Identity area
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Person
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ApIvor, Denis.
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Description area
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History
Denis ApIvor, composer, was born in 1916 in the Republic of Ireland, where he was brought up until his family moved to Wales in 1921. In 1925 ApIvor left the family home in Caernarfon to become a chorister at Christ Church, Oxford where, by the age of ten, he was already showing compositions to his music master Henry Ley. He later transferred to Hereford Cathedral, where his father was by now chaplain. At Hereford ApIvor learnt the clarinet, piano and organ and played in local orchestras while also continuing to compose. It was as a medical student, however, that ApIvor entered University College, London in 1934; however, with the help of Cecil Gray, who had written a biography of the composer Peter Warlock, ApIvor became the pupil of the composer and Cambridge University professor Patrick Hadley. He would later work with Alan Rawsthorne, who was to become an important figure in the contemporary music of the 1930s. ApIvor fulfilled his war service at hospitals in India, all the while continuing to compose music. He returned to London in 1945; in 1987, he took up residence near Llanidloes. Amongst ApIvor's most noted works are the operas She Stoops To Conquer, Yerma, Ubu Roi and Bouvard et Pécuchet and his ballets A Mirror For Witches and Blood Wedding, the latter based on the work of Federico García Lorca, for whose poetical works ApIvor showed great enthusiasm. He also produced numerous solo and choral works, chamber music and songs and numbered Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern amongst his greatest influences.