Hubert Parry
Encyclopedia
Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, 1st Baronet (27 February 18487 October 1918) was an English composer, teacher and historian of music.
Parry's first major works appeared in 1880. As a composer he is best known for the choral song "Jerusalem
", the coronation anthem "I was glad
" and the hymn tune "Repton", which sets the words "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind
". He was director of the Royal College of Music
from 1895 until his death and was also professor of music at the University of Oxford
from 1900 to 1908. He also wrote several books about music and music history. Some contemporaries rated him as the finest English composer since Henry Purcell
, but his academic duties prevented him from devoting all his energies to composition.
, the youngest of six children of Thomas Gambier Parry
(1816–1888) of Highnam Court, Gloucestershire
, a painter, art collector and inventor of the "spirit fresco" process, and his first wife, Isabella née Clinton (1816–1848). Three of their children died in infancy, and Isabella Parry died twelve days after the birth of her sixth child. Parry grew up at Highnam Court with his surviving siblings, (Charles) Clinton and Lucy. Thomas Parry remarried in 1851, and had a further six children.
From this upper-middle class background, Parry was sent to Twyford Preparatory School
in Hampshire and Eton
, where his interest in music was encouraged and developed. At Eton he distinguished himself at sports as well as music, despite early signs of the heart trouble that was to dog him for the rest of his life. He took music lessons with Sir George Job Elvey
, the organist of St George's Chapel, Windsor, and composed many prentice works.
While still at Eton Parry successfully sat the Oxford Bachelor of Music
examination, the youngest person who had ever done so. His examination exercise, a cantata, O Lord, Thou hast cast us out, "astonished" the Oxford Professor of Music, Sir Frederick Ouseley
, and was triumphantly performed and published in 1867. On going to Oxford after leaving Eton, Parry did not study music, being intended by his father for a commercial career, and instead read law and modern history. From 1870 to 1877 he was an underwriter at Lloyd's of London
. In 1872 he married Lady Elizabeth Maude Herbert (1851–1933), second daughter of the politician Sidney Herbert
and his wife Elizabeth. His in-laws, like his father, preferred a conventional career for him, although Parry proved as unsuccessful in insurance as he was successful in music. Parry and his wife had two daughters, their elder, Dorothea (d. 11 July 1963) married the politician Arthur Ponsonby
in 1898 and had a son and a daughter. Their younger daughter Gwendolen (b. 1877) married the baritone Harry Plunket Greene
(1865–1936) and had two sons and a daughter.
in Stuttgart
, and on moving to London he took lessons from William Sterndale Bennett
, but finding them insufficiently demanding he sought lessons from Johannes Brahms
. Brahms was not available, and Parry was recommended to the pianist Edward Dannreuther
, "wisest and most sympathetic of teachers". Dannreuther started by giving Parry piano lessons, but soon extended their studies to analysis and composition. At this stage in his musical development, Parry moved away from the classical conventions inspired by Mendelssohn
. Dannreuther introduced him to the music of Wagner
, which influenced his compositions of these years.
At the same time as his compositions were coming to public notice, Parry was taken up as a musical scholar by George Grove
, first as his assistant editor for his new Dictionary of Music and Musicians
, to which post Parry was appointed in 1875 and contributed 123 articles, and then, in 1883, Grove, as the first director of the new Royal College of Music
, appointed him as the college's professor of composition and musical history.
Parry's first major works appeared in 1880: a piano concerto, which Dannreuther premiered, and a choral setting of scenes from Shelley
's Prometheus Unbound. The first performance of the latter has often been held to mark the start of a "renaissance" in English music
, but was regarded by many critics as too avant garde. Parry scored a greater contemporary success with the ode Blest Pair of Sirens (1887), commissioned by and dedicated to Charles Villiers Stanford
, one of the first British musicians to recognise Parry's talent. Stanford described Parry as the greatest English composer since Purcell. Blest Pair of Sirens, a setting of Milton
's "At a Solemn Musick"
, suggested as a text by Grove, established Parry as the leading English choral composer of his day; this had the drawback of bringing him a series of commissions for conventional oratorios, a genre with which he was not in sympathy.
s Judith (1888) and Job (1892), the psalm-setting De Profundis (1891) and a lighter work, The Pied Piper of Hamelin (1905), described later as "a bubbling well of humour." The biblical oratorios were well received by the public, but Parry's lack of sympathy with the form was mocked by George Bernard Shaw
, then writing musical criticism in London. He denounced Job as "the most utter failure ever achieved by a thoroughly respectworthy musician. There is not one bar in it that comes within fifty thousand miles of the tamest line in the poem."
