Reginald Owen Morris (3 March 1886 – 15 December 1948), known professionally and by his friends by his initials, as R.O. Morris, was a British composer and teacher.

Teacher and author

Morris was born in

York York is a cathedral city with Roman Britain, Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers River Ouse, Yorkshire, Ouse and River Foss, Foss in North Yorkshire, England. It is the historic county town of Yorkshire. The city has many hist ...

, son of Army officer Reginald Frank Morris and Georgiana Susan (née Sherard). He was educated at

Harrow School Harrow School () is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school (English Independent school (United Kingdom), independent boarding school for boys) in Harrow on the Hill, Greater London, England. The school was founded in 1572 by John Lyon (sc ...

New College, Oxford New College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1379 by William of Wykeham in conjunction with Winchester College as its feeder school, New College is one of the oldest colleges at ...

and the

Royal College of Music The Royal College of Music is a music school, conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, UK. It offers training from the Undergraduate education, undergraduate to the Doctorate, doctoral level in a ...

(RCM) in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. On the outbreak of World War I he enlisted in the

Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry The Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry (DCLI) was a Light infantry, light infantry regiment of the British Army in existence from 1881 to 1959. The regiment was created on 1 July 1881 as part of the Childers Reforms, by the merger of the 32nd ( ...

, along with his friends

George Butterworth George Sainton Kaye Butterworth, MC (12 July 18855 August 1916) was an English composer who was best known for the orchestral idyll '' The Banks of Green Willow'' and his song settings of A. E. Housman's poems from ''A Shropshire Lad''. Earl ...

and Geoffrey Toye. After a time writing for ''

The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's ''The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...

'' as music critic he re-joined the RCM as a professor of counterpoint and composition in 1920. From 1926 for two years he taught at the

Curtis Institute The Curtis Institute of Music is a private conservatory in Philadelphia. It offers a performance diploma, Bachelor of Music, Master of Music in opera, and a Professional Studies Certificate in opera. All students attend on full scholarship. H ...

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

before returning to the RCM. Morris became famous as an exceptional teacher of counterpoint, and wrote several texts including ''Contrapuntal Technique in the Sixteenth Century'' (Oxford, 1922), ''Foundations of Practical Harmony and Counterpoint'' (London, 1925), ''Figured Harmony at the Keyboard'' (London, 1931), ''The Structure of Music'' (London, 1935) and ''Introduction to Counterpoint'' (London, 1944). His students included the composers

Gerald Finzi Gerald Raphael Finzi (14 July 1901 – 27 September 1956) was a British composer. Finzi is best known as a choral composer, but also wrote in other genres. Large-scale compositions by Finzi include the cantata '' Dies natalis'' for solo voice an ...

Sir Michael Tippett Sir Michael Kemp Tippett (2 January 1905 – 8 January 1998) was an English composer who rose to prominence during and immediately after the Second World War. In his lifetime he was sometimes ranked with his contemporary Benjamin Britten ...

Constant Lambert Leonard Constant Lambert (23 August 190521 August 1951) was a British composer, conductor, and author. He was the founder and music director of the Royal Ballet, and (alongside Ninette de Valois and Frederick Ashton) he was a major figure in t ...

Robin Milford Robin Humphrey Milford (22 January 1903 – 29 December 1959) was an English composer and music teacher. Biography Milford was born in Oxford, son of Sir Humphrey Milford, publisher with Oxford University Press. He attended Rugby School ...

Anthony Milner Anthony Francis Dominic Milner (13 May 1925 – 22 September 2002) was a British composer, teacher and conductor. Milner was born in Bristol, and educated at Douai School, Berkshire. He was awarded a bursary to attend the Royal College of Mus ...

Edmund Rubbra Edmund Rubbra (; 23 May 190114 February 1986) was a British composer. He composed both instrumental and vocal works for soloists, chamber groups and full choruses and orchestras. He was greatly esteemed by fellow musicians and was at the peak o ...

Bernard Stevens Bernard (George) Stevens (2 March 1916 – 6 January 1983) was a British composer. Life Born in London, Stevens studied English and Music at St John's College, Cambridge with E. J. Dent and Cyril Rootham, then at the Royal College of Music ...

and

Jean Coulthard Jean Coulthard, (February 10, 1908 – March 9, 2000) was a Canadian composer and music educator. She was one of a trio of women composers who dominated Western Canadian music in the twentieth century: Coulthard, Barbara Pentland, and Viole ...

Composer

His compositions have been overshadowed by his formidable reputation as a teacher. However, Morris enjoyed a ten year period of creativity as a composer roughly between 1922 and 1932, writing symphonic and chamber music, songs and choral works. One of the first, the ''Fantasy'' String Quartet in A, won a Carnegie Trust Award and was published as part of the

Carnegie Collection of British Music __NOTOC__ The Carnegie Collection of British Music was founded in 1917 by the Carnegie Trust to encourage the publication of large scale British musical works. Composers were asked to submit their manuscripts to an anonymous panel. On the panel at ...

. Gerald Finzi thought highly of his music, and in an obituary piece (quoted in

Diana McVeagh Diana McVeagh (born 6 September 1926, Ipoh) is a British author on classical music. She has written a biography of Gerald Finzi and several books on Edward Elgar. McVeagh studied at the Royal College of Music in the 1940s and was assistant editor ...

