About Peter Racine Fricker

Peter Racine Fricker joined the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1964 as a visiting professor, and became a regular faculty member in 1970. In 1979, he was appointed Faculty Research Lecturer, and remained an active professor at the University until his death in 1990.

In 2008, he arranged for his estate to be used to fund an endowment for the graduate program in Composition at UCSB. The Peter Racine Fricker Fellowship for Studies in Composition provides fellowships for graduate students as well as postdoctoral students in the Composition Program of the Music Department at the University of California at Santa Barbara. 

Fricker's substantial output of symphonies, concertos and string quartets formed an important contribution to the growth of a more progressive, European outlook among British composers in the immediate postwar years.  A contrapuntalist, he was influenced by the examples of Bartok and Hindemtih, though using serial methods as well. His vocal and choral works were few in number, though the oratorio The Vision of Judgement remains highly regarded.

Guide to the Peter Racine Fricker Papers, 1940s-1990 (Online Archive of California)

Peter Racine Fricker Chronological Catalogue of Works