British Composers

Gustavius Theodore Von Holst was born on the 21st of September 1874, and was of Russian, Swedish, German, Spanish, and possibly Irish extraction ( his mother's Spanish great-great-grandmother had once been abducted by an Irish peer and forced to live in Ireland). Holst's grandfather, also called Gustavius, had taught the harp, and his great-grandfather, Matthias, had been a pianist and composer at the Russian Imperial Court. When Holst was eight his beloved mother suddenly... Read Full Story

Fritz Theodore Albert Delius was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, into a family of wealthy wool merchants. The Delius' originally came from Bielefeld in Westphalia, where one of that town's previous Burgermeisters, Ernst Frederick Delius (Fritz's grandfather), was a retired army officer who had served proudly under Blucher during the Napoleonic Wars. In the early 1850s three of the old soldier's sons moved to Manchester, England, where the thriving wool industry gave great opportunities. The... Read Full Story

Elgar's education, unlike Delius's and Holst's, was somewhat desultory, with two years spent in a Catholic infant school, followed by two more at the Miss Walsh Dame School in Worcester; and then, from the age of eleven to fifteen, at the Littleton House School (with a compliment of just thirty boys) where the teacher, Francis Reeve, inspired the young Elgar with stories about Christ's disciples, and how, as young men, they were probably "no cleverer than some of you here." Which, as an... Read Full Story

When Sir Paul McCartney's tone poem Standing Stone was first premiered, and then released as a CD in 1997, it attracted a very mixed reception, which is fair enough when musicians and composers cross musical genres. In fact I rather like to see the musical purists get their underwear in a bit of a twist when they try to tell us how bad something is, how derivative, how shallow, and how dare someone step over the musical boundaries and try one's hand at so called 'serious music'. In other... Read Full Story

Edward William Elgar was born in Lower Broadheath, to the west of Worcester, on the 2nd of June 1857. He was the fourth child of William and Anne Elgar. From the south facing window of the bedroom in which Edward was born can be seen the Malvern Hills, and if ever a geographical feature was to influence one composer's work it would be these gentle, mystical hills. In virtually every phrase, every chord, of Elgar's music their mysticism, their rise and fall, their ever changing colour, is... Read Full Story