“I am often asked which came first: the composing or the travels? All I can say is that as a composer, without my travels, I would have nothing original to say,’’ Mr. Fanshawe wrote in Gramophone magazine in 2002.
“African Sanctus,’’ which premiered in 1972, was based on music collected during four years of wanderings in Egypt, Sudan, Kenya, and Uganda.
“He definitely thought of himself as a musical explorer, someone who would record music that he thought was in danger of extinction,’’ Richard Blackford, a composer and friend of Mr. Fanshawe, said of “African Sanctus.’’
“His idea was to collate it into the format, the structure of the Catholic Mass, but to have a universal expression of those experiences that the Mass covers: life, death, celebrations, and, in particular, the Lord’s Prayer, which has now become a standard,’’ Blackford said in an interview with BBC radio.
Mr. Fanshawe estimated that he had been present for nearly 600 performances of the work, never conducting but playing piano, handling the recorded sounds used in concert, and trying to communicate his passion to the singers.
He recalled nearly being bitten by a black mamba snake in Africa, and having his canoe overturned by a hippopotamus on a stretch of the Nile.
“I didn’t see the hippopotamus. I was recording, at the time, a love song, being sung by the person paddling the canoe,’’ Mr. Fanshawe said in an interview with www.thebeijinger.com before performances of “African Sanctus’’ in Beijing and Tianjin, China, in April.
In an interview with the Associated Press in 1989, Mr. Fanshawe recalled early journeys in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran, and how he was inspired by hearing pearl divers sing in Bahrain.
“It was more than beautiful. It was guttural. It was of the earth,’’ Mr. Fanshawe said.
“It was the work chants of these pearl divers that made me rush back to England and come back with a tape recorder.’’
Mr. Fanshawe produced CDs from Tahiti, Tonga, Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia, Thailand, and Laos. The CD “Music of the River Nile’’ includes the music gathered from Egypt, Sudan, Uganda, and Kenya that inspired “African Sanctus.’’
The Fanshawe Collection now holds 3,000 audio tapes and 60,000 images.
He leaves his wife, Jane, their daughter, and a daughter and a son from his first marriage.
