Denis ApIvor

Denis ApIvor (14 April 191627 May 2004) was a British composer, best known for his ballet score Blood Wedding. He had a parallel career as a consultant anaesthetist. Biography ApIvor (pronounced Ap Ivor) was born in Collinstown, County Westmeath, Ireland, to Welsh parents. He attended Hereford Cathedral School and was a chorister at Christ Church, Oxford, and Hereford Cathedral. Because his parents opposed a career in music, he studied medicine in London, but had also pursued the study of music from an early age. He began his medical studies at the University of Aberystwyth in 1933, moving the next year to University College London. Inspired by hearing the first performance in England of Wozzeck (at the Queen’s Hall, 14 March 1934 conducted by Adrian Boult) and encouraged by Cecil Gray, ApIvor also studied composition privately with Patrick Hadley and Alan Rawsthorne. At the outbreak of World War II he was for a time house physician at the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth, Hampstead. In 1942 he was called up, mostly serving as a war doctor in India. After the war ApIvor continued with his medical career, eventually retiring in 1979 from the Mid Kent Group. But he also returned