Frederick Herbert Torrington

Frederick Herbert Torrington (born October 20, 1837 in Dudley , † November 20, 1917 in Toronto / Ontario ) was a Canadian organist, conductor, music teacher and composer.

Torrington completed piano and organ training in England as well as choral music with Henry Hayward and James Fitzgerald and worked as an organist in Bewdley. In 1856 he settled as a music teacher in Toronto and was the organist and choirmaster at the Great St James Street Methodist Church the following year . He also worked as a conductor and violinist and was Kapellmeister with the 25th Regiment, Queen's Own Borderers . In 1860 he took part in a ceremony on the occasion of a visit by the Prince of Wales .

In 1868 he gave an organ concert at the Boston Music Hall . In the summer of the following year he was back in town as a participant in Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore's mammoth National Peace Jubilee and in September of that year he became organist at the King's Chapel . In 1870 he joined the Harvard Musical Association as a violinist under the direction of Carl Zerrahn , and from 1871 he taught at the New England Conservatory of Music .

In 1873 he returned to Toronto as organist of the Metropolitan Methodist Church and conductor of the Toronto Philharmonic Society , which he led until 1894. He conducted the Canadian premieres of Mendelssohn's oratorios Elias (1874) and Paulus (1876) and organized a music festival in Toronto in 1886 and 1894. For the second festival he founded the Festival Chorus , with which he regularly performed the Messiah and other oratorios until 1912 .

He was also musical director of the Ontario Ladies' College in Whitby (1874-82) and in the 1880s conductor of the Hamilton Philharmonic Society and directed various amateur orchestras in Toronto, which are considered the forerunners of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra , founded in 1906 . In 1888 he founded the Toronto College of Music , which was attached to the University of Toronto in 1890 , and remained its director until his death. Among the teachers he won for the college were Clarence Reynolds Lucas , Wesley Octavius ​​Forsyth , Augustus Stephen Vogt , Herbert Lincoln Clarke, and William Elliott Haslam .

In 1892 Torrington became President of the Canadian Society of Musicians . After finishing his work at the Metropolitan Church, he worked until 1915 as an organist at the High Park Methodist Church . As a composer he emerged with church music as well as some secular choral works and songs. In 1902 the University of Toronto awarded him an honorary doctorate. An 1899 portrait of Torrington by John Wycliffe Lowes Forster is in the University's Edward Johnson Building .

Works

• Canada, the gem in the crown , 1876
• Abide with me , 1881
• Welcome home, brave volunteers , 1885
• Queen's jubilee , 1887
• The sons of Canada , 1900
• Our country and our king , 1901

swell

• Dictionary of Canadian Biography - Torrington, Frederick Herbert
• RUTH PINCOE: FH Torrington ( English, French ) In: Encyclopedia of Music in Canada . published by The Canadian Encyclopedia . Retrieved August 21, 2016.