Mátyás György Seiber (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈmaːcaːʃ ˈʃaibɛr]; 4 May 1905 – 24 September 1960) was a Hungarian-born composer who lived and worked in England from 1935 onward.
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Seiber was born in Budapest, and studied there with Zoltán Kodály, with whom he toured Hungary collecting folk songs. In 1928, he became director of the jazz department at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, which offered the first academic jazz courses anywhere.[1] After they were closed by the Nazis in 1933, Seiber left Germany and settled in London. He became a British subject in 1935.[2] From 1942, he was on the staff of Morley College in London, where he became a respected teacher of composition. Several of his students went on to become eminent musicians themselves, including Peter Racine Fricker, Don Banks, Anthony Milner, Hugh Wood and Wally Stott (who later became Angela Morley).
He was killed in a car accident in Kruger National Park, while on a lecture tour of South Africa.
Seiber's music is eclectic in style, showing the influences of jazz, Bartók and Schoenberg. His output includes Ulysses (1947), a cantata on words by James Joyce; scores to animated films, including Animal Farm (1954); a setting of the Scottish "poet and tragedian" William McGonagall's work, The Famous Tay Whale (written for the second of Gerard Hoffnung's music festivals); three string quartets; and choral arrangements of Hungarian and Yugoslav folk songs. He also wrote one opera, Eva spielt mit Puppen (1934), and two operettas, A Palágyi Pekek and Balaton.[3]
Seiber used a pseudonym for his jazz works and popular music: G. S. Mathis or George Mathis (a rearrangement of his name using Anglicised forms), under which name he wrote for John Dankworth. He was awarded the Ivor Novello Prize for the song, "By the Fountains of Rome", which was a hit in 1956 in the UK Single Charts, making it to the Top Twenty. (The lyrics were by Norman Newell, and it was sung by David Hughes).[4]
When searching for Seiber, it should be noted that there are articles with references to Seiber as Seyber and Mathis as Matthis.