Thomas Frederick Dunhill (Composer, Arranger)

Born: February 1, 1877 - Hampstead, London, England
Died: March 13, 1946 - Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, England

The English composer and writer on musical subjects, Thomas Frederick Dunhill, attended the Royal College of Music, London, in 1893 and studied pianoforte under Franklin Taylor and composition under Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. He won an open scholarship for composition in 1897. He became a music-master at Eton College for several years, before becoming a professor at the Royal College of Music in 1905.

From 1907 to 1919 Thomas Dunhill gave concerts of chamber-music in London, the Thomas Dunhill Concerts, at which important chamber music by English composers was performed. He himself wrote chamber music and also songs and song-cycles. His song-cycle The wind among the Reeds, for tenor voice and orchestra (his best-known composition), was first performed by Gervase Elwes with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at Queen's Hall in 1912. His setting of W.B. Yeats's The Cloths of Heaven is deservedly famous. Elwes (with Frederick B. Kiddle) recorded his song 'A Sea Dirge', a setting of Shakespeare's lyric Full fathom five.

In July 1918 Thomas Dunhill chaired the meeting of Directors on the Royal Philharmonic Society which set out to reclaim democratic control of the Society's affairs when, during the Great War, they had largely fallen under the single, if highly benevolent, control of Thomas Beecham and his secretary Donald Baylis. He gave a concert of music by British composers in Belgrade in 1922, and in 1924 contributed Serbian articles to the Dent Musical Dictionary.

Works

The Wind among the Reeds, song-cycle, tenor and orchestra (1912)
The King's Threshold, overture
Dance Suite for strings
Variations on an old English tune, for cello & orchestra
The Chiddingfold Suite, for string orchestra
Tantivy Towers
Elegiac variations in memory of Hubert Parry (Gloucester Festival, 1922)
Symphony in A minor (1916, Belgrade 1922)
Quartet in B minor, for pianoforte & strings
Quintet in E flat, for pianoforte, wind & strings
Phantasy-trio, for pianoforte, violin & viola
Phantasy Suite in six short movements, for clarinet & pianoforte), Op. 91
Phantasy, string quartet
Sonatas for violin and pianoforte, No 1 in D, No 2 in F
Songs and part songs (various)
3 children's cantatas (John Gilpin; Sea Fairies; The Masque of the Shoe)
Pianoforte pieces for children (various)
Pieces for violin; pieces for cello (various)
Lyric Suite; for bassoon and piano
A Song of Erin
Cornucopia; six miniatures for horn and piano

Writings:
Chamber Music: A Treatise for students (Macmillan, London 1913)
"Edward German, An Appreciation" in Musical Times, Vol. 77, No. 1126 (December, 1936), pp. 1073-1077.
Sullivan's Comic Operas - A Critical Appreciation (Edward Arnold, London 1928)
Sir Edward Elgar (Blackie & Son, London, 1938)

Source: Wikipedia Website (October 2011)
Contributed by Aryeh Oron (November 2011)

Thomas Frederick Dunhill: Short Biography | Arrangements/Transcriptions: Works | Recordings

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