Iain Hamilton

About Iain Hamilton

Iain Hamilton was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on 6 June 1922 but moved to London in 1929. He was educated at Mill Hill School and spent seven years in engineering before winning a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Music. He studied with William Alwyn and Harold Craxton and won many prizes including the Koussevitsky Foundation Award (for his Second Symphony), the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Prize (for his Clarinet Concerto) and the Edwin Evans Memorial Prize before graduating in 1951 with the Academy’s highest honour, the Dove Prize.

During the 1950’s Hamilton was active both as a composer and in London musical life, lecturing at Morley College and London University, organising concerts as chairman of the music section of the Institute of Contemporary Arts and forming his own group ‘Music Now’. He was chairman of the Composers’ Guild of Great Britain in 1958.

From 1961 to 1981 Hamilton lived in New York, commuting to Duke University where he was Mary Duke Biddle Professor of Music, and spent a certain period each year in London. He returned to live in London in June 1981.

An overtly dramatic tension arising from bold contrasts of gesture and timbre is central to Hamilton’s music, whether in operatic or orchestral works. He was one of the first British composers to exploit the serial method, applied with great fluency to large-scale forms often exploring subjects drawn from classical antiquity. He subsequently relaxed this rigorous if brilliant stance into a more approachable style and an immediacy of language that has proved itself particularly effective in a number of highly successful operas.

He holds a Bachelor of Music degree from London University and an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Glasgow University. The Composers’ Guild of Great Britain gave him the Vaughan Williams Award as Composer of the Year in 1974.

A recording of the Clarinet Concerto was released on Champ Hill Records in 2020 performed by Robert Plane and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Martyn Brabbins - CHRCD160