Roger Quilter
1877 - 1953
Snapshot
English
One of the most successful and prolific of English song writers * Studied privately with Iwan Knorr at the Conservatory in Frankfurt, where fellow students included Grainger, Scott, Balfour Gardiner and O'Neill * Between 1900 and 1910 leading vocalists including Denham Price and Gervase Elwes took his songs into their repertoires, and his music quickly became popular with Edwardian public * Roger Quilter's Songs demonstrated a refined development from Victorian drawing room ballads * Principal influences were Schubert, Schumann, songs of Maude Valérie White, and French mélodies, particularly those by Fauré * A pivotal figure for generation of interwar song composers including Peter Warlock * Orchestral works, conducted by Henry Wood at Promenade Concerts, soon became light music favourites * Made many arrangements of traditional songs including those in The Arnold Book of Old Songs (1947) * Master of lyrical line, sensitive accompaniment, and precise verbal accentuation
Works by Roger Quilter include:
Shakespeare Songs Vol I-III (1905-33) for voice and piano
To Julia (1905) Song cycle for voice and piano and instruments
Seven Elizabethan Lyrics (1908) for voice and piano
As you like it: Suite (1920) for small orchestra
"...melodious and ultra-refined music... There is a naturally free-flowing effortlessness and tenderly self-effacing quality to these pages which makes them all the more priceless and inimitable." — Fanfare
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