![Roger Quilter ca](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Roger_Quilter_ca._1922.png)
Roger Cuthbert Quilter (1 November 1877 – 21 September 1953) was a British composer, known particularly for his
art song
An art song is a Western vocal music composition, usually written for one voice with piano accompaniment, and usually in the classical art music tradition. By extension, the term "art song" is used to refer to the collective genre of such songs ...
s. His songs, which number over a hundred, often set music to text by
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
and are a mainstay of the
English art song
The composition of art song in England and English-speaking countries has a long history, beginning with lute song in the late 16th century and continuing today.
English Art song in the 17th Century
The composition of polyphonic music was at its ...
tradition.
Biography
![Blue plaque for Roger Quilter in Hove](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Blue_plaque_for_Roger_Quilter_in_Hove..JPG)
Quilter was born in
Hove
Hove is a seaside resort and one of the two main parts of the city of Brighton and Hove, along with Brighton in East Sussex, England. Originally a "small but ancient fishing village" surrounded by open farmland, it grew rapidly in the 19th c ...
, Sussex;
a commemorative
blue plaque
A blue plaque is a permanent sign installed in a public place in the United Kingdom and elsewhere to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person, event, or former building on the site, serving as a historical marker. The term i ...
is on the house at 4 Brunswick Square. He was a younger son of
Sir William Quilter, 1st Baronet
Sir William Cuthbert Quilter, 1st Baronet (29 January 1841 – 18 November 1911) was an English stock broker, art collector and Liberal/Liberal Unionist politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1885 to 1906.
Life
Quilter was born at ...
, a wealthy noted landowner, politician and
art collector
A private collection is a privately owned collection of works (usually artworks) or valuable items. In a museum or art gallery context, the term signifies that a certain work is not owned by that institution, but is on loan from an individual ...
.
Roger Quilter was educated first in the preparatory school at
Farnborough. He then moved to
Eton College
Eton College () is a public school in Eton, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1440 by Henry VI under the name ''Kynge's College of Our Ladye of Eton besyde Windesore'',Nevill, p. 3 ff. intended as a sister institution to King's College, C ...
and later became a fellow-student of
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 ...
,
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
H. 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 ...
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 ...
in Frankfurt, where he studied for almost five years under the guidance of the German professor of composition
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 ...
.
[Hold, Trevor,] Quilter belonged to the
Frankfurt Group, a circle of composers who studied at the Hoch Conservatory in the late 1890s.
His reputation in England rests largely on his songs and on his
light music for orchestra, such as his ''Children's Overture'', with its interwoven
nursery rhyme
A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and many other countries, but usage of the term dates only from the late 18th/early 19th century. The term Mother Goose rhymes is interchangeable with nursery rhymes.
From t ...
tunes, and a suite of music for the play ''
Where the Rainbow Ends
''Where the Rainbow Ends'' is a children's play, originally written for Christmas 1911 by Clifford Mills and John Ramsey. The incidental music was composed by Roger Quilter.
''Where the Rainbow Ends'' is a fantasy story which follows the journe ...
''. He is noted as an influence on several English composers, including
Peter Warlock
Philip Arnold Heseltine (30 October 189417 December 1930), known by the pseudonym Peter Warlock, was a British composer and music critic. The Warlock name, which reflects Heseltine's interest in occult practices, was used for all his published ...
.
[
Quilter enjoyed a fruitful collaboration with the tenor ]Gervase Elwes
Gervase Henry Cary-Elwes, DL (15 November 1866 – 12 January 1921), better known as Gervase Elwes, was an English tenor of great distinction, who exercised a powerful influence over the development of English music from the early 1900s up u ...
until the latter's death in 1921. In November 1936, Quilter's opera ''Julia'' was presented at Covent Garden by the British Music Drama Opera Company under the direction of Vladimir Rosing
Vladimir Sergeyevich Rosing (russian: Владимир Серге́евич Розинг) (November 24, 1963), also known as Val Rosing, was a Russian-born operatic tenor and stage director who spent most of his professional career in the United ...
. It ran for only seven performances. Heavily revised, it was later published as ''Love at the Inn''.
As a homosexual, he found it difficult to cope with some of the pressures which he felt were imposed upon him, and eventually deteriorated into mental illness
A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitti ...
after the loss of his nephew Arnold Guy Vivian
The ''Arnold Book of Old Songs'' is a collection of English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh and French folk songs and traditional songs, with new piano accompaniments by Roger Quilter. Quilter dedicated it to and named it after his nephew Arnold Guy Viv ...
during the Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
.
He died at his home on 21 September 1953, in St John's Wood
St John's Wood is a district in the City of Westminster, London, lying 2.5 miles (4 km) northwest of Charing Cross. Traditionally the northern part of the ancient parish and Metropolitan Borough of Marylebone, it extends east to west from ...
, London, a few months after celebrations to mark his 75th birthday, and was buried in the family vault at St Mary's Church, Bawdsey
Bawdsey is a village and civil parish in Suffolk, eastern England. Located on the other side of the river Deben from Felixstowe, it had an estimated population of 340 in 2007, reducing to 276 at the Census 2011.
Bawdsey Manor is notable as the ...
