William Baines was an English pianist and composer who wrote over 150 works for solo piano and a number of larger orchestral works before his premature death of tuberculosis

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

 at the age of 23.

Life

Born in Horbury

Horbury

-Demography:In 2008 Horbury had a largely white population compared with Yorkshire and the Humber.-Population change:The population of Horbury in 2001 was 10,002-Transport:...

 near Wakefield

Wakefield

Wakefield is the main settlement and administrative centre of the City of Wakefield, a metropolitan district of West Yorkshire, England. Located by the River Calder on the eastern edge of the Pennines, the urban area is and had a population of 76,886 in 2001....

, Yorkshire, he came from a musical family. His father was a cinema pianist and organist at a Primitive Methodist Chapel. Encouraged by his parents, Baines began piano lessons at a young age and later had formal lessons at the Yorkshire Training College of Music in Leeds, although his later compositional style was largely self-taught. In 1913 the family moved to Cleckheaton

Cleckheaton

Cleckheaton is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees, in West Yorkshire, England, situated south of Bradford, east of Brighouse, west of Batley and south-west of Leeds...

 and whilst there Baines was able to attend the concerts of the Bradford Permanent Orchestral Society and acquainted himself with the basic orchestral repertoire. The family moved to York in 1917 where, aged 18, Baines became a professional musician and gave his first public piano recital at which a number of his original compositions were heard. He also wrote a symphony which was not to be performed until 1991.

In 1918 Baines was conscripted into the British Army during the last months of 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...

. Within a fortnight of being called up, he was hospitalised due to septic poisoning, and the war was over by the time he had been discharged, although his health, already delicate, never fully recovered. He continued to compose and give recitals until a few months before his death, although his only major recital outside of Yorkshire was in Bournemouth at the invitation of the conductor Sir Dan Godfrey

Dan Godfrey

Sir Dan Godfrey was a British music conductor and member of a musical dynasty that included his father Dan Godfrey...

 in 1921.

Works

Despite his youth, William Baines had completed roughly 150 works, mostly in the genre of the piano miniature. However, he also left a symphony, a Poem for piano and orchestra and a number of chamber works. Many of his piano works are influenced by the natural world, and often have descriptive titles; perhaps his best known work is the piano portrait "Goodnight to Flamboro'" and "The Lone Wreck" comprising the collection Tides, named after Flamborough Head

Flamborough Head

Flamborough Head is a promontory of on the Yorkshire coast of England, between the Filey and Bridlington bays of the North Sea. It is a chalk headland, and the resistance it offers to coastal erosion may be contrasted with the low coast of Holderness to the south...

, the coastal promontory on the Yorkshire coast. His Seven Preludes from 1919 are considered to be amongst his finest compositions. His Symphony in C Minor was premiered by the Airedale Symphony Orchestra at the Grassington Festival in 1991.

Baines was the subject of a 90 minute BBC Radio 3 drama in 2010 called Goodnight to Flamboro, which traced the final months of his life.

Orchestral

• Symphony in C Minor (1917)
• Island of the Fay (1919)
• Prelude to a Doll's Ballet (1920)
• Poem for piano and orchestra (1921)
• Thoughtdrift (1921)

Chamber

• Andante for string quartet (1922)
• Aubade for string quartet (1917)
• Dream Temple for violin and piano (1920)
• Marionettes for violin and piano (1919)
• Piano Trio (1918)
• Rhapsody in F# Minor for string quartet (1920)
• Sonata in G for violin and piano (1917-19)
• String Quartet in E Major (1917-18)
• Two Fragments for string quartet (1920-21)

Piano

• Sonata in A Minor (1917)
• Four Sketches (1917-18)
• Introduction & Waltz Caprice (1918)
• Poem Op 6 No 2 (1918)
• Paradise Gardens (1918-19)
• Seven Preludes (1919)
• Coloured Leaves (1919-20)
• Four Poems (1919-20)
• Three Concert Studies (1919-20)
• Milestones (1920)
• Tides (1920)
• Sonata in F# Minor (incomplete) (1918-21)
• Prelude (in G) (1921)
• Silverpoints (1921)
• Twilight Pieces (1921)
• Wind Sprites (1921)
• Prelude and Seven Diversions (1921)
• Pictures of Light (1920-22)
• A Last Sheaf (1921-22)
• Nocturne from Sonata in F# Minor (1922)
• Shade-Imagery (1922)