Philip Duffy

Biography

For over thirty six years Philip Duffy was associated with the music of Liverpool’s Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King; for most of them he was Master of the Music (1966-1996).

He was born in Liverpool in 1943, and after an abortive start at the piano at the age of seven, he commenced serious study of the instrument when he was sixteen with Albert Griffiths. In 1960 he began organ lessons with Noel Rawsthorne.

It was when he was a sixth-former at St Edward's College (now the Cathedral Choir School) that the Lutyens' Crypt of the Metropolitan Cathedral was completed and brought into use, and he joined the newly-formed Cathedral Choir. His interest in music continued to grow until he decided to make it his career.

Philip went on to study at the Royal Manchester College of Music and London University. At Manchester he studied organ with Ronald Frost, and singing with Gwilym Jones. While he was in London he studied under Henry Washington, one of the country's leading choir directors, in the choir of Brompton Oratory and in the Schola Polyphonica. As a member of the Schola he took part in the first performances of early church music ever given at Henry Wood Promenade Concerts in the Royal Albert Hall, and as a member of Michael Morrow’s pioneering early music group Music Reservata in one of its first recordings.

At the age of 23, Philip was offered the post of Acting Choirmaster at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral - just eight months before the Cathedral was consecrated and opened. Shortly afterwards he was appointed Master of the Music, and worked in partnership with his brother Terence (who was Cathedral Organist until 1993, and Director of Music 2004-2007).Together with Terence, Philip was responsible particularly for training a choir worthy of both the Cathedral and its Liturgy. He has always remained conscious of the enormous privilege - and the exhilarating challenge and the heavy responsibility – of founding the music tradition of this stimulating new, modern, Cathedral at a time when the liturgy of the RC church was itself being completely revitalised and reformed as a result of the second Vatican Council.

His particular interest has always been vocal training and choral work, and at his instigation the Metropolitan Cathedral was among the first in the country to offer its choristers individual vocal tuition. Many former choristers have since gone on to become professional singers; recently, for example, in two successive nights of opera at Glyndebourne (by Handel and by Britten) five ex-choristers performed either as principals or as members of the chorus.

A special interest has been to compose church music involving both choir and congregation and Philip Duffy remains one of very few composers working in this sphere. The liturgical celebrations which opened and closed the National Pastoral Congress of the RC Church in Liverpool in 1980 set new standards of celebration in the Catholic Church in Britain. “The settings … by Philip Duffy… taken up easily by the whole congregation… were of an almost barbaric but utterly disciplined beauty, unprecedented in any English Catholic Church in modern times…” [Fergus Kerr in Blackfriars magazine.] Philip had overall responsibility for the music of these events, and his work was recognised afterwards by Pope John Paul II, who appointed him a Knight of the Equestrian Order of St Gregory the Great.

The success of his composing for choir and congregation was also recognised in 1982 during the same Pope’s visit to Britain, when his music was chosen for the large-scale papal masses not only at Liverpool, but also at Wembley, Manchester, Cardiff and Crystal Palace. Of the Papal celebration in Liverpool, The Tablet reported “Liverpool’s Glorias, Alleluias and Hosannas must have brought Heaven running to the windows.”

Philip’s music is currently sung in America, Australia, and (in appropriate translation) in Sweden, Switzerland, Italy and Africa. He has directed and lectured at many courses on music and liturgy both locally and nationally, and he continues to compose liturgical music.

Philip founded the Metropolitan Cathedral Orchestra in 1982 and was its conductor for many years. Its distinctive contribution to Cathedral services on the major feast days, and especially the occasional performance of Bach Cantatas during Evening Prayer attracted much interest.

He led the Cathedral Choir on tours of Belgium, France, Germany, Holland, Luxembourg, Italy and Hungary.

Philip was a member of the Roman Catholic Bishops' National Committee on Church Music for many years. He has also been a member of the Councils of Universa Laus (an international society of liturgists and musicians) and the Royal School of Church Music. At the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury he was a member of the Archbishops' Commission on Church Music in the Anglican Church, 1988-1992. In 1994 the Archbishop of Canterbury presented him with an Honorary Fellowship of the Guild of Church Musicians, and in 2009 he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal School of Church Music.

Since leaving the Cathedral he has enjoyed singing and conducting engagements. Recent activities have included the role of tenor soloist in Mozart’s Requiem in Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral and in Gibraltar Cathedral, and baritone soloist in Brahms’ Requiem in Jemina de la Frontera (Southern Spain).

He has often acted as chief cantor for the Schola Gregoriana of Cambridge, and he led this group on a ten-day recital tour of Venice. He is Associate Director of Music of the Schola and he continues to lead chant workshops in many parts of the country.

He worked at Liverpool Hope University from 2000-2015, where besides lecturing in music, he led the degree programme BA in Creative and Performing Arts. He retired from a full-time post as Principal Lecturer in 2008, and became Director of Performance for the University, then for several years continued as Director of the University’s Chamber Choir (which had a reputation for innovative programming and for high standards of performance of music of the baroque and classical periods).

In 2014 he founded, and still directs, the Liverpool Bach Collective, an ensemble of eight singers and about ten instrumentalists, which performs Bach Cantatas regularly at Sunday Evensong in churches around Liverpool. In its first three years the Collective performed 29 cantatas in 19 different churches.

In a different sphere, Philip was producer and presenter of a weekly classical music for Liverpool’s independent local radio (Radio City) for the first nine years of its existence.