Contemporary critics generally regarded Parry's orchestral music as of secondary importance in his output, but in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries many of Parry's orchestral pieces have been revived. These include five symphonies
, a set of Symphonic Variations in E minor, the Overture
to an Unwritten Tragedy (1893) and the Elegy for Brahms (1897). In 1883 Parry wrote music to accompany the Cambridge Greek Play
The Birds by Aristophanes
, a production which starred the mediaevalist and ghost-story writer, M. R. James
. Parry received an honorary degree from Cambridge University
in the same year. Subsequently, he wrote music for Oxford productions of Aristophanes: The Frogs (1892), The Clouds (1905) and The Acharnians (1914). He had also provided elaborate incidental music for a West End production by Beerbohm Tree Hypatia (1893). In contrast to this involvement with music for the theatre, his only attempt at opera, Guenever was turned down by the Carl Rosa Opera Company.
When Grove retired as director of the Royal College of Music, Parry succeeded him from January 1895, and held the post until his death. In 1900 he succeeded John Stainer
as professor of music at Oxford. An obituarist in 1918 lamented these calls on Parry's time: "A composer who counts is rare enough anywhere, any time. Do not try to use him as a mixture of university don, cabinet minister, city magnate, useful hack, or a dozen things besides. A great blow was delivered against English music when Parry was appointed to succeed Sir George Grove as director of the RCM." Despite the demands of these posts his personal beliefs, which were Darwinian and humanist, led him to compose a series of six "ethical cantata
s", experimental works in which he hoped to supersede the traditional oratorio and cantata forms. They were generally unsuccessful with the public, though Elgar
admired The Vision of Life (1907), and The Soul's Ransom (1906) has had several modern performances.
Influenced as a composer principally by Bach
and Brahms
, Parry evolved a powerful diatonic
style which itself greatly influenced future English composers such as Elgar and Vaughan Williams
. His own full development as a composer was almost certainly hampered by the immense amount of work he took on; but his energy and charisma, not to mention his abilities as a teacher and administrator, helped establish art music at the centre of English cultural life. As head of the Royal College of Music, he numbered among his leading pupils Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst
, Frank Bridge
and John Ireland
.
Parry was created a Knight Bachelor
in 1898. He was made a baronet
in 1902. The baronetcy became extinct on his death.
(1916) and the Songs of Farewell (1916–1918). The piece by which he is best known, the setting of William Blake's poem "Jerusalem" mentioned above, was immediately taken up by the suffragette movement, with which both Parry and his wife were strongly in sympathy.
Parry held German music and its traditions to be the pinnacle of music, and was a friend of German culture in general. He was, accordingly, certain that Britain and Germany would never go to war against each other, and was in despair when World War I
broke out. In the words of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: "During the war he watched a life's work of progress and education being wiped away as the male population—particularly the new fertile generation of composing talent—of the Royal College dwindled."
In the autumn of 1918 Parry contracted Spanish flu
during the infamous global pandemic
and died at Knightscroft, Rustington
, West Sussex, aged 70. At the suggestion of Stanford he was buried in St Paul's Cathedral. The site of his birthplace in Richmond Hill, Bournemouth, next door to The Square
is marked with a blue plaque
, and there is a memorial tablet, with an inscription by Bridges, in Gloucester Cathedral, unveiled during the Three Choirs Festival
of 1922.
Parry's first major works appeared in 1880. As a composer he is best known for the choral song "Jerusalem
And did those feet in ancient time
"And did those feet in ancient time" is a short poem by William Blake from the preface to his epic Milton a Poem, one of a collection of writings known as the Prophetic Books. The date on the title page of 1804 for Milton is probably when the plates were begun, but the poem was printed c. 1808...
