Robin Holloway

Robin Greville Holloway (born 19 October 1943) is an English composer, academic and writer. Early life Holloway was born in Leamington Spa. From 1953 to 1957, he was a chorister at St Paul’s Cathedral and was educated at King’s College School, where his father Robert was Head of the Art Department. He attended King’s College, Cambridge, and studied composition with Bayan Northcott. Career In 1974, Holloway became an Assistant Lecturer in Music in the University of Cambridge and in 1980 attained a full Lecturer position. In 1999, he became a reader in Musical Composition at Cambridge. He retired in 2011 as professor of Musical Composition. He is a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Among his many pupils were Thomas Adès, Huw Watkins, Peter Seabourne, George Benjamin, Judith Weir and Jonathan Dove. Holloway’s doctoral thesis, Debussy and Wagner (later published as a book by Eulenburg), discussed a close relationship between music and language as well as romanticism and tonality. This can be heard in his own works, such as Scenes from Schumann (1969–70), the opera Clarissa (1976) premiered in 1990 at English National Opera under the baton of Oliver Knussen, and Seascape