Bantock, Sir Granville

Bantock, Sir Granville (1868-1946), English composer, conductor, and educationalist, born in London. After studying composition at the Royal Academy of Music, London, from 1889 to 1893, Bantock spent some years as a conductor. In 1897 he became musical director of the Tower Theatre at New Brighton, near Liverpool, and while working there he formed a choral society, established a symphony orchestra, and enabled performances of music by contemporary English composers including Stanford, Parry, and Elgar. Throughout his life he was remarkable in his encouragement of other composers, and his interest extended to a lifelong friendship with Sibelius, who in turn dedicated his 3rd Symphony to Bantock. In 1898 Bantock married Helen von Schweitzer, who wrote the texts for many of his songs; these were most often composed for festivals and amateur competitions, where songs such as “A Feast of Lanterns” are still performed today. From 1900 Bantock was Principal of the School of Music in Birmingham, and from 1908 to 1934 he was Professor of Music at Birmingham University, where he succeeded Elgar. He was knighted in 1930, in recognition of both his work as a composer and his enormous influence on the musical life of the city of Birmingham. After leaving Birmingham University he taught at Trinity College of Music in London.

The majority of Bantock’s works are for orchestra or for orchestra with chorus and are written on a grand scale, often inspired by oriental or Celtic themes. His musical influences included Wagner, Richard Strauss, and other late-Romantic composers, although his own harmonic and orchestral style never approached their chromaticism or orchestral subtlety. His music was most often homophonic, and made use of quasi-oriental melodies or, as in the Hebridean Symphony (1915), folk-like themes. Bantock had a particular interest in oriental culture, acquired during his many travels in Asia. His three-part choral work Omar Khayyam (1906) consists of a setting of the whole of Fitzgerald’s translation of Khayyam’s Rubáiyát, for vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra and was premiered in its complete form in 1912, at the Queen’s Hall, London.

Although widely performed during his lifetime, his large body of work is rarely performed today, with the exception of a small overture, Pierrot of the Minute (1908), and an orchestral tone poem, Fifine at the Fair (1912), the latter first recorded by Sir Thomas Beecham.