Norman Demuth

Norman Demuth was born on 15 July 1898 in South Croydon (Great Britain). He studied music for some time at the Royal College of Music, but is nevertheless commonly considered as musically self-taught.

The French music of the fin de siecle had a great impact on Norman Demuth and he wrote several biographies on composers of that era like Cesar Franck, Paul Dukas, Vincent d'Indy, Albert Roussel, Maurice Ravel and Charles Gounod. From 1929 to 1935 he was the conductor of the Chichester Symphony Orchestra and from 1930 he taught at the Royal Academy of Music, later at the University of Durham.

Norman Demuth mainly composed orchestral and chamber music. Among his works are 6 symphonies, a Piano, a Viola and a Violin concerto, several symphonic poems, 2 violin sonatas, many piano works as well as songs and works for military band. But his compositions were mainly neglected and Norman Demuth is today best remembered for his writings on French composers.

Norman Demuth died on 21 April 1968 in Chichester (Great Britain).

In my possession is an autograph manuscript of a "Concerto for piano and orchestra" from 1941 in the piano reduction. The score contains 118 bars of the beginning of the piano concerto, but seems to be incomplete. Most sources give the year 1943 for the first piano concerto by Norman Demuth, so maybe this is an early version or a withdrawn first effort. I don't know the location of the manuscripts or scores of the later piano concertos, so I could not compare my manuscript with other versions.