Albert Ernest Alsor Clair Ford (17 February 1858 – 2 June 1919) was an English composer of operas and ballet music and a conductor.

Life and career

Ford was born in

Warminster Warminster () is an ancient market town with a nearby garrison, and civil parish in south west Wiltshire, England, on the western edge of Salisbury Plain. The parish had a population of about 17,000 in 2011. The 11th-century Minster Church of S ...

, Wiltshire, England, the son of Edward Ford, the vestry clerk and organist there. From 1868 to 1873, he sang in the chorus at

Salisbury Cathedral Salisbury Cathedral, formally the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is an Anglican cathedral in Salisbury, England. The cathedral is the mother church of the Diocese of Salisbury and is the seat of the Bishop of Salisbury. The buildi ...

. He studied under

Arthur Sullivan Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan (13 May 1842 – 22 November 1900) was an English composer. He is best known for 14 comic opera, operatic Gilbert and Sullivan, collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including ''H.M.S. Pinaf ...

at the

Royal Academy of Music The Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, England, is the oldest conservatoire in the UK, founded in 1822 by John Fane and Nicolas-Charles Bochsa. It received its royal charter in 1830 from King George IV with the support of the first Duke of ...

in London, where, in 1875, he received the first Goss Scholarship. Ford studied in Paris under

Édouard Lalo Édouard-Victoire-Antoine Lalo (27 January 182322 April 1892) was a French composer. His most celebrated piece is the ''Symphonie espagnole'', a five-movement concerto for violin and orchestra, which remains a popular work in the standard reper ...

and also toured America. There, his motet, a setting of the Psalm ''Domine Deus'', was performed at a celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. During the 1880s, Ford was the official accompanist at the Saturday Popular Concerts at

St James's Hall St. James's Hall was a concert hall in London that opened on 25 March 1858, designed by architect and artist Owen Jones, who had decorated the interior of the Crystal Palace. It was situated between the Quadrant in Regent Street and Piccadilly, ...

, London. He also wrote a number of operas and operettas in the 1880s and early 1890s, including ''Daniel O' Rourke'' (1884); ''Nydia'' (a duologue by Justin H. M. Carthy, 1889); ''Joan'' (Robert Martin, 1890); and ''Weatherwise'' (1893).Stone, David
"Ernest Ford"
''Who Was Who in the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company'', The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive, 11 January 2013, accessed 25 March 2015 Ford became the assistant musical director for the

D'Oyly Carte Opera Company The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company is a professional British light opera company that, from the 1870s until 1982, staged Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy operas nearly year-round in the UK and sometimes toured in Europe, North America and elsewhere. Th ...

at the

Savoy Theatre The Savoy Theatre is a West End theatre in the Strand in the City of Westminster, London, England. The theatre was designed by C. J. Phipps for Richard D'Oyly Carte and opened on 10 October 1881 on a site previously occupied by the Savoy Pala ...

in 1888, serving in this position for five years. In 1891, Ford and

François Cellier François Arsène Cellier (14 December 1849 – 5 January 1914), often called Frank, was an English conductor and composer. He is known for his tenure as musical director and conductor of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company during the original runs ...

conducted Sullivan's

grand opera Grand opera is a genre of 19th-century opera generally in four or five acts, characterized by large-scale casts and orchestras, and (in their original productions) lavish and spectacular design and stage effects, normally with plots based on o ...

, ''

Ivanhoe ''Ivanhoe: A Romance'' () by Walter Scott is a historical novel published in three volumes, in 1819, as one of the Waverley novels. Set in England in the Middle Ages, this novel marked a shift away from Scott’s prior practice of setting st ...

'', which opened

Richard D'Oyly Carte Richard D'Oyly Carte (; 3 May 1844 – 3 April 1901) was an English talent agent, theatrical impresario, composer, and hotelier during the latter half of the Victorian era. He built two of London's theatres and a hotel empire, while also establi ...

Royal English Opera House The Palace Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster in London. Its red- brick facade dominates the west side of Cambridge Circus behind a small plaza near the intersection of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road. The Pal ...

. Ford also arranged the piano score for ''Ivanhoe''. While serving as music director at the Savoy, Ford wrote the music for the one-act operetta ''

Mr. Jericho ''Mr. Jericho'' is a comic opera in one act with words by Harry Greenbank and music by Ernest Ford. The work was first performed at the Savoy Theatre, London, on 18 March 1893 as a curtain raiser to Arthur Sullivan's ''Haddon Hall'' in March and ...

