The German-born British composer Alexander Goehr has died at the age of 92. Goehr was one of the leading Modernists of the 1960s generation, but from the mid-70s drew on earlier styles, adding diversity and historical engagement to his later work.

Goehr was born in Berlin in 1932. His father was Walter Goehr, a conductor and former Schoenberg pupil; his mother, Laelia, a pianist. The family moved to London in 1933, when Walter took up a job at EMI. Goehr studied at the Royal Manchester College of Music, where he met fellow pupils Harrison Birtwistle, Peter Maxwell Davies, Elgar Howarth and John Ogdon. The group would later become known as the Manchester School, a defining force in British musical Modernism. In 1955, Goehr moved for a year to Paris, where he studied under Olivier Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod, and met Pierre Boulez, who would become a mentor in the following years.

Returning to London in 1956, Goehr worked as a BBC producer and a director of the Music Theatre Ensemble. A series of large-scale works established his reputation, including the cantatas The Deluge (1957), based on the writings of Sergei Eisenstein, and Sutter’s Gold, a score derided for its excessive complexity following the Leeds Festival premiere in 1976.

Goehr’s teaching career began with an associate professorship at Yale followed by appointments at Southampton and Leeds. In 1976, he was appointed to a chair at Cambridge. His musical style changed in his first years there, as exemplified by the choral work Psalm IV(1976), which employs a ‘white-note serialism’, in which consonant modal textures are introduced into a still modern soundscape.

An engagement with historical models led Goehr to compose in every major genre. Among his orchestral works are two symphonies, Sinfonia (1979) and Symphony with Chaconne (1987), as well as concertante works for Peter Serkin, Jacqueline Mary du Pré and Daniel Barenboim. Goehr took a particular interest in opera, especially in the history of the genre. His Arianna (1994-95), the third of his five operas, sets the libretto from a lost opera by Monteverdi, creating a dialogue between Goehr’s contemporary style and the music of the early 17th century.

Goehr was an influential teacher at Cambridge, where his pupils included Thomas Adès, Julian Anderson and Ye Xiaogang, and played an active role in the university’s musical life up to and beyond his retirement in 1999. He continued to be highly productive as a composer in later years, with a greater focus on chamber music, as well as solo piano works for Kirill Gerstein and Huw Watkins.

The NMC label has long championed Goehr’s music, and their six albums of his work include Ariana (9/98), as well as three albums of orchestral music conducted by Oliver Knussen.