uk4 - East Anglia

The conductor Sir Henry Wood, founder of the ‘Promenade Concerts’, lived here from 1918 until 1935. The composer Leoš Janáček visited him in 1926.

 House of Edward Speyer, a businessman and patron of music. Elgar visited him several times and stayed here in 1910, writing his Violin Concerto. Other guests include the composers Bridge, Grainger, R. Strauss and the conductor Adrian Boult.

Collection of dance- and theatre organs, player pianos and other mechanical musical instruments.

Last house of the great ancient music pioneer David Munrow (1942-1976) before committing suicide in a state of depression. He was specialized in renaissance wind instruments and made innumerable fine recordings with the Early Music Consort of London and other groups.

Birthplace of the composer Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994). She was a pupil of Vaughan Williams but in her later works she used a more contemporary idiom. Especially her 13 string quartets are admired.

Country house of the banker Nathanael Brassey. Haydn stayed here for five weeks in the late summer of 1791. During his pleasant stay, the host once threatened suicide in a sudden mood of excessive self-reproach; a strange incident which blew over soon.

House of the writer, dramatist and music critic George Bernard Shaw from 1906 until his death in 1950. Edward Elgar was a regular visitor since 1920. Shaw’s play Pygmalion inspired Frederick Loewe to the musical My Fair Lady.

The Scottish composer James Oswald (1710-1769) lived here from 1753. He was a teacher of the royal children and is suggested, among others, to be the composer of God save the King.

Last house of the Irish composer Michael William Balfe (1808-1870); he lived here from 1864.

During the renaissance era, composers such as Fairfax, Tye, Dowland and Gibbons offered compositions to acquire a MusB or MusD degree at Cambridge University. Dvořák in 1891 was the first composer to achieve a honorary degree; until 1910, Sullivan, Boito, Bruch, Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Dohnanyi, Elgar, Glazunov and Busoni followed. In 1964, young Britons marched in: Bliss, Britten, Tippett and Walton, as well as Roberto Gerhard, then a Cambridge resident. In 2010 Birtwistle.

The magnificent King’s College Chapel is the centre of church music since the 15^th century; its choir is famous.
Grieg and Saint-Saëns stayed in the King’s Lodge in 1894.

Tchaikovsky stayed here in 1894 with professor Maitland.

The Catalonian composer Roberto Gerhard (1896-1970) lived in Cambridge from 1939 and died in this house.

House of the composer Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) from 1874 until 1892, when he left the town, dissatisfied with his salary as professor; henceforth he gave his supervisions in the railway hotel, unwilling to set a foot in the town itself. Dvořák stayed with him in 1891.

William Sterndale Bennett and Joseph Joachim stayed in the former Bull Hotel.

The Dutch composer Pieter Hellendaal (1721-1799) was organist of Peterhouse and was buried here; his grave must be on a small field outside the church but is not marked.

This museum houses important manuscripts from the university collection, including Handel autographs and the famous Fitzwilliam Virginal Book from the 1610s with over 200 keyboard pieces by Bull, Byrd, Farnaby and others.

The musicology department of the university has a concert hall and an exhibition of musical instruments, including a Gamelan ensemble.

Guests of the Reverend Hugh Stewart include Kodály (1927, perf. of Psalmus Hungaricus), Honegger (1929, perf. of Le Roi David) and Alban Berg as a jury member in 1931.

The composer Christopher Tye (c1513-1573) was organist here between 1543 and ’61; he then retired in nearby Doddington. A later organist and composer of sacred music was John Ammer (1579-1641); his grave is in the church.

Plaque of Vaughan Williams, who visited this area in January 1905 to collect folk songs of the fishermen he met in the former pub The Tilden Smith.

House of the composer Malcolm Arnold (1921-2006) from 1984 until his death.

The composer John Jenkins (1592-1678) died in Kimberley and was buried in this church. He was the main inspirer to Purcell’s juvenile masterwork, the Fantazias for 3 to 7 viols.

Thomas Morley, who was born in Norwich in 1557, was organist in this church. An earlier composer, Osbert Pearsley (1521-1585) worked here as chorister and later as a lay clerk; he got a nice grave monument.

Plaque of Paganini and Liszt who appeared in the Corn Exchange.

A local Musick Clubb gathered in this well preserved concert venue from the 18^th century. Hummel appeared here in 1830.

The present theatre for opera and concerts is a modern building with 1300 seats.

Birthplace of the painter and composer William Crotch (1775-1847), a child prodigy – aged 3, he appeared before the queen in Buckingham Palace! From his enormous output, only some hymns sometimes are performed, but he is supposed to be the composer of the Big Ben tune.

Parental house of the composer E(rnest) J(ohn) Moeran (1894-1950), to which he moved in 1931 after the suicide of his friend Warlock in preceding December (> 4483).