", the coronation anthem "I was glad
I was glad
I was glad is an introit commonly used in the Anglican church, and also used as an anthem traditionally sung at the coronation of British monarchs...
" and the hymn tune "Repton", which sets the words "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind
Dear Lord and Father of Mankind
"Dear Lord and Father of Mankind" is a hymn with words taken from a longer poem, The Brewing of Soma by American Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier. The adaptation was made by Garrett Horder in his 1884 Congregational Hymns....
". He was director of the Royal College of Music
Royal College of Music
The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire founded by Royal Charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, England.-Background:The first director was Sir George Grove and he was followed by Sir Hubert Parry...
from 1895 until his death and was also professor of music at the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
from 1900 to 1908. He also wrote several books about music and music history. Some contemporaries rated him as the finest English composer since Henry Purcell
Henry Purcell
Henry Purcell – 21 November 1695), was an English organist and Baroque composer of secular and sacred music. Although Purcell incorporated Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, his legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music...
, but his academic duties prevented him from devoting all his energies to composition.
Early years
Parry was born in BournemouthBournemouth
Bournemouth is a large coastal resort town in the ceremonial county of Dorset, England. According to the 2001 Census the town has a population of 163,444, making it the largest settlement in Dorset. It is also the largest settlement between Southampton and Plymouth...
, the youngest of six children of Thomas Gambier Parry
Thomas Gambier Parry
Thomas Gambier Parry, J.P.,D.L., was an English artist and art collector. He is best remembered for his development of the Gambier Parry process of fresco painting....
(1816–1888) of Highnam Court, Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....
, a painter, art collector and inventor of the "spirit fresco" process, and his first wife, Isabella née Clinton (1816–1848). Three of their children died in infancy, and Isabella Parry died twelve days after the birth of her sixth child. Parry grew up at Highnam Court with his surviving siblings, (Charles) Clinton and Lucy. Thomas Parry remarried in 1851, and had a further six children.
From this upper-middle class background, Parry was sent to Twyford Preparatory School
Twyford School
Twyford School is a co-educational, independent, preparatory boarding and day school, located in the village of Twyford, Hampshire.-History:Twyford claims to be the oldest preparatory school in the United Kingdom....
in Hampshire and Eton
Eton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....
, where his interest in music was encouraged and developed. At Eton he distinguished himself at sports as well as music, despite early signs of the heart trouble that was to dog him for the rest of his life. He took music lessons with Sir George Job Elvey
George Job Elvey
Sir George Job Elvey , English organist and composer, was born at Canterbury on the 27th of March 1816. He was a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral under Highmore Skeats, the organist...
, the organist of St George's Chapel, Windsor, and composed many prentice works.
While still at Eton Parry successfully sat the Oxford Bachelor of Music
Bachelor of Music
Bachelor of Music is an academic degree awarded by a college, university, or conservatory upon completion of program of study in music. In the United States, it is a professional degree; the majority of work consists of prescribed music courses and study in applied music, usually requiring a...
examination, the youngest person who had ever done so. His examination exercise, a cantata, O Lord, Thou hast cast us out, "astonished" the Oxford Professor of Music, Sir Frederick Ouseley
Frederick Ouseley
Sir Frederick Arthur Gore Ouseley, 2nd Baronet was an English composer, organist, and musicologist.He was born in London, the son of Sir Gore Ouseley, and manifested an extraordinary precocity in music, composing an opera at the age of eight years. In 1844, having succeeded to the baronetcy, he...
, and was triumphantly performed and published in 1867. On going to Oxford after leaving Eton, Parry did not study music, being intended by his father for a commercial career, and instead read law and modern history. From 1870 to 1877 he was an underwriter at Lloyd's of London
Lloyd's of London
Lloyd's, also known as Lloyd's of London, is a British insurance and reinsurance market. It serves as a partially mutualised marketplace where multiple financial backers, underwriters, or members, whether individuals or corporations, come together to pool and spread risk...
