Christopher
Bochmann

Christopher Bochmann was born in 1950. As a boy he sang in the choir of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle. At the age of 16, he went to study with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, before going up to Oxford University (New College), where he studied with David Lumsden, Kenneth Leighton and Robert Sherlaw Johnson. He also had private lessons with Richard Rodney Bennett. He holds the degrees of B.A. (Hons.), B. Mus, M. A. and D. Mus, all from the University of Oxford. In 2004 he was awarded a Medal of Cultural Merit by the Ministry of Culture, Portugal; in 2005 he was decorated by Queen Elizabeth II with the O.B.E.. Bochmann has divided his activities between composition, teaching and conducting and has lived in England, Brazil and, since 1980, in Portugal. He was a full professor of the University of Évora, from which he retired in 2020. Between 1975 and 1985 his music belonged to a general category of post-serial modernism of considerable complexity with frequent aleatoric elements. Since then, there has been a growing concern to close the gap between compositional technique and aural perception in a practical context, which results in a simplification of style without recourse to neo-tonalities.