1. Anthony Ritchie has been a freelance composer accepting commissions for works and in 2018 he became professor of composition at The University of Otago after 18 years of teaching composition.
14 Facts About Anthony Ritchie
1. 2.
Anthony Ritchie is the son of John Ritchie, who was a professor teaching composition and orchestration at the University of Canterbury.
3.
Anthony Ritchie's mother was a soprano soloist and he began learning the piano at the age of nine, showing early aptitude for improvisation.
4.
Anthony Ritchie completed his BMus with honours in 1981 at the University of Canterbury.
5.
Anthony Ritchie studied the influence of folk music on some of Bela Bartok's works in Hungary in 1983, as well as composition with Attila Bozay and Zsolt Serei.
6.
Anthony Ritchie then became a freelance composer accepting a number of commissions.
7.
Anthony Ritchie has written for many other performers including Michael Houstoun and Wilma Smith.
8.
Anthony Ritchie worked with novelist Keri Hulme on an opera Ahua, the story of the Ngai Tahu ancestor Moki.
9.
Anthony Ritchie set works by Dunedin poet Elena Poletti to create Lullabies which were originally commissioned and performed by the Auckland Choral society.
10.
Anthony Ritchie was trying out the use of the mathematical concept of the magic square used by composers Peter Maxwell Davies and Gillian Whitehead.
11.
The preludes were written when Anthony Ritchie took some time off from his freelance work to explore different approaches to composition.
12.
Anthony Ritchie's oratorio Gallipoli to the Somme which commemorated the one hundred year anniversary of the Battle of the Somme was based on the book of the same name by Alexander Aitken, who was a soldier in the Otago battalion and later professor of mathematics at Edinburgh University.
13.
In 2018, after 18 years of teaching composition, Anthony Ritchie became professor of composition in the Department of Music, Theatre and Performing Arts at the University of Otago.
14.
Anthony Ritchie received a Trust Fund award from the Composers Association of New Zealand in 1998 in recognition of his achievements in composition.