'', first performed there in March 1893 as a curtain-raiser for Sullivan's ''Haddon Hall''. The piece has a libretto by

Harry Greenbank Harry Greenbank (11 September 1865 – 26 February 1899) was an English author and dramatist best known for contributing lyrics to the successful series of musicals produced at Daly's Theatre by George Edwardes in the 1890s. Life and career Harr ...

. In May of the same year, Ford supplied the music for the full-length

J. M. Barrie Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, (; 9 May 1860 19 June 1937) was a Scottish novelist and playwright, best remembered as the creator of Peter Pan. He was born and educated in Scotland and then moved to London, where he wrote several succ ...

and

Arthur Conan Doyle Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for ''A Study in Scarlet'', the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Ho ...

comic opera Comic opera, sometimes known as light opera, is a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending and often including spoken dialogue. Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a ne ...

, ''

Jane Annie ''Jane Annie, or The Good Conduct Prize'' is a comic opera written in 1893 by J. M. Barrie and Arthur Conan Doyle, with music by Ernest Ford, a conductor and occasional composer. When the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership disbanded after the p ...

'', a flop that nevertheless toured until September of that year. Later, Ford became musical director of the

Trafalgar Theatre Trafalgar Theatre is a new West End theatre in Whitehall, near Trafalgar Square, in the City of Westminster, London. It is set to open in spring 2021 following a major multi-million pound restoration project aiming to reinstate it back to its ...

in London. There, he revised and rewrote the music for the comic opera ''The Wedding Eve''. He also composed much of the music for ballets produced at the Empire Theatre between 1894 and 1897, including ''La Frolique,'' ''Brighton Pier,'' ''Faust'' and ''La Danse''. He became conductor of the Royal Amateur Orchestral Society in 1897. Ford also composed a volume of settings of poems by

Percy Bysshe Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley ( ; 4 August 17928 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achie ...

, many other songs and chamber music, an ''Elegy'' for violin and orchestra and a cantata, ''The Eve of the Festa.'' By 1911, Ford was teaching singing as a Professor of Music at the

Guildhall School of Music The Guildhall School of Music and Drama is a conservatoire and drama school located in the City of London, United Kingdom. Established in 1880, the school offers undergraduate and postgraduate training in all aspects of classical music and jazz ...

,Albert Ernest Ford in the 1911 England Census
accessed 25 March 2015 and beginning in 1916 he taught composition there. As a writer, he published ''A Short History of Music in England'' (1912). In 1903 he contributed a chapter to H. Saxe Wyndham's biography of Sullivan, entitled "Sullivan as Composer." Ford married Alice Maria Philp (born 1875) in 1896 at St. James' church in

Muswell Hill Muswell Hill is a suburban district of the London Borough of Haringey, north London. The hill, which reaches over above sea level, is situated north of Charing Cross. Neighbouring areas include Highgate, Hampstead Garden Suburb, East Finchl ...

. They had two daughters, Frances Lily Helen Dixon Ford (1897–1957) and Eileen Carlota Ford (born 1899). He died in

Marylebone Marylebone (usually , also , ) is a district in the West End of London, in the City of Westminster. Oxford Street, Europe's busiest shopping street, forms its southern boundary. An Civil parish#Ancient parishes, ancient parish and latterly a ...

in London at the age of 61. In his will he left £976 8s 10d to his widow.Albert Ernest Ford in the England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858–1966

Ancestry.com Ancestry.com LLC is an American genealogy company based in Lehi, Utah. The largest for-profit genealogy company in the world, it operates a network of genealogical, historical records, and related genetic genealogy websites. In November 2018, ...

, accessed 25 March 2015 (pay to view)

References

External links

* *
Profile of Ford
*''Ford, Ernest'' (unattributed), in 'The

New Grove Dictionary of Opera ''The New Grove Dictionary of Opera'' is an encyclopedia of opera, considered to be one of the best general reference sources on the subject. It is the largest work on opera in English, and in its printed form, amounts to 5,448 pages in four volu ...

', ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 1992) {{DEFAULTSORT:Ford, Ernest English male classical composers English classical composers 1858 births 1919 deaths Alumni of the Royal Academy of Music People associated with Gilbert and Sullivan People from Warminster Musicians from Wiltshire English conductors (music) British male conductors (music) English opera composers Male opera composers 19th-century English musicians 19th-century British male musicians

Life and career

See also

References

External links