Dr Thomas Hyde

I’m a composer writing in a wide variety of genres from opera to choral music. My largest work to date is an opera, That Man Stephen Ward (2008) which was most recently revived by Nova Music Opera at the Cheltenham Festival in 2015 and later recorded for Resonus Classics. Other recent pieces have included a string quartet (2010), a violin sonata (2014, for Jennifer Pike), a setting of the Magnificat (2017, commissioned by Concertgebouw Brugge for The Sixteen), Les at Leisure – a Comedy Overture (commissioned by the Lichfield Festival for the BBC National Orchestra of Wales) and a Symphony (2018, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra). I currently combine my research fellowship at Worcester College with a 0.5 position in the Music Department at King’s College London. In 2017 I was awarded an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music. I am also on the advisory committee of the Little Missenden Festival and chair of the Lucille Graham Trust, a small charity that provides financial support to music education projects in the Greater London area. I am currently working on a new opera, in collaboration with the novelist Alexander McCall Smith, in development with Scottish Opera (2021).

Books

  • David Matthews: Essays, Tributes and Criticism, ed. Thomas Hyde, Plumbago Books (2014).

Compositions

  • Symphony (20 mins), for orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Geoffrey Paterson (2018)
  • Les at Leisure – a comedy overture (8 mins), for orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Dalia Stasevska (2018)
  • Magnificat (8 mins), choir, The Sixteen, Eamonn Dougan, (2017; BBC Radio 3 broadcast 2019)
  • Orpheus with his Lute (2 mins), choir, City of Canterbury Chamber Choir (2015; published by Novello & Co Ltd, 2016)
  • Serenade in A (15 mins), ensemble or small orchestra (Junior Royal Academy of Music commission, 2014)
  • Three Greek Women, Observed (15 mins), soprano, 5 players (Presteigne Festival Commission, 2013)
  • That Man Stephen Ward (60 mins), one-man opera, Nova Music Opera (2008)

Recordings

  • Symphony, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Geoffrey Paterson (Resonus, 2021)
  • Sweet was the Song, ORA, Suzi Digby (Harmonia Mundi, 2018)
  • That Man Stephen Ward, Damien Thantrey, Nova Music Opera, George Vass (Resonus, 2017)
  • Autumnal, String Quartet, Three Dancers, Nocturnes, Second Suite for solo cello, Winter Music, various performers (Guild Records, 2012)
  • Sweet was the Song, Improvisation on ‘Puer natus’, Choir of Worcester College of Oxford, Stephen Farr (Resonus, 2012)

Select Articles

  • ‘Bourgeois, Derek (1941-2017), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2021)
  • ‘Locked Linked Listening: A Covid Diary’, Musical Opinion Quarterly (July 2020), 29-32
  • ‘William Mathias: The Student, Real and Imagined’, British Music, Vol. 39/40 (2018) 34-52
  • ‘Visions of Reality: David Matthews at 60’, The Musical Times (2003) 33-39.

Recent Reviews

  • ‘Michael Tippett: The Biography; The Pre-History of ‘The Midsummer Marriage’, Twentieth-Century Music, Cambridge University Press, Vol 17(2) (2020), 269-76
  • ‘Phillip Cooke: James MacMillan’ [book review] Musical Opinion Quarterly (April 2020), 30-32

Selected Media / Engagement

  • ‘Narratives of the self in Thomas Hyde’s That Man Stephen Ward’ by Edward Venn, Opera in Flux: New Approaches to Identity, Staging, and Narrative , University of Michigan Press (forthcoming)
  • ‘Thomas Hyde: Larkin Songs’ by Jane Manning, Vocal Repertoire for the 21st Century, Oxford University Press, 2020.
  • ‘How to play the piano badly like Les Dawson’, BBC Breakfast / Radio 4 feature (July 2018)
  • ‘How I turned the Profumo scandal into a one-singer opera’, Gramophone.co.uk (August 2016)
  • Chair of Panel, ‘The Composers’ Seminar’, PRS for Music, Southbank Centre (October 2014)

Composition; British modernism (post-1945); techniques of composition, analysis.