Cecil Forsyth (30 November 1870, in Greenwich – 7 December 1941, New York City) was an English composer and musicologist.
Career
He studied at the University of Edinburgh and at the Royal College of Music (with Charles Villiers Stanford and
Hubert Parry), and played
viola in various London orchestras (including the Queen's Hall Orchestra) while establishing himself as a composer. In 1914 he moved to the US and took up a position at the music publishers H.W. Gray, who also became his publisher. He continued to compose and secure performances in the US, though mostly with choral societies and
.
[ He died in New York in 1941. Without the composer present to promote it, his music lost traction in the UK and was largely forgotten.][
]
Composer
As a composer he was best known for his G minor Viola Concerto, premiered at the Proms in 1903 with Émile Férir as soloist,[ BBC Proms performance archive, 12 September, 1903] and repeated in 1904 and 1906. According to Lewis Foreman, it is "possibly the first full blown concerto for viola by a British composer". (York Bowen's Viola Concerto followed in 1907). There is a modern recording by Lawrence Power and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.[ Foreman, Lewis. Notes to Hyperion CDA67546 (2005)] Chanson Celtique (1906) for viola and piano, also achieved some popularity and was later orchestrated.[ A Tribute To Rudolf Barshai, ICA Classics ICA 5136 (2015)]
The orchestral suite Four Studies from Victor Hugo also had its debut at the Proms in 1905.[ BBC Proms performance archive, 23 September, 1905] There were two comic operas, Westward Ho! and Cinderella, both produced in London at the Savoy Theatre, and a setting of John Keats' Ode to a Nightingale, published in 1894.The unaccompanied choral variations on Old King Cole from 1912 gained some popularity because of its humour.[Bynog, David M. The Vocal Music of Cecil Forsyth', in British Music 30 (2008): 6-15] There were also two sacred Masses and various songs, such as In Old Japan (setting W. E. Henley), The Return (setting Arthur Symons) and The Watcher, op. 74 (setting James Stephens).
Once in the US, Forsyth composed The Last Supper: a Lenten Meditation in 1916 for chorus and orchestra, and two choral ballads for soloists with orchestra, Tinker, Tailor (1919) and The Luck of Eden Hall (1922).[Bynog, David M. 'Cecil Forsyth: The Forgotten Composer?' in Journal of the American Viola Society 24, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 13-19] Other works composed in America were The Dark Road for viola and strings (1922) and the six movement Alice in Wonderland orchestral suite (1927).[ 'London Concerts', in The Musical Times, Vol. 68, No. 1017, November 1927, p. 1032]
Author
His most successful book was Orchestration, originally published in 1914 and revised in 1935. Dover published a reprint of this revision in 1983 with a new foreword by composer William Bolcom, who lauds especially Forsyth's insight into instrumental culture and his wit. Conductor Adrian Boult recalled how Forsyth advised Ralph Vaughan Williams about the orchestration of the latter's A London Symphony.[ Boult on Music: Words from a Lifetime's Communication (1983), ] Forsyth's other books include Music and Nationalism: A Study of English Opera (1911), Choral Orchestration (1920), A History of Music (1916, with Stanford), Modern Violin Playing (1920, with Samuel Dean Grimson), A Digest of Music History (1923) and a collection of essays, Clashpans (1933).[Colles, H.C. 'Cecil Forsyth' in Grove Music Online (2001)]
External links
