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"If music be the food of love, play on!" - William Shakespeare

JONATHAN DOVE is the most performed living opera composer in the UK. His over 30 works in this genre come in all shapes and sizes and form the backbone to his considerable oeuvre, many of which have also been performed in Europe, America and Australia. Much of his other music is palpably narrative and dramatic in conception, and covers a great range of subject matter, from contemporary to legendary, fairy-tale to sexual politics, catering to all audiences from children to adult.
Hailing from a family of architects, Dove was playing the organ in his local church at the age of twelve, and read Music at Cambridge, studying composition with Robin Holloway. Graduating from the music staff at Glyndebourne, he first gained prominence with his chamber versions of operas, including The Magic Flute, The Ring of the Nibelung, and The Cunning Little Vixen for Birmingham Opera ’s touring productions, then became music advisor at the Almeida Theatre in North London, writing a plethora of theatre scores for them, the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was Artistic Director of the Spitalfields Festival from 2001-6.
Awarded a CBE in 2019 for services to music, he has also won the 2008 Ivor Novello Award, the 2006 Royal Philharmonic Society education award and four British Composer Awards. His 1998 Glyndebourne commission opera Flight has received 40 productions worldwide, and his television opera When She Died was seen by 2.5 million viewers.
He has written extensively in many genres, he is a prolific and popular choral composer, has orchestral works to his credit, several oratorios, many song cycles and much chamber music, including four string quartets.
Recent and forthcoming works include operas Marx in London (2018), Itch (2023), and forthcoming Im 80 Tagen um die Welt (Zürich, 2024) and Uprising, for Glyndebourne (2025), Northern Lights - an accordion concerto, Gaspard’s Foxtrot and Gaspard’s Christmas for narrator and orchestra, two song cycles, three string quartets and more.

Featured on

Jonathan Dove
On the streets and in the sky
Jonathan Dove
Various composers
Magnificat Vol. 4
Choir of St John's College, Cambridge
Various composers
Noël!
Armonico Consort
Various composers
Locus Iste
The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge
Various composers
Silence & Music
Gabrieli Consort
Jonathan Dove
Nights Not Spent Alone
Kitty Whately
Jonathan Dove
In Damascus
Sacconi Quartet
Jonathan Dove
For An Unknown Soldier
London Mozart Players
Jonathan Dove
There Was a Child
Joan Rodgers / Toby Spence