My former composition teacher and friend, Justin Connolly, who has died aged 87, was a leading light of modernist music in Britain in the 1960s and 70s. A series of highly crafted, delicately wrought, notationally virtuosic chamber pieces he composed in the late 60s led to his receiving prominent orchestral commissions in the 70s for the BBC Proms, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pierre Boulez, who championed his music.
There followed a period of ill health during which Justin composed nothing; after he resumed activity in the late 1980s – partly prompted by his high-profile “discovery” of the hitherto neglected 80-year-old composer Minna Keal – he never quite regained the public status of the earlier period.
Nonetheless, he produced a steady stream of high quality work throughout the 90s and beyond, in which the earlier modernist astringency was fused with a new lyricism; a retrospective CD of his music, Night Thoughts, was issued in 2001, and in 2003 the Piano Concerto was premiered by Nicolas Hodges, one of the most committed later advocates of his music.
Justin was an inspirational teacher. Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, current principal of the Royal Academy of Music, accurately characterises him as “one of the most wonderfully supportive, kindly and congenial colleagues … modest to a fault, he was a supreme musician of the very highest calibre – a true original but with a childish love of discovery and enjoyment which drew on his astonishingly wide knowledge of music; his bright smile said it all”. He held positions at both the Royal Academy and Royal College of Music (RCM), as well as visiting professorships in the US (at the University of California Santa Barbara) and Australia (at the University of Melbourne).
Born in London, Justin was the son of John D’Arcy-Dawson, an author and journalist, and his wife Barbara (nee Little). He changed his surname to that of his father’s biological father in his early 20s. From Westminster school he went on to national service in the Army, and briefly studied law at the Middle Temple before deciding on a career in music.
Following initial study at the RCM he spent three years (1963-66) at Yale University, first on a Harkness fellowship and then as a faculty member.
During this period he married the violinist Pauline Scott; they divorced a few years later. Justin is survived by a younger sister, Pat.
