hindemith.
At 21 (1951) he was awarded the RCM Octavia Travelling Scholarship which took him and his new wife in an old Ford Brake through Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and France, listening to and partaking of music wherever they went, as well as meeting various composers such as Henze. On returning from this stimulating and formative experience they lived in an old cottage in Buckinghamshire where Cannon steadily wrote and earned a living by teaching, lecturing and deputising at the RCM.
Some of his early works written during this period have become firmly established in the repertoire (SONGS TO DELIGHT and CINQ CHANSONS DE FEMME are still widely performed after 48/50 years, and CONCERTINO FOR PIANO AND STRINGS has now had over a thousand performances).
In 1958 he was appointed Lecturer in Music at Sydney University, returning to London in 1960 as a Professor of Composition at the RCM, a post he held until his retirement in 1995. Over these years he has travelled widely and written many works.
In 1965, the international success of his String Quartet (Grand Prix, Critics Prize, Paris) opened the way for his music on the Continent, and later three prestigious commissions for historic events (BBC: SYMPHONY commissioned for Britain's entry into Europe; RF: SYMPHONY - first British work commissioned by French Radio, premiered at a diplomatic occassion in Paris; HM The Queen: TE DEUM personally commissioned for the Quincentenary of St George's Chapel, Windsor) firmly established his reputation as a composer of note and distinction.
Personal tragedy, though, struck in the early 1980s when his wife, the writer and librettist Jacqueline Laidlaw, contracted and later died of Alzheimer's Disease (1984). After many years of a close relationship and artistic collaboration, this proved a traumatic experience which affected his lifestyle and writing for some time. However, he gradually recovered from this spiritual shock and in the early nineties began composing again with renewed vigour. He then met and later married the artist Jane, Baroness Buijs van Schouwenburg. Together they have had rebuilt and old Buckinghamshire cottage he has owned for many years, and recently they retired there to concentrate full-time on creative work.
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