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James Frederick Stocken (b. 1967 in Birmingham) is a British classical composer and musicologist.
Stocken's father is British but his mother was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany.
Stocken was a pupil at Chetham's School of Music in Manchester, and was subsequently Organ Scholar of St Catharine's College, Cambridge. Howard Ferguson and Margaret Hubicki were important compositional mentors in the early years of his career. He also studied the organ with Peter Hurford, winning five prizes as an Associate of the Royal College of Organists and three prizes when he became a Fellow. He subsequently gained a doctorate in music from the University of Manchester.
Stocken's best-known composition is his Lament for Bosnia, which was released on CD (becoming the number one best-selling classical CD in Tower Records' London store during early 1994). He conducted the work at the opening of the Permanent Holocaust Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum with the strings of the Royal Academy of Music, and also in Sarajevo with the Sarajevo Philharmonic Orchestra. As the sleeve-notes to the CD explain, the work was also dedicated to Stocken's maternal grandmother, Rosa Bechhofer, who had died in Auschwitz.
Stocken's First Symphony was commissioned by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vernon Handley in the Royal Albert Hall, London and broadcast on Classic FM (UK). His Second Symphony, 'To the Immortal Memory', was premiered in 2005 at St John's Smith Square, London, by the Young Musicians Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Blair.
Other significant commissions include a ballet - Alice - written for the State Theatre in Gießen, Germany, and a Mass - Missa Pacis - commissioned for the Brompton Oratory in London. In 2004, Top Of The Morning (for flute and piano) was published by Oxford University Press. Other Stocken compositions include a Violin Concerto, which was performed by the violinist Adam Summerhayes with the Surrey Sinfonietta in St John's Smith Square. Stocken's Bagatelle (for piano) was featured on the 2009 album Haflidi’s Pictures (a compilation of 20th/21st century piano music).
Stocken has also written a book: 'Simon Sechter's Fundamental-Bass Theory and its Influence on the Music of Anton Bruckner' (Edwin Mellen, 2009) based on his PhD research. He also invented a diagrammatic method, the Stocken Method, for learning piano scales, published in five volumes as Scale Shapes (Chester Music, 2002-).
More controversially, Stocken has intermittently written articles as a strong critic of what he perceives as a modernist musical establishment, the last in 2000 criticising Pierre Boulez.[1] His forthright views once spilled over into an instance of direct action: the so-called 'Hecklers' protest at the end of the first night of the revival of Harrison Birtwistle's Gawain at Covent Garden in April 1994.
A statement about this incident on Stocken's website reads: "Although Frederick still believes that his actions and the argument he made at the time were legitimate (and since then the public debate on this issue has surely moved more in his direction than the reverse) he quickly found being such a controversial figure detrimental to the peace he needed for composition, and he would prefer that this instance of youthful extravagance fifteen years ago did not dominate what is still sometimes written about him."
James Frederick Stocken (b. 1967 in Birmingham) is a British classical composer and musicologist.
Stocken's father is British but his mother was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany.
Stocken was a pupil at Chetham's School of Music in Manchester, and was subsequently Organ Scholar of St Catharine's College, Cambridge. Howard Ferguson and Margaret Hubicki were important compositional mentors in the early years of his career. He also studied the organ with Peter Hurford, winning five prizes as an Associate of the Royal College of Organists and three prizes when he became a Fellow. He subsequently gained a doctorate in music from the University of Manchester.
Stocken's best-known composition is his Lament for Bosnia, which was released on CD (becoming the number one best-selling classical CD in Tower Records' London store during early 1994). He conducted the work at the opening of the Permanent Holocaust Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum with the strings of the Royal Academy of Music, and also in Sarajevo with the Sarajevo Philharmonic Orchestra. As the sleeve-notes to the CD explain, the work was also dedicated to Stocken's maternal grandmother, Rosa Bechhofer, who had died in Auschwitz.
Stocken's First Symphony was commissioned by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vernon Handley in the Royal Albert Hall, London and broadcast on Classic FM (UK). His Second Symphony, 'To the Immortal Memory', was premiered in 2005 at St John's Smith Square, London, by the Young Musicians Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Blair.
Other significant commissions include a ballet - Alice - written for the State Theatre in Gießen, Germany, and a Mass - Missa Pacis - commissioned for the Brompton Oratory in London. In 2004, Top Of The Morning (for flute and piano) was published by Oxford University Press. Other Stocken compositions include a Violin Concerto, which was performed by the violinist Adam Summerhayes with the Surrey Sinfonietta in St John's Smith Square. Stocken's Bagatelle (for piano) was featured on the 2009 album Haflidi’s Pictures (a compilation of 20th/21st century piano music).
Stocken has also written a book: 'Simon Sechter's Fundamental-Bass Theory and its Influence on the Music of Anton Bruckner' (Edwin Mellen, 2009) based on his PhD research. He also invented a diagrammatic method, the Stocken Method, for learning piano scales, published in five volumes as Scale Shapes (Chester Music, 2002-).
More controversially, Stocken has intermittently written articles as a strong critic of what he perceives as a modernist musical establishment, the last in 2000 criticising Pierre Boulez.[1] His forthright views once spilled over into an instance of direct action: the so-called 'Hecklers' protest at the end of the first night of the revival of Harrison Birtwistle's Gawain at Covent Garden in April 1994.
A statement about this incident on Stocken's website reads: "Although Frederick still believes that his actions and the argument he made at the time were legitimate (and since then the public debate on this issue has surely moved more in his direction than the reverse) he quickly found being such a controversial figure detrimental to the peace he needed for composition, and he would prefer that this instance of youthful extravagance fifteen years ago did not dominate what is still sometimes written about him."
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