Howard Ferguson (21 October 1908 – 31 October 1999) was an Irish composer and

musicologist Musicology (from Greek μουσική ''mousikē'' 'music' and -λογια ''-logia'', 'domain of study') is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology departments traditionally belong to the humanities, although some m ...

from Belfast. He composed instrumental, chamber, orchestral and choral works. While his music is not widely known today, his Piano Sonata in F minor, Op. 8 and his ''Five Bagatelles'', Op. 9, for piano are still performed. His works represent some of the most important 20th-century music to emerge from

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label=Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. North ...

Biography

Ferguson was born in

Belfast Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingd ...

and attended Rockport School in

Holywood, County Down Holywood ( ) ( Irish: ''Ard Mhic Nasca'', meaning 'Height of the Son of Nasca'. Latin: ''Sanctus Boscus'', meaning 'Holy Wood') is a town in the metropolitan area of Belfast in County Down, Northern Ireland. It is a civil parish and townland of ...

, where his musical talent was recognized, leading to several school prizes. The pianist Harold Samuel heard him in 1922 and encouraged his parents to allow him to travel to London to become his pupil. Following further studies at

Westminster School Westminster School is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school in Westminster, London, England, in the precincts of Westminster Abbey. It derives from a charity school founded by Westminster Benedictines before the 1066 Norman Conquest, as d ...

, Ferguson entered 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 ...

in 1924 to study composition with R. O. Morris and

Ralph 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 ...

. He also studied conducting with

Malcolm Sargent Sir Harold Malcolm Watts Sargent (29 April 1895 – 3 October 1967) was an English conductor, organist and composer widely regarded as Britain's leading conductor of choral works. The musical ensembles with which he was associated include ...

and formed a lifelong friendship with fellow-student

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 ...

with whom he attended

Richard Strauss Richard Georg Strauss (; 11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic music, Romantic and early Modernism (music), modern eras, he has been descr ...

Alpine Symphony ''An Alpine Symphony'' (''Eine Alpensinfonie''), Op. 64, is a tone poem for large orchestra written by German composer Richard Strauss in 1915. It is one of Strauss's largest non-operatic works; the score calls for about 125 players and a t ...

at the

Royal Albert Hall The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London. One of the UK's most treasured and distinctive buildings, it is held in trust for the nation and managed by a registered charity which receives no govern ...

. His early compositions such as his ''Octet'' of 1933 (scored for the same forces as

Franz Schubert Franz Peter Schubert (; 31 January 179719 November 1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite his short lifetime, Schubert left behind a vast ''oeuvre'', including more than 600 secular vocal wor ...

octet Octet may refer to: Music * Octet (music), ensemble consisting of eight instruments or voices, or composition written for such an ensemble ** String octet, a piece of music written for eight string instruments *** Octet (Mendelssohn), 1825 com ...

) met with considerable success. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, Ferguson helped

Myra Hess Dame Julia Myra Hess, (25 February 1890 – 25 November 1965) was an English pianist best known for her performances of the works of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schumann. Career Early life Julia Myra Hess was born on 25 February 1890 to a Jew ...

run the popular, morale-boosting series of concerts at the

National Gallery The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director o ...

. From 1948 to 1963 he taught at the

Royal Academy of Music The Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, England, is the oldest conservatoire in the UK, founded in 1822 by John Fane and Nicolas-Charles Bochsa. It received its royal charter in 1830 from King George IV with the support of the first Duke ...

, his students there including

Richard Rodney Bennett Sir Richard Rodney Bennett (29 March 193624 December 2012) was an English composer of film, TV and concert music, and also a jazz pianist and occasional vocalist. He was based in New York City from 1979 until his death there in 2012. Zachary Wo ...

and

Cornelius Cardew Cornelius Cardew (7 May 193613 December 1981) was an English experimental music composer, and founder (with Howard Skempton and Michael Parsons) of the Scratch Orchestra, an experimental performing ensemble. He later rejected experimental music, ...

. He regarded Bennett as having an astonishing natural talent, though lacking a personal musical style. His music has a haunting, searching quality, as if a deeply personal question is being asked, but never answered (Tait 2007, see below). In the song cycle ''Discovery'', the surrealistic poetic language of

Denton Welch Maurice Denton Welch (29 March 1915 – 30 December 1948) was a British writer and painter, admired for his vivid prose and precise descriptions. Life Welch was born in Shanghai, China, to Arthur Joseph Welch, a wealthy British rubber merchant, ...

