Stanley Glasser

Stanley 'Spike' Glasser (28 February 1926 – 5 August 2018), was a South African-born British composer and academic, the elder son of first-generation Jewish immigrants from Lithuania. He first came to the UK in 1950 to study with Benjamin Frankel and (from 1952) Mátyás Seiber, then read music at Cambridge. Returning to South Africa he became a music lecturer at Cape Town University for four years.

In 1959 he was the musical director of King Kong by Todd Matshikiza and Harry Bloom, based on the life of boxer Ezekiel Dlamini. It was a big hit in South Africa, and was billed at the time as an "all-African jazz opera". In 1961 he composed South Africa's first full length ballet score, The Square. In 1962 Glasser also composed a musical, Mr Paljas with lyrics by Harry Bloom. Although it was less successful, a cast recording was made. But Glasser was forced to flee South Africa's apartheid regime in 1963 due to his relationship with black jazz singer Maud Damons (who had been in the cast of Mr Paljas).Glasser quickly joined the staff at Goldsmiths, University of London, teaching evening classes. He was appointed full-time lecturer in 1966, and then head of music from 1969. in the 1980s he was Dean of Humanities, becoming Professor of Music in 1990.He was deeply influenced by his ethnomusicological investigations of native African music. His ethnomusicological field research is now held at the British Library. And Glasser was arguably South Africa's first composer of electronic music, thanks to a 1960 performance of the Eugene O'Neill play The Emperor Jones in Johannesburg for which he wrote incidental electronic music. His visionary interest in all areas of contemporary musical development led to his department being a pioneer in the exploration of electronic music, and the Goldsmiths music studio purchased one of the first Fairlight CMI sampling systems to find its way to Britain.

The electronic music studio is named in honour of Professor Glasser.

His compositions span musicals and incidental music for the theatre, comic opera, concert music and educational music, as well as commercial music. The Kings Singers performed and what became his most famous piece, Lalela Zulu. They also recorded his Lamentations in 1994. Other works include the choral cantata Zonkizizwe in 1991, a Magnificat & Nunc dimittis for the Choir of St George’s Chapel, Windsor in 1998, and Bric-à-brac, a series of short pieces for piano written between 1985 and 2000, performed by Andrew Ball.

In 1995 Glasser also compiled and presented a 52-part weekly radio series for Classic FM, The A-Z of Classical Music, which was also published in book form.