Hubert Parry

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Charles Hubert H. Parry

Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (born February 27, 1848 in Bournemouth , Dorset , † October 7, 1918 in Knight's Croft , Rustington , Sussex ) was an English composer .

Life

Charles Hubert Hastings Parry was born the second son of Thomas Gabier Parry into an upper-class English family whose wealth went back to his grandfather Thomas Parry, a director of the East India Company . Hubert Parry received his education at Eton College . The foundations of his musical education were already being laid at this time - less at the school than in the neighboring St George's Chapel in Windsor , where Parry was instructed in choral music by George Elvey . While still in school, Parry received a bachelor's degree in music from Oxford .

During the school holidays he studied with Henry Hugo Pierson in Stuttgart ; He later received formal composition lessons from the then successful composer William Sterndale Bennett in London . After school he married Maude, the daughter of Sidney and Elizabeth Herbert and sister of his friend George Herbert, the 13th Earl of Pembroke . Maude's fragile state of health required several spa stays abroad and severely hampered Parry's career as a composer in the early years. To secure his livelihood, he therefore became an employee of Lloyd's of London .

In London he made friends with Edward Dannreuther , a well-known pianist and admirer of Richard Wagner's music . It was thenreuther who premiered Parry's first great work, the Piano Concerto in F sharp major, at the Crystal Palace in 1880 . Also because of its unusual key, the work was received with skepticism. Parry then had a greater success with his cantata Prometheus Unbound - based on the fragmentary verse drama Percy Bysshe Shelleys - which his later professor colleague Sir Charles Villiers Stanford launched on September 7 of the same year at the Gloucester Festival. In the following years Parry established himself as one of the leading English composers of choral music with works such as the Ode Blest Pair of Sirens (1887), the Ode on Saint Cecilia's Day (1889), Judith (1888) and Job (1892). Parry also composed five great symphonies , which, with the exception of the fifth, could not establish themselves, remained unpublished for a long time and even during Parry's lifetime lagged behind the very successful symphonies of Stanford ("Irish Symphony") and Cowen ("Scandinavian Symphony").

The most important of his large-scale choral works, which were often performed in their time, are now the “Sinfonia Sacra” The Soul's Ransom , subtitled A Psalm for the Poor , but above all the secular cantata The Lotos Eaters based on a poem by the most famous Victorian poet, Sir Alfred Lord Tennyson from the year 1833. Like his symphonies, however, Parry's choral works were increasingly forgotten after his death - with the exception of his hymn Jerusalem (“ And did those feet in ancient time ...”) based on a poem by William Blake , which is an integral part of the English concert repertoire and developed into one of those unofficial national anthems that are sung every year at the patriotic end of the Proms Concerts in London. The orchestration used today comes from Edward Elgar . In the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador , the song Ode to Newfoundland , which Parry set to music in 1904 on behalf of then Governor Sir Charles Cavendish Boyle, is still used today as a regional anthem.

At the end of 1882, at the invitation of Sir George Grove , Parry accepted a teaching position in music history at the newly created Royal College of Music , of which he became director in 1894 and remained until his death. Together with Stanford, who also teaches there, Parry prepared the ground for the so-called “English Musical Renaissance” around Ralph Vaughan Williams on the threshold of the 20th century , of which Arthur Bliss , John Ireland and Gustav Holst also belong. With them, British music finally reached an international audience again after a century of isolation. Also in 1882 his First Symphony was premiered in Birmingham .

In 1900 Parry also took over the professorship from John Stainer at the University of Oxford.

reception

Parry's own music is strongly influenced by Bach and Brahms . His late works are formally very experimental and unconventional, such as the seven ethical cantatas (the generic name does not come from Parry), the fifth symphony (called Symphonic Phantasia 1912) or his only symphonic poem From Death to Life . However, he had little success with it, although Elgar and Vaughan Williams, for example, valued this music very much.

After decades of being forgotten, new recordings of Parry's works brought Parry's compositional oeuvre back into perspective in the early 1970s. In particular, the Symphonic Variations from 1897 are now considered to be on par with those of Antonín Dvořák and the Haydn Variations by Johannes Brahms as an excellent contribution to the art of variation in orchestral literature. In the early 1990s, all five of Parry's symphonies were finally re-recorded - until then, only the 5th symphony under Adrian Boult was still on record. These recordings now allow a more nuanced picture of Parry, who to superficial observers (like Stanford) was long clichéd as the embodiment of a rigid, backward-looking Victorianism . Desiderata are recordings of the choral symphonic works, of which only a small selection has been presented so far.

Works (selection)

Symphonies

  • Symphony No. 1 in G major (1882)
  • Symphony No. 2 in F major, The Cambridge (1883)
  • Symphony No. 3 in C major, The English (1889)
  • Symphony No. 4 in E minor (1889)
  • Symphony No. 5 in B minor, Symphonic Fantasy 1912 (1912)

Concert works

  • Concerto for piano and orchestra in F sharp major (1880)

Orchestral works

  • Concert piece in G minor (1877)
  • Overture to an Unwritten Tragedy (1893)
  • Lady Radnor's Suite (for string orchestra, 1894)
  • Elegy for Brahms in A minor (1897)
  • Symphonic Variations in E minor (1897)
  • An English Suite (for string orchestra, 1914–1918)
  • From Death to Life - Symphonic poem in two connected movements (1914)

Choral works

  • Evening Service in D major (The Great) (1882)
  • Hear My Words, Ye People - for choir and organ, (1894)
  • The Lotos Eaters - for soprano, choir and orchestra (1902)
  • The Soul's Ransom - Sinfonia Sacra for soprano, bass, choir and orchestra (1906)
  • Jerusalem (for choir and organ, 1916) - version for choir and orchestra, arranged by Edward Elgar
  • Songs of Farewell (1916-1918)
  • I Was Glad When They Said Unto Me (1902)

Discographic notes

  • Symphonies 1–5 (complete): London Philharmonic Orchestra , Matthias Bamert , Chandos CHAN 9120-22
  • Symphony No. 2 (The Cambridge), Symphonic Variations, Overture to an Unwritten Tragedy: Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Andrew Penny, NAXOS 8.553469
  • Piano Concerto in F sharp major: Piers Lane, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra , Martyn Brabbins , (with Charles Villiers Stanford : Piano Concerto No. 1 in G major), Hyperion CDA66820
  • Overture to an Unwritten Tragedy, An English Suite, Lady Radnor's Suite, Symphonic Variations: London Symphony Orchestra , London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult , Lyrita SRCD220
  • The Soul's Ransom / The Lotos Eaters: Della Jones, David Wilson-Johnson, The London Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra, Matthias Bamert, Chandos CHAN 8990
  • I Was Glad: The Cathedral Music of Sir Hubert Parry: Choir of St. George's Chapel, Windsor, Christopher Robinson, Hyperion CDA66273

literature

  • Alfred Baumgartner: Propylaea World of Music - The Composers - A lexicon in five volumes . tape 4 . Propylaen Verlag, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-549-07830-7 , pp. 259 .

Web links

Commons : Hubert Parry  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Parry, Hubert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Parry, Charles Hubert Hastings (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English composer
DATE OF BIRTH February 27, 1848
PLACE OF BIRTH Bournemouth , Hampshire
DATE OF DEATH October 7, 1918
Place of death Knight's Croft , Rustington, Sussex