I am a British composer particularly active in the field of organ and sacred choral music but my commissioned pieces also include orchestral, ballet and piano music. Among my bigger works are a violin concerto and two symphonies; the first symphony was commissioned for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

There are audio clips of various of my compositions on soundcloud.

CONTACT ME using this link.

 

As well as finding up-to-date information about my music on this webpage, there are also a few notes about my related work as an organist, organ and music theory teacher, musicologist and music examiner.

 

COMPOSITION NEWS:

 

Archangels for organ was published by Banks Music Publications 18 April 2013. There are three videos of me playing the piece on Youtube: St Gabriel, St Raphael and St Michael and a review on Bachtrack. It has also been written about on The Lady Organist.

 

Come to your Heaven for choir and organ was released on the Priory Label in December 2012 sung by the choir or St Michael’s, Cornhill, conducted by Jonathan Rennert. The piece was commissioned by the Worshipful Company of Musicians.

 

OTHER NEWS:

 

I am editing Bruckner’s Psalm 150 for the New Bruckner Edition.

 

I’m conducting the choir of St Mary’s, Woodford as part of a Celebration of Psalms at the church on Saturday 11 May 2013 at 7.30. Tickets £8.

 

For  RCO (Royal College of Organists) St Giles Organ School, I’m giving a class called  Introducing Advanced Harmony  on Saturday 25 May 2013. For RCO Academy I’m teaching at a study day called Preparing for CertRCO, ARCO and FRCO on Saturday 22 June 2013.

 

GENERAL BACKGROUND:

 

My main musical mentors in composition were Howard Ferguson and Margaret Hubicki.  Having started composing  as a fairly small child, my music first came before the wider musical world when the CD of my Lament for Bosnia (FCC 0001) was top of the classical charts in Tower Records for several weeks and it is still my most performed and broadcast work, including several airings on the BBC and Classic FM. Particularly memorable for me was conducting Lament with the Strings of the Royal Academy of Music and with the Sarajevo Philharmonic Orchestra.  Since Lament I have been fortunate that one composing opportunity has led to another.

 

My First Symphony was commissioned by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and performed in the main concert season of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in the Royal Albert Hall, conducted by Vernon Handley and broadcast on Classic FM.  My Second Symphony and Violin Concerto were both performed on separate occasions at St John’s, Smith Square.  A ballet, Alice, was commissioned by  the Stadttheater in Giessen, Germany, and has received many performances.   Missa Pacis, an orchestral and choral mass, was commissioned for the Brompton Oratory, London.   Top of the Morning for flute and piano (in Flute Time Pieces 1) was published by OUP.   Bagatelle for piano, played by Mark Tanner, was released on disc in 2009 (PRCD 1018). These are just some selected highlights; contact me for more detailed information.

 

I was born in Birmingham, the only child of my British-born father and my mother who came to the UK as a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany.  I was a chorister at Southwell Minster, where I studied the organ under Kenneth Beard. At Chetham’s School of Music,  I studied the organ with Derrick Cantrell and became Head Boy.  As Organ Scholar of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, my Director of Studies was Peter le Huray and I studied the organ with Peter Hurford.   I became an Associate of the Royal College of Organists at sixteen, winning five prizes, later being even luckier to win a further three prizes when I became a Fellow.   

 

My occasional organ recitals have been in  churches, cathedrals and college chapels, including King’s College, Cambridge.  I also played a piano duet with James Kirby on a CD for Chandos featuring the music of Margaret Hubicki (CHAN 10322).  I have held various church-music appointments, and became Director of Music at St Mary’s, Woodford in London in 2011.

 

Hoping to deepen my composing technique, I decided to make a study of Anton Bruckner’s mammoth musical apprenticeship with Simon Sechter and its influence on Bruckner’s Music. The research was awarded a PhD from Manchester University and was subsequently published as a book:  Simon Sechter’s Fundamental-Bass Theory and  Its Influence on the Music of Anton Bruckner (Edwin Mellen Press, 2009). As a fledgling musicologist hunting in Vienna I stumbled upon a clue to some overlooked contemporary reminiscences about Schubert giving, for instance, Schubert’s only recorded opinions about Bach; co-authored with the Schubert expert Rita Steblin, these memoirs were published as ‘Studying with Sechter: Newly Recovered Reminiscences about Schubert by his Forgotten Friend, the Composer Joseph Lanz’, Music & Letters, 88 (May 2007), 226-65.

 

My piano teaching led to the invention of Scale Shapes  using the ‘Stocken Method’, published in five volumes by Chester Music, which is now  in its third revised edition. It is a diagrammatic method for learning scales, which, although conceived in a moment, has had surprising international popularity. Examining for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music has taken me to many countries, especially in south-east Asia. I am also a diploma examiner for the ABRSM and a trainer of examiners.

 

Today I live in Poplar in East London, in the shadow of Canary Wharf, combining composition with organ playing and freelance teaching, mainly for RCO St Giles Organ School.

 

REVIEWS

 

“The brief Bagatelle (2008) by Frederick Stocken (born 1967) is a bittersweet treat, fully expressed in tonal terms. One can almost taste Tanner’s enjoyment.” Fanfare Magazine.

 

“Stocken’s Bagatelle is only two-and-a-half minutes long, and Prokofievan, too, but with a bittersweet sophistication and melodic catchiness that suggests his larger-scale works will be worth tracking down.” International Record Review.

 

“Stocken’s Bagatelle plays with major-minor expectations in a Busonian way, in a work of neo-classical economy.” Records International.

 

“At last a young English composer has chosen to write accessible, beautiful music which is unashamedly passionate and melodic.” A.N. Wilson, The Evening Standard.

 

“…it is music which makes me believe that a new Sibelius or a new Elgar has been born.” A.N. Wilson, The Spectator.

 

“… one of the most promising talents of his generation….it is refreshing to find a composer who is producing music which is clear, profound, free-flowing and superbly composed.” Malcolm Williamson, the late Master of the Queen’s Music, quoted in The Sunday Telegraph.

 

“Stocken is forging his own language.” Nottingham Evening Post.

 

“Stocken’s work will also prove popular with players for he has written very much a showpiece for the violin.” The Strad.

 

“The Agnus Dei of his Mass was beautiful and quite striking with ladders of woodwind rising against the sound of the solo singers, soon to be shattered by the sound of war (as in, but not like, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis.)” The Tablet.

 

“Stocken has managed to create something like a ‘symphony of the city’ that is suitable for our time, which makes you breathless and sometimes invites you to rest.” Translated from Wetzlauer Neue Zeitung.

 

“Frederick Stocken has written a surprisingly melodic score especially for this entertaining spectacle, reminiscent of the late romantics.” Translated from Giessener Anzeiger.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Frederick Stocken

Composer