’s biography of Finzi) he chose four pieces representing Morris at his most approachable –''Corrina’s Maying'' for chorus and orchestra, the ''Concerto Piccolo'', the ''Suite for Chamber Orchestra'' and the six ''Canzoni Ricercati'' for string orchestra or string quartet – with the ''Toccata and Fugue for Orchestra'' at the other extreme and the Symphony in D (first performed on 1 January 1934 at the

Queen’s Hall The Queen's Hall was a concert hall in Langham Place, London, opened in 1893. Designed by the architect Thomas Knightley, it had room for an audience of about 2,500 people. It became London's principal concert venue. From 1895 until 1941, it ...

) somewhere in the middle. According to

Stephen Banfield Stephen David Banfield (born 1951) is a musicologist, music historian and retired academic. He was Elgar Professor of Music at the University of Birmingham from 1992 to 2003, and then Stanley Hugh Badock Professor of Music at the University of Br ...

, Finzi regarded the last of the ''Canzoni Ricercati'' as Morris's "one genuine masterpiece” and described it as a "grave and lovely" work. Much of his most powerful music is contrapuntally-led, as in the final Chaconne of the Sinfonia in C, the intense fugal and canonic writing of the ''Canzoni Ricercati'' No 6 (using themes that maintain the flavor of mournful folk melodies), or the first movement of the Symphony in D, where the coda develops into a masterly canon. But in the early 1930s Morris stopped composing and would never talk about his own compositions from that point onwards. Today he is generally known for just one work, the hymn tune ''Hermitage'', used as the melody for the carol ''

Love Came Down at Christmas "Love Came Down at Christmas" is a Christmas poem by Christina Rossetti. It was first published without a title in ''Time Flies: A Reading Diary'' in 1885. It was later included in the collection ''Verses'' in 1893 under the title "Christmastide" ...

''. The Sinfonia in C was revived at the

English Music Festival The English Music Festival (also known as EMF) is an annual four-day event held over the second May bank holiday, dedicated to the performance of British composers from the mediaeval to the present day with a strong focus on the early to mid twe ...

Dorchester Abbey The Abbey Church of St Peter and St Paul, more usually called Dorchester Abbey, is a Church of England parish church in Dorchester on Thames, Oxfordshire, about southeast of Oxford. It was formerly a Norman abbey church and was built on the s ...

on 27 May, 2022, with the

BBC Concert Orchestra The BBC Concert Orchestra is a British concert orchestra based in London, one of the British Broadcasting Corporation's five radio orchestras. With around fifty players, it is the only one of the five BBC orchestras which is not a full-scale symp ...

conducted by Martin Yates.

Personal life

Beyond music, Morris set crosswords for ''The Times'' and edited the 1914

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...

edition of R D Blackmore's novel ''

Lorna Doone ''Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor'' is a novel by English author Richard Doddridge Blackmore, published in 1869. It is a romance based on a group of historical characters and set in the late 17th century in Devon and Somerset, particularly ar ...

''. In February 1915 Morris married Emmie Fisher, thus becoming brother-in-law to

Vaughan Williams Ralph Vaughan Williams, (; 12 October 1872– 26 August 1958) was an English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over ...

, who had married her sister Adeline. For many years in the 1920s and 1930s Morris lived at 30,

Glebe Place Glebe Place is a street in Chelsea, London. It runs roughly north to south from King's Road to the crossroads with Upper Cheyne Row, where it becomes Cheyne Row, leading down to Cheyne Walk and the River Thames. It also has a junction with Br ...

, very close to Vaughan Williams and Adeline. He later moved to 2, Addison Gardens in Kensington, where he died very suddenly in December 1948, having been examining at the Royal College of Music the day before with no sign of anything wrong.

Works

Orchestral and chamber * 1922 ''Fantasy'' for string quartet * 1925 ''Motet'' for string quartet (''fp 7 June 1925'') * 1928-9 Sinfonia in C Major * 1930 ''Concerto piccolo'' for two violins and string orchestra * 1930 Concerto in G minor for Violin and Orchestra * 1931 ''Canzoni Ricercati'' for string quartet or string orchestra * 1932 ''Partita Lidica'' (Suite for Violoncello and Orchestra in F major) * 1934 Symphony in D * Toccata and Fugue for Orchestra Choral * 1925 ''Love came down at Christmas'' (tune ''Hermitage'') * 1928 ''See amid the winter's snow'' (tune ''Winter's Snow'') * 1929 'Six English Folk-Songs (''Seventeen come Sunday, Brisk young sailor'' (two versions) ''The lawyer, Tarry trousers, The cuckoo'') * 1930 ''There is a Garden'' * 1931 Five English Folk-Songs (''Blow away the Morning Dew, Cold Blows the Wind, High Germany, The Turtle-Dove, The Mare and the Foal) * 1932 ''Since thou, O fondest and truest'' * 1932 ''Hunting Song'' * 1933 ''Corinna's Maying''. (also version with orchestral accompaniment)

References

External links

War Composers: The Music of World War 1 - R O Morris

Free scores at IMSLP
{{DEFAULTSORT:Morris, Reginald 1886 births 1948 deaths English classical composers 20th-century classical composers People educated at Harrow School Alumni of New College, Oxford Alumni of the Royal College of Music Musicians from York English male classical composers 20th-century English composers 20th-century British male musicians British Army personnel of World War I Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry soldiers Military personnel from York