Birthplace of Britain’s greatest 20^th century composer, Benjamin Britten (1913-1976). Suffolk would become the pre-eminent ‘Britten country’.

Britten bought this house in the 1960s to relax from the bustle of Aldeburgh, where he lived since 1947. He had a modern studio and a swimming pool added.

First Aldeburgh house of Britten and his life partner, the singer Peter Pears, from 1947-’57. In the same street is the Jubilee Hall, the cradle of the important Aldeburgh Festival, established in 1948 and held yearly in June.

The villa of Britten and Pears from 1957. Kodály, Poulenc and Shostakovich were among the foreign visitors. Today the house with numerous memorabilia and temporary exhibitions, moreover extended by an archive, can be visited by every music lover; highly recommended.

There is a window in memory of Britten in the parish church – also a festival venue. On the churchyard there are the graves of Britten and Pears, and also the grave of the pianist Imogen Holst, the composer’s daughter and Britten’s amanuensis between 1952 and 1964.

In 1996 the town council rejected the proposition for a Britten monument in the village. Nevertheless, a memorial by Maggi Hambling was erected in 2003 on the beach (direction Thorpeness), entirely paid for by donations; it is not a bust or statue but a broken double scallop with a text from Peter Grimes, Britten’s most famous opera: I hear those voices that not will be drowned.

Britten lived in this former mill from 1937 to 1939 and intermittently between 1942 and ’47. The composer Lennox Berkeley stayed with him for a year in 1937/38.

Snape Maltings is a complex of historic granaries and malt houses, today turned into shops, galleries, cafés, concert halls and studios. The large concert hall, opened in 1967, has 832 seats; it is the epicentre of the Aldeburgh Festival, next to some smaller halls and churches nearby.

House of the composer, conductor, flutist and teacher William Alwyn (1905-1985).

House of the song composer Roger Quilter (1877-1953).

Parental home until 1920 of the composer Michael (Kemp) Tippett (1905-1998).

Haydn stayed in Langham with Sir Patrick Blake and his wife for a couple of days in November 1791. Meanwhile he made a trip to Canterbury and admired the King’s Chapel.

The composer John Wilbye (1574-1638) worked here between 1595 and 1628 in the service of Sir Thomas Kitson.

This former church, today a community centre, has the disposal of five bells from the 15^th century, Britain’s oldest bells in fair condition.

The composer Ernest John Moeran (1894-1950) lived here from 1929 to 1931. He collected folk songs, but the stay was troubled by a motoring accident, alcoholism and at last the suicide of his friend Peter Warlock in December 1930, which shocked him deeply. Warlock had been of great influence upon him as composer and personally and he decided to move to his parental home to come to himself.

Grave of the composer John Wilbye (1574-1638); at the end of his life he had lived opposite the church.

From 1959 until his death, the composer and arranger Gordon Jacob (1895-1984) lived here. The plaque was installed in June 2013.

House of the composer John Ireland from 1942 to 1945.

House of the composer John Ireland from 1945 to 1947.

House of the composer Gustav Holst from 1917 to 1925. Here he wrote The Perfect Fool. The preceding house (Monk Street) where he wrote most of his masterwork The Planets was demolished.

Holst played the organ of this church. The instrument was made by Henry Cephas Lincoln in 1821 and moved here in 1858. It was restored in 2014. III/p/23.

Between 1925 and 1933 Holst lived in Great Easton in successively Brook End, The Cottage and Hill Cottage; the exact addresses couldn’t be found out.

The composer Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994; > 4141) lived here from 1954 until her death.

Grave of the conductor and composer Armstrong Gibbs (1889-1960). He was a pupil of Adrian Boult and Vaughan Williams. His Danbury home from 1919, ‘The Crossings’, was demolished.

The great composer William Byrd (1543-1623) was a regular visitor of Sir William Petre, secretary of state and the father of his patron John Petre. He composed a Pavan and Galliard for William. The Petres and Byrd had joined interests: they had remained Roman Catholics, not without danger in those days.

William Byrd lived in Stondon Massey from 1593 until his death in 1623 (house not extant) and is supposed to have been buried in this church (plaque at the south wall). His birthplace in Lincolnshire and his house in Stapleford Abbotts (1570s) are not known.

Byrd’s greatest forerunner Thomas Tallis (1505-1585) was organist of Waltham Abbey from 1538 until its dissolution in 1540. The abbey had the disposal of three organs. The organs haven’t survived but the church is extant; from the abbey itself remained the gatehouse and the bridge.

Birthplace of the pianist, modernist composer and critic Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892-1988). He was of Parsi/Spanish descent. Among his piano works, Opus Clavicembalisticum (1929/30) attracts attention because of its unprecedented technique and duration (2½-3 hours!). Complexity and huge dimensions also characterize a great deal of his other compositions.