David Fanshawe

David Arthur Fanshawe (19 April 1942 – 5 July 2010) was an English composer and self-styled explorer with a fervent interest in world music. His best-known composition is the 1972 choral work African Sanctus. Life Fanshawe was born in Paignton in Devon in 1942. His father was an officer in the Royal Artillery who played a central role in the planning of D-Day. His father's stories of military service in India fired Fanshawe's enthusiasm for travel and adventure. His first ambition was to be an explorer, but when he attended St George's School, Windsor Castle and Stowe School he discovered a love of music. His severe dyslexia, however, prevented him from reading a musical score and becoming a chorister. At Stowe School he spent much of his spare time learning to play the piano, and when he was 17 he was discovered by the mother of a school friend, a French baroness who tutored him in the piano even after he left the school in 1959. He started his adult career as a musician and film editor for a small production company in Wimbledon in London who made documentary films. In 1965 Fanshawe won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, where he studied composition under John Lambert. During his holidays he continued to travel widely in Europe and the Middle East. During a summer spent hitchhiking in Iran he heard Islamic music for the first time and was immediately attracted to its beauty. During further travels in Iraq and Bahrain he recorded the traditional music he heard. On completing his studies in 1969, Fanshawe travelled up the Nile from the Mediterranean Sea, visiting Egypt, Sudan, Uganda and Kenya over a three-year period before finally reaching Lake Victoria. He brought a small stereo tape recorder on his journey and would persuade local musicians to play for him. Returning to the United Kingdom in 1972 with several hundreds of hours of recordings made during his travels, Fanshawe used the material to compose what became his best known work, African Sanctus. 'African Sanctus' was written and conceived with David's first wife, Judith Croasdell, in the 1970s in their first home in East Sheen, London, after many perilous trips to Africa together. After this work he became widely known for the composition of choral works.