Alan Bush
Alan Dudley Bush (22 December 1900 – 31 October 1995) was a British composer, pianist, conductor, teacher and political activist. A committed communist, his uncompromising political beliefs were often reflected in his music. He composed prolifically across a range of genres, but struggled through his lifetime for recognition from the British musical establishment, which largely ignored his works. Bush, from a prosperous middle-class background, enjoyed considerable success as a student at the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in the early 1920s, and spent much of that decade furthering his compositional and piano-playing skills under distinguished tutors. A two-year period in Berlin in 1929 to 1931, early in the Nazi Party's rise to power, cemented Bush's political convictions and moved him from the mainstream Labour Party to the Communist Party of Great Britain which he joined in 1935. He wrote several large-scale works in the 1930s, and was heavily involved with workers' cho ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Watford
Watford () is a town and borough in Hertfordshire, England, 15 miles northwest of Central London, on the River Colne. Initially a small market town, the Grand Junction Canal encouraged the construction of paper-making mills, print works, and breweries. While industry has declined in Watford, its location near London and transport links has attracted several companies to site their headquarters in the town. Cassiobury Park is a public park that was once the manor estate of the Earls of Essex. The town developed next to the River Colne on land belonging to St Albans Abbey. In the 12th century, a charter was granted allowing a market, and the building of St Mary's Church began. The town grew partly due to travellers going to Berkhamsted Castle and the royal palace at Kings Langley. A mansion was built at Cassiobury in the 16th century. This was partly rebuilt in the 17th century and another country house was built at The Grove. The Grand Junction Canal in 1798 and th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tobias Matthay
Tobias Augustus Matthay (19 February 185815 December 1945) was an English pianist, teacher, and composer. Biography Matthay was born in Clapham, Surrey, in 1858 to parents who had come from northern Germany and eventually became naturalised British subjects.''Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', 5th ed. (1954) Vol. 5, p. 632, Macmillan, London He entered London's Royal Academy of Music in 1871 and eight months later he received the first scholarship given to honour the knighthood of its principal, Sir William Sterndale Bennett. At the Academy, Matthay studied composition under Sir William Sterndale Bennett and Arthur Sullivan, and piano with William Dorrell and Walter Macfarren. He served as a sub-professor there from 1876–1880, and became an assistant professor of pianoforte in 1880, before being promoted to professor in 1884. With Frederick Corder and John Blackwood McEwen, he co-founded the Society of British Composers in 1905. Matthay remained at the RAM until ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Harold Monro
Harold Edward Monro (14 March 1879 – 16 March 1932) was an English poet born in Brussels, Belgium. As the proprietor of the Poetry Bookshop in London, he helped many poets to bring their work before the public. Life and career Monro was born at 137 chaussée de Charleroi, Saint-Gilles/St Gillis, Brussels, on 14 March 1879, as the youngest of three surviving children of Edward William Monro (1848–1889), civil engineer, and his wife and first cousin, Arabel Sophia (1849–1926), daughter of Peter John Margary, also a civil engineer.Dominic Hibberd: "Monro, Harold Edward (1879–1932)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 200Retrieved 14 December 2014/ref> Monro's father was born at Marylebone and died aged 41 when Monro was only nine years old. This loss may have influenced his character as a poet. The Monro family was well established in Bloomsbury. His paternal grandfather, Dr Henry Munro FRCP MD, was a surgeon, born at Gower St, Bloomsbury ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Walter De La Mare
Walter John de la Mare (; 25 April 1873 – 22 June 1956) was an English poet, short story writer, and novelist. He is probably best remembered for his works for children, for his poem "The Listeners", and for a highly acclaimed selection of subtle psychological horror stories, amongst them "Seaton's Aunt" and "All Hallows". In 1921, his novel '' Memoirs of a Midget'' won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, and his post-war ''Collected Stories for Children'' won the 1947 Carnegie Medal for British children's books. Life De la Mare was born in Kent at 83, Maryon Road, Charlton (now part of the Royal Borough of Greenwich), partly descended from a family of French Huguenot silk merchants, and was educated at St Paul's Cathedral School. He was born to James Edward de la Mare (1811–1877), a principal at the Bank of England, and James's second wife Lucy Sophia (1838–1920), daughter of Scottish naval surgeon and author Dr Colin Arrott Browning.Theresa Whistler, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Antonio Brosa
Antonio Brosa (27 June 1894 – 23 March 1979) was a Spanish violinist. Born in La Canonja in Catalonia, Brosa began studying the violin at the age of four with his father, making his public debut at the age of 10 in Barcelona. He studied with Mathieu Crickboom in Brussels, and made his debut in London in 1919, aged 25, and his first tour of the US in 1930. Brosa was the soloist for the premiere performance of the young Elizabeth Poston's Violin Sonata, broadcast by the BBC on 9 July 1928, for Haydn Wood's Violin Concerto on 1 March 1933, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Joseph Lewis, and also for the first performance of Arthur Benjamin's Violin Concerto (1932) on 5 January 1934 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Adrian Boult. In the summer of 1938 William Walton asked Brosa to look over and suggest improvements for the first two movements of his Violin Concerto, which he was writing for Jascha Heifetz. He was introduced to Benjamin Britten by Frank ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ignacy Jan Paderewski
