Peter Pope (composer)

Peter Searson Pope (25 March 1917 – 27 November 1991) was a British composer. Biography Peter Pope was born in London in 1917 and was educated at Uppingham School and at the Royal College of Music, where he studied composition with John Ireland and R.O. Morris, singing with Freda Swain and piano with Cyril Smith. In 1939 he won the Octavia Traveling Scholarship to study composition with Nadia Boulanger at the American Conservatoire in Fontainebleau, Paris and it was clear from subsequent documentation that he was one of her inner circle of favoured students. His studies were, however, cut short by the German invasion of Paris in 1940 and, when Nadia Boulanger emigrated to the United States, he had to flee across France, returning to England on a Spanish trawler. He later saw service in the Royal Army Medical Corps and was attached to the 8th Army as it advanced from North Africa through Sicily and Italy. After the war he composed several chamber works and his major break came in April 1948 when a piano quartet of his was performed at Wigmore Hall. It was favourably reviewed by William Mann, then assistant music critic of The Times, who opined that the new composer’s work would be '