Gerrard Williams Explained

John Gerrard Williams (10 December 1888 – 7 March 1947), most commonly known as Gerrard Williams, was an English composer and arranger.[1]

Life

Williams was born in London - his birth name was John Gerrard Williams. He had no formal music education (other than some informal advice from Richard Henry Walthew), but learned through amateur performing in choirs and orchestras and through concert going. He trained and worked as an architect, though began composing in his spare time from around 1911.[2]

He gave up architecture after 1920, and began organising concerts of his music. These included a concert at the Pump Room in Bath on 2 February 1921. 16 of his songs were sung by the tenor Osmond Davis with the composer at the piano.[3] The tenor, Vladimir Rosing, premiered his song Idyll at Aeolian Hall in New York on 8 February 1922, The Musical Leader calling it "extraordinary."[4] A further concert of his chamber music, including the second string quartet, piano works and songs, was held at the Aeolian Hall in London on 27 March 1922.[5] In 1924 the BBC broadcast an hour long programme of his chamber music,[6] and another hour of orchestral and choral music in 1928, conducted by Stanford Robinson.[7]

He was also a prolific arranger of folk-songs and folk-dance tunes, as well as adaptions of popular classics. His arrangements for military band in the 1930s include the Eric Coates' London Suite for Chappell & Co. He also arranged the suite from the 1937 Arthur Bliss ballet Checkmate for wind orchestra.[8]

In the 1930s Williams was living at Underhill, Stafford Road in Caterham.[9] He died in Oxted, Surrey at the age of 58.

Music

His many compositions include a comic operetta for children The Story of the Willow Pattern Plate (1921), and the ballad opera Kate, The Cabin Boy, based on traditional tunes and inspired by the success of the Beggar's Opera revival in 1920.[10] It was produced by Donald Calthrop at the Kingsway Theatre in 1924.[11] There are orchestral suites, incidental music for radio, chamber music, including two string quartets, choral works, solo piano pieces and songs. Much of his music could be classified as light music miniatures, but folk music is also an important component, while the influence of Debussy and Ravel is sometimes noted in connection with the piano works and chamber music.[12]

Pot-Pourri, the orchestrated version of a piano suite with eight short movements titled after the names of flowers, was given at the Proms twice, in 1921 and 1922.[13] Williams also wrote one of the movements of Captions: Five Glimpses of an Anonymous Theme (1923), a suite with other movements by Herbert Bedford, Arthur Bliss, Eugene Goossens and Felix Harold White.[14]

Selected works

Dramatic

Orchestra

Chamber

Piano

Songs

Choral

External links

Notes and References

  1. Leach, Gerald. British Composer Profiles (3rd. edition, 2012), p. 217
  2. Arthur Eaglefield-Hull. A Dictionary of Modern Music and Musicians (1924), p. 521
  3. 'A Gerrard Williams Concert at Bath', The Musical Times, Vol. 62, No. 937 (March 1921), p. 186
  4. Bauer, Emilie Frances. The Musical Leader, 16 Feb 1922, p. 152.
  5. 'This Week's Music: Mr Gerrard Williams', in The Sunday Times, 2 April 1922, Issue 5164, p. 7
  6. https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/page/5ed6b16a58f64817a0b389ac9137d050 Radio Times, Issue 40, 29th June 1924, p. 8
  7. https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/page/7a2c0c65c26a4d38a928d5992f7c1b69 Radio Times, Issue 226, 29th January 1928, p. 28
  8. Recorded on The Best Of British, Vol. 2, KOCD 8012 (2006)
  9. Who's Who in Music, Shaw Publishing (1935)
  10. https://www.jstor.org/stable/914023 'Gerrard Williams's Kate', in The Musical Times, Vol. 65, No. 975 (May 1924), p. 453
  11. https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/96a7bf61-d7e7-4904-8ee1-25c0f30299c3 Lucy Broadwood correspondence held at the Surrey History Centre
  12. Philip L Scowcroft. British Light Music, Dance Books (2013), p. 167
  13. https://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/events/works/4f387e46-50bd-4b4d-acdc-92360ab9d95e BBC Proms performance archive
  14. http://landofllostcontent.blogspot.com/2012/03/captions-five-glimpses-of-anonymous_14.html 'Captions', in The Land of Lost Content, 14 March, 2012
  15. https://books.google.com/books?id=t262J2y8HSMC&dq=%22gerrard+williams%22+%22composer%22&pg=RA1-PA607 Publisher's notice, in The Musical News and Herald, 13 May 1922, p. 607
  16. recorded by Richard Rodney Bennett on Best of British, Warner Classics Warner Classics 0289892 (2011)

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