Rhian Samuel

Rhian Samuel (born Aberdare, Wales, 1944) is a Welsh composer who resided in the USA for many years.

She has composed over 140 published works, including orchestral, chamber, vocal, and choral music.

She now divides her time between mid-Wales and London.

She currently resides in the coastal town of Aberdyfi.

Samuel's orchestral music spans from Elegy-Symphony (St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin, cond., 1981) to Tirluniau/Landscapes (BBC commission, BBC NOW, BBC Proms 2000); in 1983 she won the ASCAP/Rudolf Nissim Prize (USA) for her choral/orchestral work, La Belle Dame sans Merci.

Previously, she taught at the University of Reading (1984–95, as Head of Department, 1993–95) and at the St. Louis Conservatory, St. Louis.

Samuel was educated at Reading University (BA, BMus) in the UK and Washington University in St. Louis (MA, PhD), and joined the teaching staff of City University, London in 1995, where she became Professor of Music in 1999 and is now Emeritus Professor.

While there, she also supervised the research of post-graduate students at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

In 2006 she was awarded the Glyndŵr Award for an Outstanding Contribution to the Arts in Wales and in 2016 she was awarded an Hon DMus by the University of Wales.

Later, she taught composition at Magdalen College, Oxford (2007–2016).

Her Path Through the Woods for recorder and strings was premiered at Temple of Peace, Cardiff, in April 2011 by Pamela Thorby and the Welsh Sinfonia, conducted by Mark Eager.

A BIS CD containing her BBC-commissioned work for soprano and orchestra, Clytemnestra, was short listed for a Gramophone Award in 2020.

As well as orchestral song-cycles (Clytemnestra and The White Amaryllis), she has written a large number of voice-and-piano cycles for major festivals including the Oxford Lieder Festival (Wildflower Songbook, to poems by Anne Stevenson), the Three Choirs Festival (A Swift Radiant Morning, to poems by WWI poet, Charles Sorley, the Fishguard Festival, UK (Cerddi Hynafol/Ancient Songs, to anonymous early Welsh texts), and the Ludlow English Song Weekend (The Moon and I, to poems by Anne Stevenson and Tabitha Hayward) and has written music for choirs including New College Choir (Oxford), the BBC Singers, and a number of American college choirs as well as her own choirs at Reading University and City University, London. She has also written about music: as co-editor of the New Grove (Norton) Dictionary of Women Composers, she has been prominent on issues concerning the reception of music by women.

She has also written on the operas of Harrison Birtwistle; she was commissioned by the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, to write programme essays on both Gawain and The Minotaur and subsequently published diaries of their first productions.

Amongst many CDs which contain her compositions, one entirely devoted to her chamber music, Light and Water, is issued on the Deux-Elles label, and another, Songs of Earth and Air, to her music for baritone and piano, on the Lorelt label.