. In 1872 he married Lady Elizabeth Maude Herbert (1851–1933), second daughter of the politician Sidney Herbert
Sidney Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Lea
Sidney Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Lea PC was an English statesman and a close ally and confidante of Florence Nightingale.-Early life:...
and his wife Elizabeth. His in-laws, like his father, preferred a conventional career for him, although Parry proved as unsuccessful in insurance as he was successful in music. Parry and his wife had two daughters, their elder, Dorothea (d. 11 July 1963) married the politician Arthur Ponsonby
Arthur Ponsonby, 1st Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede
Arthur Augustus William Harry Ponsonby, 1st Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede was a British politician, writer, and social activist. He was the third son of Sir Henry Ponsonby, Private Secretary to Queen Victoria, and the great-grandson of Frederick Ponsonby, 3rd Earl of Bessborough...
in 1898 and had a son and a daughter. Their younger daughter Gwendolen (b. 1877) married the baritone Harry Plunket Greene
Harry Plunket Greene
Harry Plunket Greene was an Irish baritone singer who was most famous in the formal concert and oratorio repertoire. He made a great contribution to British musical life also by writing and lecturing upon his art, and in the field of competitions and examinations...
(1865–1936) and had two sons and a daughter.
Double harness
Parry continued his musical studies alongside his work in insurance. He had already studied with the English-born composer Henry Hugo PiersonHenry Hugo Pierson
Henry Hugh Pearson was an English composer resident from 1845 in Germany. He is also known as Edgar Mansfeld and, when living in Germany, as Heinrich Hugo Pierson. He had success in his adopted country with his operas and songs but little in his own, and his music is now rarely performed...
in Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
, and on moving to London he took lessons from William Sterndale Bennett
William Sterndale Bennett
Sir William Sterndale Bennett was an English composer. He ranks as the most distinguished English composer of the Romantic school-Biography:...
, but finding them insufficiently demanding he sought lessons from Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene...
. Brahms was not available, and Parry was recommended to the pianist Edward Dannreuther
Edward Dannreuther
Edward Dannreuther was a German pianist and writer on music resident from 1863 in England. He trained as a musician at the Conservatoire at Leipzig, where he was a pupil of Ignaz Moscheles, a severe critic of the music of Wagner and Franz Liszt...
, "wisest and most sympathetic of teachers". Dannreuther started by giving Parry piano lessons, but soon extended their studies to analysis and composition. At this stage in his musical development, Parry moved away from the classical conventions inspired by Mendelssohn
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...
. Dannreuther introduced him to the music of Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
, which influenced his compositions of these years.
At the same time as his compositions were coming to public notice, Parry was taken up as a musical scholar by George Grove
George Grove
Sir George Grove, CB was an English writer on music, known as the founding editor of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians....
, first as his assistant editor for his new Dictionary of Music and Musicians
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, it is the largest single reference work on Western music. The dictionary has gone through several editions since the 19th century...
, to which post Parry was appointed in 1875 and contributed 123 articles, and then, in 1883, Grove, as the first director of the new Royal College of Music
Royal College of Music
The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire founded by Royal Charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, England.-Background:The first director was Sir George Grove and he was followed by Sir Hubert Parry...
, appointed him as the college's professor of composition and musical history.
Parry's first major works appeared in 1880: a piano concerto, which Dannreuther premiered, and a choral setting of scenes from Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
's Prometheus Unbound. The first performance of the latter has often been held to mark the start of a "renaissance" in English music
English Musical Renaissance
The English Musical Renaissance was a hypothetical period in the late 19th and early 20th century, when British composers, often those lecturing or trained at the Royal College of Music, were said to have freed themselves from foreign musical influences, to have begun writing in a distinctively...
, but was regarded by many critics as too avant garde. Parry scored a greater contemporary success with the ode Blest Pair of Sirens (1887), commissioned by and dedicated to Charles Villiers Stanford
Charles Villiers Stanford
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford was an Irish composer who was particularly notable for his choral music. He was professor at the Royal College of Music and University of Cambridge.- Life :...
, one of the first British musicians to recognise Parry's talent. Stanford described Parry as the greatest English composer since Purcell. Blest Pair of Sirens, a setting of Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
's "At a Solemn Musick"
Milton's 1645 Poems
Milton's 1645 Poems is a collection, divided into separate English and Latin sections, of the poet's youthful poetry in a variety of genres, including such notable works as An Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity, Comus, and Lycidas. Appearing in late 1645 or 1646 , the octavo volume, whose...
