David Lumsdaine, who has died aged 92, was a remarkable figure in the contemporary music world. Primarily a composer, he was also a noted teacher, and an expert in wildlife sound recording, something which continued to preoccupy him when around 1997 he stopped composing, saying: “‘I have not retired but my muse has retired me.”
This is paralleled by his rejection or destruction of the many works he had written before 1964. However, his more than 30 years of mature composition reveal an outstandingly imaginative approach in his music, which is sometimes formidably complex but always direct in its expression.
