# I'm trying to remember the name of a composer



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

I'm sure I don't have a lot of chances, since it's not an easy question. I discovered this composer years ago while I was reading something about Sorabji, and Sorabji was talking of this composer he highly admired and who composed in his opinion absolutely beautiful songs. I think it was a british composer, but at the time I wasn't able to find basically anything of him, except some article that also reinforced the idea that this was someone who had written great vocal music. But who was this musician? I may be making confusion, but I think it was also someone who went fighting in some war (maybe world war 1?) and died young, but I'm not sure. Any idea?


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

George Butterworth, perhaps?


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

elgar's ghost said:


> George Butterworth, perhaps?


That would be my guess.


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## Brahmsian Colors (Sep 16, 2016)

Certainly sounds like George Butterworth to me as well. Three works of his I thoroughly enjoy: The Banks of Green Willow, A Shropshire Lad and his English Idylls.


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## Josquin13 (Nov 7, 2017)

If it's not George Butterworth, it could be Ernest John Moeran, or E.J. Moeran, who didn't die in the first World War, but barely made it through & was badly scarred by the experience. I like Moeran's songs, too, & the imaginative writing for the piano part in these songs would likely interest a pianist like Sorabji:









Moeran: Complete Solo Songs Vocal & Song Piano Chandos


Moeran: Complete Solo Songs CHAN 10596




www.chandos.net





The following BBC article on composers that served & died in WWI might give you some further ideas, if your question remains unanswered: Composers who died during WW1 | Classical Music

Off the top of my head, I can't think of any British composers that perished in WWII...


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Sorabji wrote a great deal on British composers he more or less admired (Delius, Walton, Lambert, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Ireland, Lord Berners, Alan Bush, Peter Warlock, Sacheverall Sitwell) as well as those he disliked or detested (Bax, Holst, Howells, Arthur Bliss, Rutland Boughton, Cyril Scott, Eugene Goossens, Britten), but I’m not aware that he ever expressed an opinion about the music of George Butterworth or Moeran.

Sorabji's admiration for the then relatively unappreciated Delius was immense. In his opinion Delius was "the creator of radiant masterpieces", "the greatest and purest Nature poet that music has ever known". Sorabji called _A Song of the High Hills_ "one of the supreme masterpieces of music”. Delius' _A Mass of Life_ compared favorably to Bach's B minor Mass. Sorabji also had an intense admiration for the music of the London-based composer Bernard van Dieran who he considered a paragon among artists for “the amazing and strange beauty that emerges from his marvelously flexible and subtle writing.” In a review, Sorabji called a selection of van Dieran’s songs he heard in concert in 1928, the _Frammento de Zenobia, for Voice and eight instruments,_ the "epitome of perfection" as van Dieran understood completely the singer and his problems. He believed that all van Dieran’s songs were among the finest of the 20th century.


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## Josquin13 (Nov 7, 2017)

What a fascinating post, Rick. Thanks. It certainly sounds like it was Van Dieran. & I see that he worked in Intelligence for the secret service in the Netherlands during WWI, as a cypher expert.

I wonder if Peter Warlock, who you also mention, could be another possibility, considering that he & Sorabji moved within the same circles. I see that they both helped Van Dieran out financially, due to his ongoing health problems.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Josquin13 said:


> I wonder if Peter Warlock, who you also mention, could be another possibility, considering that he & Sorabji moved within the same circles. I see that they both helped Van Dieran out financially, due to his ongoing health problems.


Thanks, Josquin13. Warlock is certainly a possibility. He was greatly influenced by van Dieran’s contrapuntal style of writing and harmonic language, so it’s not surprising that Sorabji looked on Warlock’s music favorably. Warlock also admired Delius. For Sorabji, Warlock was a “great, an honoured, and deeply admired friend” as well as “one of the finest musical minds…a critic and writer of unparalleled brilliance, insight and subtlety.” Although he was at first put off by Sorabji's arrogant and aggressive familiarity, Warlock became a major source of inspiration and encouragement to Sorabji during his youth and also during his early years as a music critic for _The New Age_. They were ‘brothers-in-arms’ in their shared polemical, confrontational, and countercritical attitudes. It seems the only thing Sorabji didn’t like about Warlock was his friend's “wooden” conducting, especially of his own pieces.


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