Sebastian Forbes is a musical composer, conductor and professor of music at the University of Surrey.

Sebastian Forbes was born in 1941. He was a distinguished chorister at Hampstead Parish Church (with additional solo work elsewhere). He studied at the Royal Academy of Music and then at Cambridge University where he gained a first-class degree in music, was also a member of the chapel choir at King’s College, and where he was later awarded a doctorate (MusD) for composition.

In 1964-68 he was based in London, as composer, organist, choral conductor, and BBC producer. He was then a university lecturer, first at Bangor and soon at Surrey, where he became Professor in 1981. Emeritus Professor from 2006, he continues with some composition and some academic work, along with his activities as choral conductor and church organist.

Sebastian Forbes’s style can be summarised by epithets that appear in volumes of The New Grove:

- ‘a composer of intellectual toughness’ (1981) and

- ‘subtle harmonic plotting’ (2000).

See also

- Philip Radcliffe, ‘Sebastian Forbes’, Musical Times, May 1969, pp. 483-485.

- Ates Orga, ‘Sebastian Forbes: A 50th Birthday Profile’, Musical Times, May-June 1991, pp. 234-237, 290-292.

- Ates Orga, ‘A Conversation with Sebastian Forbes’, in Peter O’Hagan, ed., Aspects of British Music in the 1990s, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 149-160.

His compositional outlook was shaped by two early experiences, his father Watson Forbes’s activity in chamber music, particularly the Aeolian String Quartet’s involvement in new music, and his own training as a chorister under Martindale Sidwell. His personal style found its focus in the early 1960s, when awards, commissions and broadcasts began to flow. His more recent output is less prolific, less complex, but no less characteristic.

Sebastian Forbes is a member of an active musical family, beginning with his father Watson Forbes (viola) and including many of his relations, offspring and grandchildren. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music and then at Cambridge University; there he gained a first-class degree in music, sang bass in the chapel choir at King’s College, and was later awarded a doctorate (MusD) for composition. In 1964-68 he was based in London, as composer, organist, choral conductor, and BBC producer. He was then a university lecturer, first at Bangor and soon at Surrey, where he became Professor of Music in 1981. Emeritus Professor from 2006, he continues with some composition and some academic work, along with his activities as choral conductor and church organist.

His early musical outlook was shaped by two early experiences, his father’s activity in chamber music, particularly the Aeolian String Quartet’s involvement in new music, and his own training as a chorister under Martindale Sidwell at Hampstead Parish Church, with plenty of solo singing there and elsewhere.

His compositional style, which found its particular focus in the early 1960s, can be summarised by epithets that appear in volumes of The New Grove: ‘a composer of intellectual toughness’ (1981) and ‘subtle harmonic plotting’ (2000).