Bernard (George) Stevens (2 March 1916 – 6 January 1983) was a British composer who first became known to a wider public when he won a newspaper composition prize for a 'Victory Symphony' in post-war 1946. The broader success was not sustained, but Stevens went on to become a respected composer and teacher at the Royal College of Music, using traditional forms for his compositions while extending his essentially tonal harmonic language towards serialism. Life Born in Stamford Hill London, Stevens grew up in Essex, and received his first musical education at Southend High School, where his teacher was Arthur Hutchings. He began piano lessons at the age of eight. The pianist and Bach specialist Harold Samuel heard him play and offered encouragement. He went on to study English and Music at St John's College, Cambridge, with E. J. Dent and Cyril Rootham, then at the Royal College of Music with R. O. Morris (composition) and Gordon Jacob (orchestration) from 1937 to 1940. At the college Arthur Benjamin taught him piano and Constant Lambert conducting. Called up for war service in 1940 he was rejected for a combat role due to his poor eyesight, so served in the Royal Army Pay Corps. While there he composed his Piano Trio and his Violin Sonata, Op. 1, written for his wife Bertha, a violin teacher who he married in 1941. The sonata attracted the attention of Max Rostal, who commissioned a Violin Concerto, which Stevens also wrote during his army service. In 1946 his First Symphony, entitled Symphony of Liberation, won first prize in a competition sponsored by the Daily Express newspaper for a 'Victory Symphony' to celebrate the end of the war with a high profile premiere at the Royal Albert Hall. The competition judges were Arthur Bliss, Constant Lambert and Malcolm Sargent. The symphony was dedicated to the memory of his friend, the artist and poet Clive Branson, who was killed in action in 1944. The success of the symphony led to some lucrative work scoring films in the late 1940s, but after completing three scores Stevens decided not to continue writing film music. In 1948 he was appointed Professor of Composition at the Royal College of Music, a post he combined from 1967 with a professorship at the University of London. As an examiner he travelled widely, especially in Eastern Europe. His students included Keith Burstein, Stephen Dodgson, Michael