, suggested as a text by Grove, established Parry as the leading English choral composer of his day; this had the drawback of bringing him a series of commissions for conventional oratorios, a genre with which he was not in sympathy.
Peak years
Now well established as a composer and scholar, Parry received many commissions. Among them were choral works such as the Ode on Saint Cecilia's Day (1889), the oratorioOratorio
An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...
s Judith (1888) and Job (1892), the psalm-setting De Profundis (1891) and a lighter work, The Pied Piper of Hamelin (1905), described later as "a bubbling well of humour." The biblical oratorios were well received by the public, but Parry's lack of sympathy with the form was mocked by George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
, then writing musical criticism in London. He denounced Job as "the most utter failure ever achieved by a thoroughly respectworthy musician. There is not one bar in it that comes within fifty thousand miles of the tamest line in the poem."
Contemporary critics generally regarded Parry's orchestral music as of secondary importance in his output, but in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries many of Parry's orchestral pieces have been revived. These include five symphonies
Symphony
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...
, a set of Symphonic Variations in E minor, the Overture
Overture
Overture in music is the term originally applied to the instrumental introduction to an opera...
to an Unwritten Tragedy (1893) and the Elegy for Brahms (1897). In 1883 Parry wrote music to accompany the Cambridge Greek Play
Cambridge Greek Play
The Cambridge Greek Play is a play performed in Ancient Greek by students and alumni of the University of Cambridge, England. The event is held once every three years and is a tradition which started in 1882 with the Ajax of Sophocles....
The Birds by Aristophanes
Aristophanes
Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete...
, a production which starred the mediaevalist and ghost-story writer, M. R. James
M. R. James
Montague Rhodes James, OM, MA, , who used the publication name M. R. James, was an English mediaeval scholar and provost of King's College, Cambridge and of Eton College . He is best remembered for his ghost stories, which are regarded as among the best in the genre...
. Parry received an honorary degree from Cambridge University
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
in the same year. Subsequently, he wrote music for Oxford productions of Aristophanes: The Frogs (1892), The Clouds (1905) and The Acharnians (1914). He had also provided elaborate incidental music for a West End production by Beerbohm Tree Hypatia (1893). In contrast to this involvement with music for the theatre, his only attempt at opera, Guenever was turned down by the Carl Rosa Opera Company.
When Grove retired as director of the Royal College of Music, Parry succeeded him from January 1895, and held the post until his death. In 1900 he succeeded John Stainer
John Stainer
Sir John Stainer was an English composer and organist whose music, though not generally much performed today , was very popular during his lifetime...
as professor of music at Oxford. An obituarist in 1918 lamented these calls on Parry's time: "A composer who counts is rare enough anywhere, any time. Do not try to use him as a mixture of university don, cabinet minister, city magnate, useful hack, or a dozen things besides. A great blow was delivered against English music when Parry was appointed to succeed Sir George Grove as director of the RCM." Despite the demands of these posts his personal beliefs, which were Darwinian and humanist, led him to compose a series of six "ethical cantata
Cantata
A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir....
s", experimental works in which he hoped to supersede the traditional oratorio and cantata forms. They were generally unsuccessful with the public, though Elgar
Edward Elgar
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM, GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos...
admired The Vision of Life (1907), and The Soul's Ransom (1906) has had several modern performances.
Influenced as a composer principally by Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
and Brahms
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene...
, Parry evolved a powerful diatonic
Diatonic scale
In music theory, a diatonic scale is a seven note, octave-repeating musical scale comprising five whole steps and two half steps for each octave, in which the two half steps are separated from each other by either two or three whole steps...
style which itself greatly influenced future English composers such as Elgar and Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...
. His own full development as a composer was almost certainly hampered by the immense amount of work he took on; but his energy and charisma, not to mention his abilities as a teacher and administrator, helped establish art music at the centre of English cultural life. As head of the Royal College of Music, he numbered among his leading pupils Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst
Gustav Holst
Gustav Theodore Holst was an English composer. He is most famous for his orchestral suite The Planets....
