Basil Deane Recordings

An Ulsterman by birth, Basil Deane (1928-2006) left his mark on seven universities and music colleges in the UK and abroad, and was the urbane and politically adept director of music for the Arts Council of Great Britain during one of its most difficult periods.

In 1945 he went to study modern languages at Queen’s University Belfast, where the vice-chancellor, Eric Ashby, encouraged him to become the first undergraduate to read for a music degree, in which he obtained a first. He then spent a year in Paris studying under Etienne Pasquier. A chance hearing on a borrowed record of Albert Roussel’s Le Festin de l’Araignée (The Spider’s Feast) led to his swift return to academic life, at Glasgow University, where, after gaining his PhD with a critical assessment of the music of Roussel in 1954, he became a lecturer and met his future wife Norma, with whom he was to collaborate on translations of libretti of operas by Luigi Cherubini and Reinhard Keiser (1674-1739).

He was senior lecturer at Melbourne University’s conservatorium of music (1959-65), then lectured at Nottingham University for two years, before taking up the chair of music at Sheffield in 1968 then moved to Manchester University.

In 1980 Basil was headhunted by the Arts Council, on whose music panel he had served since 1977. The withdrawal of funding from the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company and the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain caused him difficulty, though he was able to help establish Opera North and give increased support to the Contemporary Music Network. A move in 1983 as first principal of the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts gave him the challenge of building a new conservatoire in purpose-built premises. Afterwards, he became the Peyton and Barber professor of music at Birmingham University.

Basil retired in 1991, eventually moving to Portugal, where he returned to an early interest in composition, with a cycle of songs to words by WB Yeats. His writings include books on Roussel (1962), Cherubini (1965) and his friend Alun Hoddinott (1979), as well as numerous contributions, notably on Beethoven, to anthologies and periodicals.