The Frankfurt Group, also called the Frankfort Group, the Frankfurt Gang or the Frankfurt Five, [1] was a group of English-speaking composers and friends who studied composition under Iwan Knorr at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt am Main in the late 1890s. [2] The group included H. Balfour Gardiner, Norman O'Neill, Cyril Scott and Roger Quilter, who were all English, and Percy Grainger, who was born in Australia and established himself as a composer in England between 1901 and 1914 before moving to the United States. [2] They remained close friends from their student days onwards. [3]
Knorr, though German-born, was strongly influenced by Russian music and was a believer in fostering the individuality of his pupils. [2] The Frankfurt group were united more by their friendship and their non-conformity than by any common aim, [4] though they did share a dislike of Beethoven, [5] and a resistance to the musical nationalism of the self-styled English Musical Renaissance of Hubert Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford, and of the later English Pastoral School of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst. [2] All of them had a predilection for the music of Frederick Delius, [6] 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. [7] The group was distinguished by its rebelliousness, [8] and by studying abroad they stood apart from the conservative wider English musical establishment. [3]
Grainger described the group as Pre-Raphaelite composers, [9] 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 rather than musical architecture or "the truly English qualities of grandeur, hopefulness and glory". [8] Most rebellious were Grainger and Scott, whose music often crossed the boundaries of accepted musical convention. [8] Scott's work for a time gave up the use of bars and time signatures, while employing dissonant harmonies and highly individual orchestration. [2] The music of Quilter, O'Neill and (sometimes) Balfour Gardiner, shows an influence derived from Delius. [10]
Writing in 1977 Stephen Banfield argued that "today [the Frankfurt Group] is difficult to regard as anything other than a damp squib in the history of English music". Of them all, he said, only Roger Quilter is remembered not as a name but for his music - although only his songs have made an impact. [11]
Frederick Theodore Albert Delius was an English composer. Born in Bradford in the north of England to a prosperous mercantile family, he resisted attempts to recruit him to commerce. He was sent to Florida in the United States in 1884 to manage an orange plantation. He soon neglected his managerial duties, and in 1886 returned to Europe.
Percy Aldridge Grainger was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist who moved to the United States in 1914 and became an American citizen in 1918. In the course of a long and innovative career he played a prominent role in the revival of interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th century. Although much of his work was experimental and unusual, the piece with which he is most generally associated is his piano arrangement of the folk-dance tune "Country Gardens".
Philip Arnold Heseltine, 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 musical works. He is best known as a composer of songs and other vocal music; he also achieved notoriety in his lifetime through his unconventional and often scandalous lifestyle.
Ashampstead is a small village and civil parish in the rural area between Reading, Newbury and Streatley in Berkshire, England. The parish population is about 400, occupying some 150 dwellings.
Roger Cuthbert Quilter 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 English art song tradition.
Henry Balfour Gardiner was a British musician, composer, and teacher. He was the son of Henry John Gardiner, a successful entrepreneur who made a considerable fortune in the drapery wholesale business in Bristol and London.
Gervase Henry Cary-Elwes, DL, 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 until his death in 1921 due to a railroad accident in Boston at the height of his career.
On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring is a tone poem composed in 1912 by Frederick Delius. Together with Summer Night on the River it is one of Delius's Two Pieces for Small Orchestra. The two were first performed in Leipzig on 23 October 1913, conducted by Arthur Nikisch. On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring is the longer of the two pieces, with a typical playing time of between six and seven minutes. There have been numerous recordings of the piece, which Delius's champion Sir Thomas Beecham described as much the best known of the composer's works.
Iwan Otto Armand Knorr was a German composer and music teacher.
Beatrice Harrison was a British cellist active in the first half of the 20th century. She gave first performances of several important English works, especially those of Frederick Delius, and made the first or standard recordings of others, particularly the first recording of Elgar’s cello concerto in 1920 with the composer conducting.
John Coates was a leading English tenor, who sang in opera and oratorio and on the concert platform. His repertoire ranged from Bach and Purcell to contemporary works, and embraced the major heldentenor roles in Richard Wagner's operas. For more than 40 years, with only a four-year interruption for military service during World War I, he overcame the limitations of a voice that was not naturally large by impressing listeners with his intense artistic expression, lively diction, musical versatility and memorable stage presence.
Norman Houston O'Neill was an English composer and conductor of Irish background who specialised largely in works for the theatre.
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 music and the arts was established for all age groups. Instrumental to the foundation, prosperity and success of the conservatory was its director Joachim Raff who did most of the work including setting the entire curriculum and hiring all its faculty. It has played an important role in the history of music in Frankfurt. Clara Schumann taught piano, as one of distinguished teachers in the late 19th century, gaining international renown for the conservatory. In the 1890s, about 25% of the students came from other countries: 46 were from England and 23 from the United States.
Frederic William Austin was an English baritone singer, a musical teacher and composer in the period 1905–30. He is perhaps best remembered for his arrangement of Johann Pepusch's music for a 1920 production of The Beggar's Opera by John Gay, and its sequel Polly in 1922; and for his popularization of the melody of the carol The Twelve Days of Christmas. Austin was the older brother of the composer Ernest Austin (1874–1947).
Colonial Song is a musical composition written by Australian composer Percy Grainger. Although Grainger created versions for different types of musical ensembles, its most commonly used version today is for concert band.
Charles James Kennedy Osborne Scott was an English organist and choral conductor who played an important part in developing the performance of choral and polyphonic music in England, especially of early and modern English music.
The Grainger Museum is a repository of items documenting the life, career and music of the composer, folklorist, educator and pianist Percy Grainger, located in the grounds of the University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Frederick Baring Ranalow was an Irish baritone who was distinguished in opera, oratorio, and musical theatre, but whose name is now principally associated with the role of Captain Macheath in the ballad opera The Beggar's Opera, which he sang close to 1,500 times. He was also a minor film actor and writer of 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 Vivian, who perished at the hands of German forces in Italy in 1943.
Evening Hymn, "Te lucis ante terminum", is an anthem composed by Henry Balfour Gardiner, a setting of the Latin compline hymn "Te lucis ante terminum" for four voices and organ, in both English and Latin. It was published in 1908. It is regarded as Gardiner's best-known work and a classic of the English choral tradition.