Jeremy Dale Roberts

Jeremy Dale Roberts (16 May 1934 – 11 July 2017)[4] was an English composer and teacher.[5] After early contact with Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gerald Finzi,[5] Dale Roberts studied with William Alwyn and Priaulx Rainier at the Royal Academy of Music, London.[6] He retired as Head of Composition at the Royal College of Music, London in 1999, and was a Visiting Professor of Composition at the University of Iowa for the 1999-2000 academic year.[1][7]

His compositions have been performed at the Edinburgh and Aldeburgh Festivals, the Venice Biennale, the Diorama de Geneve, and the festivals of Avignon and Paris.[8][9] They include

• the cello concerto Deathwatch, written for Rohan de Saram;
• Tombeau for Stephen Kovacevich;
• Croquis for string trio, written for members of the Arditti Quartet (BBC commission);
• In the Same Space, nine poems of Constantin Cavafy, written for Stephen Varcoe;
• Lines of Life, lyric episodes for ensemble, written for Lontano (BBC commission);
• Casidas y Sonetos — del amor oscuro, for solo guitar (Arts Council commission) for Charles Ramierez;
• Hamadryad for alto flute, viola and guitar;
• Stelae, a work for gamelan;
• Nightpiece for soprano and two bass viols;
• Tristia for violin and piano, written for Peter Sheppard Skaerved and Aaron Shorr.

His compositions received attention in the context of a 70th-birthday portrait concert given at the Purcell Room in London by the ensemble Lontano in 2004,[5] the release of an associated CD by the same group in early 2005,[10] and most recently by the long-awaited release of a complete commercial recording of Croquis by NMC Recordings.[11] One writer has described his style as 'a kind of ascetically sumptuous exoticism', and has further characterised Dale Roberts' music in terms of:

• the miniature form and associated possibilities of extended structuring;
• reference to artists and works in other art-forms (in particular sculpture and painting);
• the occasional use of quotation from other composers’ music (albeit in the context of a rather 'pure' modernist idiolect); and
• a fondness for unusual instrumentations.[12]

A review of the CD recording of Croquis noted: "Dale Roberts’s miniatures are brilliantly able to condense a familiar image, such as the reel or the fugue, and accumulate into a substantial, 54-minute statement."[13]