The Frankfurt Group, also called the Frankfurt Gang or the Frankfurt Five, was a group of English-speaking composers and friends who studied composition under

Iwan Knorr Iwan Otto Armand Knorr (3 January 1853 – 22 January 1916) was a German composer and music teacher. Life A native of Gniew, he attended the Leipzig Conservatory where he studied with Ignaz Moscheles, Ernst Friedrich Richter and Carl Reinecke. I ...

at the

Hoch Conservatory Dr. Hoch's Konservatorium – Musikakademie was founded in Frankfurt am Main on 22 September 1878. Through the generosity of Frankfurter Joseph Hoch, who bequeathed the Conservatory one million German gold marks in his testament, a school for ...

Frankfurt am Main Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

in the late 1890s. The group included

Balfour Gardiner Henry Balfour Gardiner (7 November 1877 – 28 June 1950) was a British musician, composer, and teacher. He was born at Kensington (London), began to play at the age of 5 and to compose at 9. Between his conventional education at Charterhouse ...

Norman O'Neill Norman Houston O'Neill (14 March 1875 – 3 March 1934) was an English composer and conductor of Irish background who specialised largely in works for the theatre. Life O'Neill was born at 16 Young Street in Kensington, London, the youngest son ...

Cyril Scott Cyril Meir Scott (27 September 1879 – 31 December 1970) was an English composer, writer, poet, and occultist. He created around four hundred musical compositions including piano, violin, cello concertos, symphonies, and operas. He also wrot ...

and

Roger Quilter Roger Cuthbert Quilter (1 November 1877 – 21 September 1953) was a British composer, known particularly for his art songs. His songs, which number over a hundred, often set music to text by William Shakespeare and are a mainstay of the En ...

, who were all English, and

Percy Grainger Percy Aldridge Grainger (born George Percy Grainger; 8 July 188220 February 1961) was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist who lived in the United States from 1914 and became an American citizen in 1918. In the course of a long an ...

and

Frederick Septimus Kelly Frederick Septimus Kelly (29 May 1881 – 13 November 1916) was an Australian and British musician and composer and a rowing (sport), rower who competed in the 1908 Summer Olympics. After surviving the Gallipoli campaign He was killed in action ...

, who were born in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

but established themselves as composers in England. Although they did not study in Frankfurt all at the same time they remained close friends from their student days onwards. Knorr, though German-born, was strongly influenced by

Russian music Music of Russia denotes music produced from Russia and/or by Russians. Russia is a large and culturally diverse country, with many ethnic groups, each with their own locally developed music. Russian music also includes significant contributions ...

and was a believer in fostering the individuality of his pupils. The Frankfurt group were united more by their friendship and their non-conformity than by any common aim, though they did share a dislike of

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical ...

, and a resistance to the

musical nationalism Musical nationalism refers to the use of musical ideas or motifs that are identified with a specific country, region, or ethnicity, such as folk tunes and melodies, rhythms, and harmonies inspired by them. History As a musical movement, nation ...

of the self-styled

English Musical Renaissance The English Musical Renaissance was a hypothetical development in the late 19th and early 20th century, when British composers, often those lecturing or trained at the Royal College of Music, were said to have freed themselves from foreign musica ...

Hubert Parry Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, 1st Baronet (27 February 18487 October 1918) was an English composer, teacher and historian of music. Born in Richmond Hill in Bournemouth, Parry's first major works appeared in 1880. As a composer he is b ...

and

Charles Villiers Stanford Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (30 September 1852 – 29 March 1924) was an Anglo-Irish composer, music teacher, and conductor of the late Romantic music, Romantic era. Born to a well-off and highly musical family in Dublin, Stanford was ed ...

, and of the later

English Pastoral School The English Pastoral School, sometimes called the English Nationalist School or by detractors the Cow Pat School, is an informal designation for a group of English composers of classical music working during the early to mid 20th century, who sough ...

Ralph Vaughan Williams Ralph Vaughan Williams, (; 12 October 1872– 26 August 1958) was an English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over ...

and

Gustav Holst Gustav Theodore Holst (born Gustavus Theodore von Holst; 21 September 1874 – 25 May 1934) was an English composer, arranger and teacher. Best known for his orchestral suite ''The Planets'', he composed many other works across a range ...

. All of them had a predilection for the music of

Frederick Delius Delius, photographed in 1907 Frederick Theodore Albert Delius ( 29 January 1862 – 10 June 1934), originally Fritz Delius, was an English composer. Born in Bradford in the north of England to a prosperous mercantile family, he resisted atte ...

, although there remains some doubt as to when the individual members first became aware of his music, which was certainly later than when they were a group in the 1890s. The group was distinguished by its rebelliousness, and by studying abroad they stood apart from the conservative wider English musical establishment. Grainger described the group as

Pre-Raphaelite The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (later known as the Pre-Raphaelites) was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James ...

composers, arguing that they were musically distinguished from other British composers by "an excessive emotionality ... particularly a tragic or sentimental or wistful or pathetic emotionality", reached through a focus on

chords Chord may refer to: * Chord (music), an aggregate of musical pitches sounded simultaneously ** Guitar chord a chord played on a guitar, which has a particular tuning * Chord (geometry), a line segment joining two points on a curve * Chord (as ...

rather than

musical architecture In music, ''form'' refers to the structure of a musical composition or performance. In his book, ''Worlds of Music'', Jeff Todd Titon suggests that a number of organizational elements may determine the formal structure of a piece of music, such a ...

or "the truly English qualities of grandeur, hopefulness and glory". Most rebellious were Grainger and Scott, whose music often crossed the boundaries of accepted musical convention. Scott's work for a time gave up the use of bars and

time signature The time signature (also known as meter signature, metre signature, or measure signature) is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats (pulses) are contained in each measure (bar), and which note value ...

s, while employing dissonant harmonies and highly individual

orchestration Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra (or, more loosely, for any musical ensemble, such as a concert band) or of adapting music composed for another medium for an orchestra. Also called "instrumentation", orc ...

. The music of Quilter, O'Neill and (sometimes) Balfour Gardiner, shows an influence derived from Delius.''Delius and his Circle'', Stone Records (2011)
/ref>

References

Literature

* Peter Cahn, ''Das Hoch'sche Konservatorium in Frankfurt am Main (1878–1978)'', Frankfurt am Main: Kramer, 1979. * * * Culture in Frankfurt Composition schools English music Music organisations based in Germany {{Composition schools