I met Barrie Gavin in 1984 when he made a BBC film about Mahler’s 10th Symphony in which I took part. During his long career, Barrie was the most prolific and distinguished maker of television documentaries about composers. He had a lifelong passion for music, an indefatigable sense of humour, and an inexhaustible fund of memories of his encounters with musicians over many decades.

 

After his retirement, he moved from London to the Welsh borders, and on my visits to the Presteigne Festival every year since 2000 I saw a lot of Barrie and we became close friends. He continued to make films about composer friends, and he spent twelve years making a documentary about my life and music, A Composer’s Landscape, which was shown at the Presteigne Festival in 2023.

 

My piece for clarinet and piano, written in Barrie’s memory, begins with a motif, B A D D E G based on the letters of his name (D standing for R, re). It tries to capture something of Barrie’s incomparably vital spirit, and its overall mood is happy rather than sad.

 

D.M.