Barrie Gavin was educated at St Paul's School, and studied history at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge from 1954 to 1957. He joined the BBC as an assistant film editor in 1961. With the opening of BBC Two in 1964 he began to direct programmes principally about music. In the early years of BBC2 there was regular coverage of chamber music and Gavin learnt his craft with many studio-based productions. His experience in the cutting room led inevitably to the making of film documentaries.
In 1966 his fascination with contemporary music brought him into contact with the French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez. Over the next 40 years they collaborated on a series of analytical documentaries on the founding fathers of 20th-century music: Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Bartók, Stravinsky, Ives, Varese, Messiaen and of course Boulez himself. They made twelve films together:
Pierre Boulez: Portrait – Analysis – Performance, 1966
In 1970 Barrie Gavin began to explore folk music with the writer and musician A. L. Lloyd. Together they travelled across the British Isles and visited Romania, Hungary, the United States. The death of A. L. Lloyd in 1984 brought this work to an end.
Years in Germany
In 1977 Gavin had been invited to Germany to make a film about Kurt Weill. This marked the beginning of a long association with German television, resulting not only in many adventurous documentaries but also in a new area of work, directing concerts for television. To date he has been responsible for some 250 relays of concerts and opera.
In 1989 he worked for the first time with the composer and writer Gerard McBurney. They have produced some ten films, many of them on Russian music, including Think Today, Speak Tomorrow and Giving Voice 1990 The Fire and the Rose 1990 The Face behind the Face. In 2006 he began a collaboration with Gerard McBurney and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on a series of music documentaries for the internet. They have completed productions on music by Bartók, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, HolstVivaldi, Mussorgsky, Sibelius, Dvořák and Debussy. There were created the following films:
Bartók – 2006
Mozart – 2007
Tchaikovsky – 2008
Shostakovich – 2008
Holst – 2008
Vivaldi – 2008
Mussorgsky/Ravel – 2008
Sibelius – 2010
Dvořák – 2010
Debussy – 2010
Films on arts and literature
The vast majority of Gavin's work has concentrated on music, but he has also produced in 1967 a series on classic film directors. In addition there have been films on literature and the visual arts. Among them: Sir William in search of Xanadu and Images – A History of Early Photography.
Recent projects
In 2007 he finished a film, Finding the Music in Croatia, on the composer Nigel Osborne. In 2008 he received an award from International Music Publisher' Association for Services to Contemporary Music. In 2009 he completed a film Towards and Beyond, a portrait of the composer. In 2010 he made two short films: A Mind of Winter and How Slow the Wind, using music by these composers. He also started work on a continuing series of archival, unedited interviews, mainly with contemporary composers. Copies of many of Gavin's films on contemporary music have been deposited in the archives of the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, Switzerland.
