Iain Hamilton (composer)

Iain Ellis Hamilton (6 June 1922 – 21 July 2000) was a prolific Scottish composer of ten operas, four symphonies, four string quartets and much more. He worked in the United States for twenty years. Career Hamilton was born in Glasgow and educated in London, where he became an apprentice engineer. He remained in that profession for the next seven years, studying music in his spare time. In 1947 he won a scholarship to attend the Royal Academy of Music for three years, studying composition with William Alwyn and piano with Harold Craxton. Simultaneously he earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of London (1950), and he was later awarded an honorary Doctorate of Music from the University of Glasgow (1970). In 1951 Hamilton became a lecturer at both Morley College and the University of London, posts he held until 1960, when he moved to New York. There he was appointed Mary Duke Biddle Professor at Duke University, North Carolina. In 1971 he was also appointed to the Cramb lectureship at the University of Glasgow. He returned to London in 1981, but struggled to regain a place in the mainstream of UK musical life, although his orchestral work Commedia was performed at the