Composer whose more than 250 works ranged from instrumental music to chamber opera
The imagination of the composer Stephen Dodgson, who has died aged 89, was galvanised by the personalities and the often unusual requests of the musicians for whom he wrote – and they usually came back for more. His more than 250 works ranged from his chamber operas Margaret Catchpole (1979) and Nancy the Waterman (2007) through choral music, songs and chamber music to large-scale orchestral and wind-band works. Three instruments in particular benefited from his attention: the guitar, harpsichord and recorder.
His introduction to the guitar came in the early 1950s through Alexis Chesnakov, a Russian refugee who was working in Britain as an actor and asked for some folksong settings. Dodgson, able to play the instrument only in his imagination, struggled at first, but came to write for it idiomatically, as in the Guitar Concerto No 1 (1956), intended for Julian Bream. However, as Bream was not available for its BBC premiere, this was given by John Williams, then aged 17, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Walter Goehr. The Guitar Concerto No 2 (1972), this time specifically written for Williams, followed and there have since been duet concertos for violin, guitar and strings, and for two guitars and strings.
At the heart of Dodgson's contribution to the guitar's solo repertoire are the four Partitas and the popular Fantasy-Divisions, and he has written for the instrument in numerous different ensembles: there are works for two, three and four guitars, massed guitars with and without solo instruments, songs with guitar accompaniment, including Four Poems of John Clare (1962) for the tenor Wilfred Brown and Williams, and numerous chamber music works. Notable among them is the large Duo Concertante (1968) written for the surprising combination of guitar – Williams – and harpsichord – Rafael Puyana– and recorded by those artists.
Dodgson always rose to the challenge presented by an improbable melange of instruments, including, in 1999, High Barbaree, for recorder, guitar and harpsichord. In 2006, John Mackenzie produced a substantial study of his guitar music.
His introduction to the harpsichord came through its Czech exponent Stanislav Heller, for whom he wrote his first set of Six Inventionsin 1955. Four years later Dodgson married Jane Clark, another harpsichordist and an authority on François Couperin. A fascination with the music and instruments of the baroque and earlier followed, resulting in four more sets of Inventions (1961, 1970, 1985 and 1993) – making 30 pieces in all. Their changing styles reflected the transition from the metal-framed instruments of the Wanda Landowska generation to the more resonant classical- replica harpsichords, and indeed to more authentic performance practice, with appropriate and stylish ornaments.
For his recorder-playing student Richard Harvey, Dodgson wrote the virtuosic Shine and Shade (1975), a rare example, for him, of a jazz-inflected piece, and now a staple of the instrument's repertoire. The recorder had featured in his incidental music for the 1970 BBC radio production of John Ford's chronicle play Perkin Warbeck, and Dodgson remembered vividly the dynamic playing of David Munrow in the sessions. This music was quarried for a commission for a recorder and harpsichord work for Carl Dolmetsch and Joseph Saxby, Warbeck Dances (1972).
Since my own introduction to Dodgson in 1997, a stream of idiomatic music for the instrument has followed, including Concerto Chacony (2000), with string orchestra, a Capriccio Concertante No 2 (2005), for recorder, harpsichord and string orchestra, and numerous smaller chamber works. Dodgson's seven piano sonatas have been championed and recorded by Bernard Roberts, and his eight string quartets likewise by the Tippett String Quartet.
His explorations of instrumental byways have included a concerto for viola da gamba, a song for voice and baryton, and a duet for two lutes. Six of his nine Essays for orchestra have been recorded commercially.
Stylistically, his music is tonal, though often ambiguously so. Like that of Janacek, a composer he admired and whose compositional method of developing small cells finds its echo in his own works, the music rarely follows an obvious path. Performers find initially that the music is surprising and unexpected – puzzling even – and almost always very intricate: the guitar guru John Duarte once told me that Dodgson could not write a simple piece of music if he tried, though that is not entirely true.
However, once the music reveals its secrets, it becomes intensely appealing. The influence of early music in his style manifests itself in numerous ways: not just in his choice of instrument, but also in a love of decoration and ornamentation, a fondness for virtuoso display, baroque-style figuration, a predilection for variation form (often on medieval or folk-tune themes), and the choice of early vocal texts.
Dodgson was born in Chelsea, London, the third child of artistic parents. His father, John Dodgson, was a distinguished symbolist painter whose works grace several Dodgson CDs (and a distant cousin of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the writer Lewis Carroll). His mother, Valentine, was also an artist: the couple had met at the Slade School of Art.
From Berkhamsted school, Hertfordshire, Stephen went to Stowe school, Buckinghamshire, and in 1942 was conscripted into the Royal Navy, where he was mainly engaged in anti-submarine warfare in the North Atlantic. A year of private composition lessons with Bernard Stevens led to him entering the Royal College of Music, London, in 1946.
While he was nominally there to study the horn, as he put it: "My real incentive was composition. RO Morris inspired my interest in counterpoint, the music of the 16th-century composer Thomas Morley, and so on. Morris was shy about composition in the 20th century, and I think he liked me because I avoided mentioning it. He was rather old, always had a cold, and was charming and courteous. Patrick Hadley was briefly on the staff when Morris retired; he staggered up from Cambridge in a state of delightful disarray, indiscreet and erratic, but was a tonic in realism and practical attitude. When he was absent, Antony Hopkins took his place and wasa more useful instructor."
Dodgson won the Cobbett memorial prize in 1948 for a Fantasy String Quartet, followed by the Royal Philharmonic Society prize in 1949 for his Variations for Orchestra, and again in 1953 for the Symphony in E Flat. Also in 1949, he was awarded the Octavia travelling scholarship, which took him to Rome.
On his return to London in the spring of 1950, his music started to get performances and broadcasts by, among others, the flautist Geoffrey Gilbert, oboist Evelyn Barbirolli, harpist Maria Korchinska, the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble, violinist Neville Marriner, violist Watson Forbes and conductors Leslie Woodgate, Paul Steinitz and even Gerald Finzi with his Newbury String Players – though he found Dodgson's style somewhat ungrateful.
In 1956 Dodgson started teaching at the RCM and conducting the junior orchestra. Nine years later he became professor of composition and theory, continuing at the RCM until his retirement in 1982. He was also a regular reviewer and commentator on musical matters for the BBC, and wrote scores for many radio dramas.
Enthusiastic, ebullient and quick-witted, Dodgson was extremely voluble, with a strong, distinctive voice, an ever-present smile, much old-world courtesy, and an idiosyncratic gait.
He is survived by Jane.
• Stephen Cuthbert Vivian Dodgson, composer, born 17 March 1924; died 13 April 2013