Malcolm Hayes was born in 1951 in Marlborough, Wiltshire to English and Scottish parents, with Anglo-Irish ancestry on his mother's side. Brought up in the northern highlands of Scotland, he was at the choir school of St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, then at Eton College (where the countertenor Charles Brett was among his music teachers). After a year at St Andrews University, reading German and music, he read music at Edinburgh University, graduating B. Mus. Hons. in 1974, and in the same year winning the Music Faculty's Tovey Prize for Composition. His Three Songs on Chinese Poems for soprano and ensemble were selected for BBC Radio 3's Young Composers Forum in 1973, and were premiered by Jane Manning and the Vesuvius Ensemble.
After graduating, Malcolm Hayes lived for several years in Lewis in the Outer Hebridean islands of Scotland, working mainly in the local weaving industry. Since 1982 he has lived and worked in London as a composer, music journalist and author.
His Stabat Mater for soprano, mezzo-soprano and orchestra (2001) was first performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Garry Walker, in Edinburgh in 2002, and marked a return to composing after a break of many years. Odysseus remembers (2004), for narrator, soprano, countertenor, baritone and orchestra, was premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Edward Gardner at BBC Maida Vale in February 2006.
In April 2011, Daniel Grimwood gave the first performance of From the Paradiso of Dante for solo piano. In June 2011 the premiere of Ring of Light, a solo soprano setting of a text by Kathleen Raine, was sung by Rebecca Lea. Among other recent works are Hymns and Constellations for piano quintet (to be premiered at the North York Moors Chamber Music Festival in August 2013); a Magnificat and Nunc dimittis for soprano, baritone and small orchestra; and Three Motets for soprano and piano.
On 23 April 2012 in London, the BBC Singers will give the first performance of May Magnificat (a motet with a double text, combining Gerard Manley Hopkins's poem and the plainchant 'Gaudeamus in Domino'). Another recently completed choral work is Prayer, a setting of the poem by Carol Ann Duffy.
Formerly chief music critic of the Sunday Telegraph (1986-89), and a music critic with The Times (1985-86) and the Daily Telegraph (1989-95), Malcolm Hayes continued to contribute classical music features, reviews and listings to the Sunday Telegraph from 1989 to 2005. He is a regular feature-writer and reviewer for BBC Music Magazine and Classic FM Magazine.
He has written a biography of Anton von Webern (Phaidon, 1995), and was a contributor to The Messiaen Companion (Faber, 1995), writing on Messiaen's earlier choral and orchestral works. His 150,000-word edition of William Walton's Selected Letters (Faber, 2002) was published in the composer's centenary year. He is also the author of 20th-Century Music (Heinemann, 2001), a six-part illustrated history for secondary-school readers, covering musicals, jazz, blues and rock besides classical music.
Malcolm Hayes's new biography of Liszt, including two compilation CDs of the composer's music, was published by Naxos Books in March 2011. As a freelance classical music journalist, his features and reviews appear regularly in BBC Music Magazine and Classic FM Magazine.
He is currently working on a biography of Sibelius, also for Naxos Books.
February 2012