Ignacy Jan Paderewski (; – 29 June 1941) was a Polish pianist and composer who became a spokesman for Polish independence. In 1919, he was the new nation's Prime Minister and foreign minister during which he signed the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I. A favorite of concert audiences around the world, his musical fame opened access to diplomacy and the media, as possibly did his status as a freemason, and charitable work of his second wife, Helena Paderewska. During World War I, Paderewski advocated an independent Poland, including by touring the United States, where he met with President Woodrow Wilson, who came to support the creation of an independent Poland in his Fourteen Points at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, which led to the Treaty of Versailles.Hanna Marczewska-Zagdanska, and Janina Dorosz, "Wilson – Paderewski – Masaryk: Their Visions of Independence and Conceptions of how to Organize Europe," ''Acta Poloniae Historica'' (1996), Issue 73, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mabel Lander
__NOTOC__ Mabel Lander (1882 – 19 May 1955) was British pianist and teacher, mostly remembered today as piano tutor to the Royal Family in the 1930s and 1940s, though her real legacy comes from her teaching several generations of prominent pianists, composers and musicians.Obituary, 'Miss Mabel Lander', ''The Times'', 21 May 1955, p 10 Early career Lander began her musical studies at the Berlin Hochschule in 1898 at the age of 17. She spent four years there, playing in concerts with the violin pupils of Joseph Joachim. Becoming disillusioned with the teaching she moved to Vienna and studied with Theodor Leschetizky, who himself had been a pupil of Carl Czerny. After several years in Vienna she moved to Dublin, where she established herself as a concert pianist and teacher. However, her career as a public performer was cut short (around 1917) when she developed a rheumatic complaint in her hands, which left her unable to satisfy her own high standards. London During the war, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Benno Moiseiwitsch
Benno Moiseiwitsch CBE (22 February 18909 April 1963) was a Russian-born British pianist. Biography Moiseiwitsch was born to Jewish parents in Odessa, Russian Empire (today part of Ukraine), and began his studies at age seven with Dmitry Klimov at the Odessa Music Academy. He won the Anton Rubinstein Prize when he was just nine years old. He studied with Theodor Leschetizky in Vienna from 1904 to 1908, then joined his own family in England, making his English debut at Reading in 1908, his London debut the following year. While in Dublin during the war he met another Leschetizky student, Mabel Lander, and they began plans to establish a piano school together in London that would use the Leschetizky method. But the plans had to be abandoned due to Moiseiwitsch's increasingly heavy international concert schedule. He toured the United States (first in 1919), Australia, India, Japan, and South America. Moiseiwitsch was invited by Director Josef Hofmann to teach at the Curtis Institu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Theodor Leschetizky
Theodor Leschetizky (sometimes spelled Leschetitzky, pl, Teodor Leszetycki; 22 June 1830 – 14 November 1915 was an Austrian-Polish pianist, professor, and composer born in Landshut in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, then a crown land of Austria-Hungary. Life Theodor Leschetizky was born on 22 June 1830 at the estate of the family of Count Potocki in Landshut, Austrian Galicia. Joseph Leschetizky, his father, was a gifted pianist and music teacher of Viennese birth. His mother Thérèse von Ullmann was a gifted singer of German origin. His father gave him his first piano lessons and then took him to Vienna to study with Carl Czerny. At age eleven, he performed a Czerny piano concerto in Landshut, with Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart, the son of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, conducting. At the age of fifteen he started to tutor his first students. By the age of eighteen he was a well-known virtuoso in Vienna and beyond. His composition teacher was Simon Sechter, an eminent professo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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John Ireland (composer)
John Nicholson Ireland (13 August 187912 June 1962) was an English composer and teacher of music. The majority of his output consists of piano miniatures and of songs with piano. His best-known works include the short instrumental or orchestral work " The Holy Boy", a setting of the poem " Sea-Fever" by John Masefield, a formerly much-played Piano Concerto, the hymn tune Love Unknown and the choral motet "Greater Love Hath No Man". Life John Ireland was born in Bowdon, near Altrincham, Cheshire, into a family of English and Scottish descent and some cultural distinction. His father, Alexander Ireland, a publisher and newspaper proprietor, was aged 69 at John's birth. John was the youngest of the five children from Alexander's second marriage (his first wife had died). His mother, Annie Elizabeth Nicholson Ireland, was a biographer and 30 years younger than Alexander. She died in October 1893, when John was 14, and Alexander died the following year, when John was 15. [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Michael Head (composer)
Michael Head, FRAM (28 January 190024 August 1976) was a British composer, pianist, organist and singer who left some enduring works still popular today. He was noted for his association with the Royal Academy of Music. His compositional oeuvre mainly consists of songs, as well as choral works and few larger-scale pieces such as a piano concerto. Life Michael Dewar Head was born in Eastbourne, England, on 28 January 1900. His father was a barrister and journalist and his mother an accomplished amateur singer and pianist. His mother's influence evidently dominated, and at age 10 he commenced his musical training, taking lessons in piano with Jean Adair and in singing with Fritz Marston at the Adair-Marston School of Music. He was educated at Monkton Combe School in Somerset. He began to study at the Royal Academy of Music but was soon called up for service in the War. While working at an ammunition factory, he composed the song cycle ''Over the rim of the moon'' (Head et al., ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |