Cedric Thorpe Davie

Cedric Thorpe Davie (1913-1983) was born in London, the son of famous voice teacher, Thorpe Davie. Cedric studied at the Scottish National Academy of Music in Glasgow and a Caird scholarship enabled him to move to the Royal Academy of Music in London in 1932 where he studied piano with Egon Petri and Harold Craxton and horn with Aubrey Brain. In 1933 he moved to the Royal College of Music where he principally studied composition under Ralph Vaughan Williams and Dr RO Morris. He won several prizes for composition including, in 1935, the prestigious Cobbett prize. He spent 1935 abroad in Budapest and Helsinki, studying with Kodaly, Finnish composer Yryo Kilpinen and visiting Sibelius. A number of early works date from this period. He returned to Scotland in 1936 and took up a post at the Scottish National Academy of Music, teaching theory and composition, supplementing his income as a church organist.

In 1945 he was invited to become Master of Music at the University of St Andrews and during the next thirty years he directed choirs and orchestras, gave recitals, taught and composed and built up the Department of Music. He arranged and edited works for performance by the students he directed as well as composing works for the forces at his disposal. He produced a steady stream of compositions, many commissioned, for film, theatre, youth orchestras and education departments as well as for the young and growing Edinburgh Festival. The second festival of 1948 saw the beginning of his partnership with director Tyrone Guthrie and dramatist Robert Kemp in the production of Lindsay's Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaites .

Much of Thorpe Davie's work reflected his interest in drama and he produced much incidental music for stage plays, radio programmes and films, many with a Scottish theme. He was awarded an OBE in 1954 and became a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in 1955 and of the Royal Society in 1978. He was Professor of Music from 1973 until he retired in 1978. He died in 1983.

Composer, singing tutor and choral conductor, b Glasgow.

Epithet: composer