, Frank Bridge
Frank Bridge
Frank Bridge was an English composer and violist.-Life:Bridge was born in Brighton and studied at the Royal College of Music in London from 1899 to 1903 under Charles Villiers Stanford and others...
and John Ireland
John Ireland (composer)
John Nicholson Ireland was an English composer.- Life :John Ireland was born in Bowdon, near Altrincham, Manchester, into a family of Scottish descent and some cultural distinction. His father, Alexander Ireland, a publisher and newspaper proprietor, was aged 70 at John's birth...
.
Parry was created a Knight Bachelor
Knight Bachelor
The rank of Knight Bachelor is a part of the British honours system. It is the most basic rank of a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not as a member of one of the organised Orders of Chivalry...
in 1898. He was made a baronet
Baronet
A baronet or the rare female equivalent, a baronetess , is the holder of a hereditary baronetcy awarded by the British Crown...
in 1902. The baronetcy became extinct on his death.
Books on music
Parry wrote about music throughout his adult life. As well as his 123 articles in Grove's Dictionary, his publications include Studies of Great Composers (1886); The Art of Music (1893) enlarged as The Evolution of the Art of Music (1896); The Music of the Seventeenth Century, (Volume III of the Oxford History of Music (1902); Johann Sebastian Bach: the Story of the Development of a Great Personality (1909); and Style in Musical Art, collected Oxford lectures (1911).Last years
Parry resigned his Oxford appointment on doctor's advice in 1908 and in the last decade of his life produced some of his best-known works, including the Symphonic Fantasia '1912 (also called Symphony No. 5), the Ode on the Nativity (1912), JerusalemAnd did those feet in ancient time
"And did those feet in ancient time" is a short poem by William Blake from the preface to his epic Milton a Poem, one of a collection of writings known as the Prophetic Books. The date on the title page of 1804 for Milton is probably when the plates were begun, but the poem was printed c. 1808...
(1916) and the Songs of Farewell (1916–1918). The piece by which he is best known, the setting of William Blake's poem "Jerusalem" mentioned above, was immediately taken up by the suffragette movement, with which both Parry and his wife were strongly in sympathy.
Parry held German music and its traditions to be the pinnacle of music, and was a friend of German culture in general. He was, accordingly, certain that Britain and Germany would never go to war against each other, and was in despair when World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
broke out. In the words of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: "During the war he watched a life's work of progress and education being wiped away as the male population—particularly the new fertile generation of composing talent—of the Royal College dwindled."
In the autumn of 1918 Parry contracted Spanish flu
Spanish flu
The 1918 flu pandemic was an influenza pandemic, and the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus . It was an unusually severe and deadly pandemic that spread across the world. Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify the geographic origin...
during the infamous global pandemic
Pandemic
A pandemic is an epidemic of infectious disease that is spreading through human populations across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or even worldwide. A widespread endemic disease that is stable in terms of how many people are getting sick from it is not a pandemic...
and died at Knightscroft, Rustington
Rustington
Rustington is a seaside resort and civil parish near Littlehampton in West Sussex. Rustington is centrally situated on the West Sussex coast almost midway between the cathedral city of Chichester and Brighton. For local government purposes, it forms part of the Arun district of the administrative...
, West Sussex, aged 70. At the suggestion of Stanford he was buried in St Paul's Cathedral. The site of his birthplace in Richmond Hill, Bournemouth, next door to The Square
The Square, Bournemouth
The Square is a public square that marks the centre of Bournemouth, England. It has been almost totally pedestrianised since 2000. Prior to this it was a large roundabout.-History:...
is marked with a blue plaque
Blue plaque
A blue plaque is a permanent sign installed in a public place to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person or event, serving as a historical marker....
, and there is a memorial tablet, with an inscription by Bridges, in Gloucester Cathedral, unveiled during the Three Choirs Festival
Three Choirs Festival
The Three Choirs Festival is a music festival held each August alternately at the cathedrals of the Three Counties and originally featuring their three choirs, which remain central to the week-long programme...
of 1922.