Godfrey Ridout


Godfrey Ridout was a Canadian composer, conductor, music educator, and writer.

Life and career

Ridout was a descendant of Thomas Ridout the first Surveyor General of Upper Canada during the administration of Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe. He attended University of Toronto with John Beckwith. During his time at the Toronto University, he was a pupil of Ettore Mazzoleni, Weldon Kilburn, and Charles Peaker at its Conservatory of Music. He then taught on the conservatory faculty from 1940 to 1948. He left there to join the faculty at Toronto University, where he taught until 1982. Among his notable pupils were Walter Babiak, Walter Buczynski, Hugh Davidson, Alan Detweiler, Ben McPeek, Welford Russell, Alfred Strombergs, and Charles Wilson.
He contributed articles to numerous Canadian music publications, notably serving as the assistant editor of both Canadian Music and Canadian Review of Music and Art. From 1973 to 1984 he was the author of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's program notes. As a conductor he served as the music director of the Eaton Operatic Society from 1949 to 1958. He was also highly involved with the Toronto Gilbert & Sullivan Society of which he was made an honorary vice-president. As a composer, Ridout is chiefly remembered for his symphonic and choral works. The Canadian Encyclopedia describes him thus:
"Essentially an eclectic, Ridout yet did not lack for individuality. His music, though intensely felt, is prevailingly sunny and affirmative; it eschews the 'doom and gloom' manner and self-conscious profundity of much 20th-century concert fare. Ridout liked fun in music and could not easily resist concluding a work with a 'good tune'. He saw no need to strive for ever-new styles, or for a progress through styles, or for the role of musical inventor; style for him was a means of communication, not the 'message' itself. In this aloofness from contemporary conformity, Ridout may be perceived to be more original than many innovators and one of the determined communicators of his day."

In 1946, Ridout conducted Two Etudes for String Orchestra, after making alterations suggested by TSO music director Ernest MacMillan. In 1961, he composed one of his notable works, Fall Fair and in 1974 traveled to London to lead the Royal Philharmonic Society at Royal Festival Hall, his first visit to England.

Selected works

;Notable Arrangements
Godfrey Ridout is known to millions of ears for his spirited choral arrangement of O Canada which offers mixed bilingual lyrics and places fresh melodic strength on its second verse and chorus.

;Opera
;Orchestral
;Band
;Concertante
;Chamber Music
;Organ
;Piano
;Vocal
;Choral