Stephen Dodgson was born into an artistic family in London. His parents were both painters, and Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known as the writer Lewis Carroll) was a distant relative. From Stowe School he was conscripted into the British Navy during the Second World War before gaining his musical education (initially as a French Horn player) at London’s Royal College of Music: he would subsequently spend 26 years there teaching theory and composition. He worked at the BBC for the first time in 1957, and would go on to provide incidental music for many of their dramatic productions as well as becoming one of the corporation’s most recognisable (and most loved) voices, as a broadcaster on a wide range of musical subjects.

Dodgson’s more than 250 works range from songs and solo instrumental pieces to chamber operas, choral music and large-scale orchestral works. Although his music was never predictable, he was always practical, often writing for performers he knew and admired. He composed a number of characterful pieces for The National Youth Wind Orchestra, of which he was chairman for many years, and his association with the noted Philip Jones Brass Ensemble led to him writing or arranging an array of music for brass.

He had a particular affinity with three ‘domestic’ instruments, the recorder, guitar (fostered by Julian Bream) and harpsichord; his marriage in 1959 to the harpsichordist Jane Clark cemented a fascination with Baroque music that infused many of his works. Witty, blessed of a prodigious memory (he was an inveterate storyteller), and with a generous heart that shines through his works, his music is now celebrated by The Stephen Dodgson Charitable Trust.

– Richard Edgar-Wilson