, Suffolk.
Songs
Roger Quilter's output of songs, more than one hundred in total, added to the canon of English art song
The composition of art song in England and English-speaking countries has a long history, beginning with lute song in the late 16th century and continuing today.
English Art song in the 17th Century
The composition of polyphonic music was at its ...
that is still sung today. According to Valerie Langfield, his style "was indisputably English" despite his German training, and once matured around 1905, did not develop further. Shakespeare, Herrick, and Shelley were his favoured poets.[Langford, Valerie]
'Quilter, Roger (Cuthbert)'
in Grove Music Online (2001) Among the most popular are "Love's Philosophy", "Fair House of Joy", "Come Away Death", "Go, Lovely Rose", "Weep You No More", "By the Sea", and his setting of " O Mistress Mine". Quilter's setting of verses from the Tennyson poem "Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal
"Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal" is a poem written by Alfred Tennyson. It is like a sonnet in having fourteen iambic lines, but it is not rhymed (except that the word "me" is repeated at the ends of key lines), and it does not follow either the Sh ...
" is one of his earliest songs but is nonetheless characteristic of the later, mature style.
Of his seventeen Shakespeare settings, the ''Three Shakespeare Songs'' of 1905 are perhaps the most successful: commenting on 'O Mistress Mine' Peter Warlock said the song is "one of the very few things that very simply send me into ecstasies every time I play it".[Pilkington, Michael. Notes to Hyperion CD A66878 (1996)]
/ref> While a collection rather than a true song cycle, ''Seven Elizabethan Lyrics'' is "probably the best single volume of songs the composer ever produced", according to Michael Pilkington, and includes the still regularly performed "Fair House of Joy" as its final song.[ But perhaps his most widely known work is ''Non Nobis, Domine'' (1934). This was written for the Pageant Of Parliament at the Royal Albert Hall July 1934, to a text by Rudyard Kipling, and has become the school song or school hymn of countless girls' schools all over the English-speaking world. He also published the '']Arnold Book of Old Songs
The ''Arnold Book of Old Songs'' is a collection of English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh and French folk songs and traditional songs, with new piano accompaniments by Roger Quilter. Quilter dedicated it to and named it after his nephew Arnold Guy Viv ...
'', a collection of 16 folk and traditional songs from England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and France to new accompaniments, dedicated to his nephew Arnold Guy Vivian.
Selected works
*''Four Songs of the Sea, Op. 1'' (1901) (revised, omitting first song, as ''Three Songs of the Sea'' (1911)
* ''Four Songs of Mirza Schaffy'' Op. 2 (1903) (revised 1911)
*''Three Shakespeare Songs'', Op. 6 (1905)
*''To Julia'', Op. 8 (texts of Robert Herrick) (1905)
*''Seven Elizabethan Lyrics'', Op. 12 (1908)
*''Three English Dances'', Op. 11 (1910)
*''Three Studies for Piano'', Op. 4 (1910)
*''Where the Rainbow Ends
''Where the Rainbow Ends'' is a children's play, originally written for Christmas 1911 by Clifford Mills and John Ramsey. The incidental music was composed by Roger Quilter.
''Where the Rainbow Ends'' is a fantasy story which follows the journe ...
'' (incidental music) (1911)
* ''Four Child Songs'', Op.5 (1914) (revised 1945)
*''A Children's Overture'' (1914)
*''Three Pastoral Songs'', Op. 22 (1920)
*''Five Shakespeare Songs'', Op. 23 (1921)
*''The Fuschia Tree'', Op. 25 No. 2 (1923)[Smythe, David K.,]
The Fuschia Tree
'' The Lied, Art Song, and Choral Texts Archive, Access date: 6 June 2012
*''Five Jacobean Lyrics'', Op. 28 (1926)
*''Five English Love Lyrics'', Op. 24 (1922–28)
* ''Four Shakespeare Songs'', Op. 30 (1933)
* ''Julia'', light opera (1936) (includes the concert waltz ''Rosme'' and the gavotte ''In Georgian Days''). Revised as ''Love at the Inn'' (1940)
*''Arnold Book of Old Songs
The ''Arnold Book of Old Songs'' is a collection of English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh and French folk songs and traditional songs, with new piano accompaniments by Roger Quilter. Quilter dedicated it to and named it after his nephew Arnold Guy Viv ...
'' (1921, 1942, pub. 1950)
References
Further reading
* Banfield, Stephen (1985)
''Sensibility and English Song''
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
* Harrison, Nicola (2016)
''The Wordsmith's Guide to English Song: The Songs of Roger Quilter''
Compton Publishing,
* Hold, Trevor (1976 and 1996). ''The Walled in Garden: The Songs of Roger Quilter'', Thames Publishing,
*
External links
Roger Quilter Homepage
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Quilter, Roger
1877 births
1953 deaths
20th-century classical composers
20th-century English composers
20th-century British male musicians
English classical composers
English male classical composers
English gay musicians
Hoch Conservatory alumni
LGBT classical composers
Light music composers
Musicians from Sussex
People educated at Eton College
People from Hove
Pupils of Iwan Knorr
Younger sons of baronets
19th-century LGBT people
20th-century LGBT people