Duncan Druce
Biography
Duncan Druce was born in Cheshire, England: composer, violinist, violist, lecturer and writer on music, Duncan gained a double first in music at Cambridge. His compositions number about forty, encompassing orchestra, choral and chamber music. Many of these compositions have been broadcast by the BBC. In addition to his original compositional work, Duncan has achieved success with reconstructions of incomplete or lost music by Mozart, Bach and Franz Berwald. His completion of the Mozart Requiem, has achieved widespread critical acclaim and two commercial recordings.
Duncan was a member of the Pierrot Players and during his ten years with this group and its successor The Fires of London, he took part in numerous premiers of music by Maxwell Davies, Birtwistle, Morton Feldman, Henze and many others. He gave the British premiere of Berio's Sequenza VI for viola and, in 1976, the first performance of The Door of the Sun, a solo work written for him by Maxwell Davies.
Well known for his work in the early music movement as a founder-member of the Academy of Ancient Music, Duncan has appeared since the 1970's with most of the well known British groups specialising in Baroque and Classical period performance.
From 1978-1991 Duncan was senior lecturer in music at Bretton Hall College. Since giving up full time lecturing he has combined performance, music journalism and composition with part-time teaching at the University of Huddersfield.