("What are you in the morning when you wake? A quacking duck, a quacking drake?") is the ideal spark for Ferguson to express such private questioning in his aphoristic, fleeting settings (Tait). Ferguson produced what (according to Tait) is probably one of the greatest British solo piano works of the twentieth century, the stormy and passionate Piano Sonata, Op. 8, inspired by the death of a friend. Of his two violin sonatas, the second emerged after a long silence just after World War II; the ferocious energy of its finale has a spirit of escape and liberation, a suppressed voice finally speaking (Tait) (Ferguson had not had the time to compose during the war due to his other commitments). His miniatures, such as the ''Four Short Pieces'' for clarinet and piano and the ''Three Sketches'' for flute and piano, have a crystalline intensity, as if hinting at much larger works (Tait) –

Anton Webern Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 188315 September 1945), better known as Anton Webern (), was an Austrian composer and conductor whose music was among the most radical of its milieu in its sheer concision, even aphorism, and ste ...

was a composer he admired, even if stylistically Ferguson's own work belongs to the sound world of twentieth century Romanticism. Ferguson was always highly self-critical as a composer: after writing the large choral work ''The Dream of the Rood'' in 1958-9, he received a commission to write a string quartet. It was during the composition of this that he felt he was merely repeating his previous work, so he destroyed the sketches and gave up composing, saying that in his relatively few works he had said all he wanted to say. For the next decades he concentrated on musicology. His editions of such repertoire as early keyboard music and the complete

piano sonata A piano sonata is a sonata written for a solo piano. Piano sonatas are usually written in three or four movement (music), movements, although some piano sonatas have been written with a single movement (Domenico Scarlatti, Scarlatti, Liszt, Scr ...

s of Schubert are outstanding, with a meticulous attention to detail which makes them authoritative (Tait). Ferguson also worked with

to select and edit the songs of

Ivor Gurney Ivor Bertie Gurney (28 August 1890 – 26 December 1937) was an English poet and composer, particularly of songs. He was born and raised in Gloucester. He suffered from bipolar disorder through much of his life and spent his last 15 years in ps ...

for publication after his death: five volumes of ten songs were issued between 1938 and 1979.Banfield, Stephen. ''Sensibility and English Song'' (1985), p 181. In his later years he lived in a white-painted converted farmhouse in Barton Road in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge beca ...

, his quiet hospitality legendary (Tait). He wrote a cookbook in the 1990s, ''Entertaining Solo'', which commemorates the remarkable welcome he gave to so many friends, as does the memoir mentioned below. In the same decade he also prepared an edition of letters between himself and Gerald Finzi, which is an invaluable source of information on the professional lives of Ferguson and his circle. Late in his life, a friendship with the German singer Reiner Schneider-Waterberg led to his rediscovering a song written in 1958 as part of incidental music for a

William Golding Sir William Gerald Golding (19 September 1911 – 19 June 1993) was a British novelist, playwright, and poet. Best known for his debut novel ''Lord of the Flies'' (1954), he published another twelve volumes of fiction in his lifetime. In 1980 ...

play, '' The Brass Butterfly'', and subsequently rearranging it for counter-tenor and piano (originally harp) as "Love and Reason" (1958/1994), a moving postscript to a compositional output whose great characteristic is powerful emotions expressed through superb and strictly controlled craftsmanship. (Tait)

Compositions

*Op. 1 ''Two Ballads'', for baritone and orchestra (1928–32) *Op. 2 Violin Sonata No. 1 (1931) *Op. 3 ''Three Mediaeval Carols'', for voice and piano (1932–33) *Op. 4 Octet, for clarinet, bassoon, horn, string quartet and double-bass (1933) *Op. 5a Partita, orchestral version (1935–36) *Op. 5b Partita, version for two pianos or piano four hands (1935–36) *Op. 6 ''Four Short Pieces'', for clarinet or viola and piano (1932–36) *Op. 7 ''Four Diversions on Ulster Airs'', for orchestra (1939–42) *Op. 8 Piano Sonata in F minor (1938–40) *Op. 9 ''Five Bagatelles'' for piano (1944) *Op. 10 Violin Sonata No. 2 (1946) *Op. 11 Chauntecleer – ballet. (1948) Withdrawn and destroyed. *Op. 12 Concerto for piano and strings (1950–51) *Op. 13 ''Discovery'', song-cycle to words by

for voice and piano (1951) *Op. 14 ''Three Sketches'', for flute and piano (1932, revised 1952) *Op. 15 Two Fanfares, for trumpets and trombones (1952) *Op. 16 ''Overture for an Occasion'' for orchestra (1952–53) *Op. 17 ''Five Irish Folksongs'', for solo voice and piano (1954) *Op. 18 ''Amore Langueo'', for tenor, chorus and orchestra (1955–56) *Op. 19 ''The Dream of the Rood'', for soprano, chorus and orchestra (1958–59) * o opus numberString Quartet (c. 1959, sketches only, destroyed) *''Love and Reason'' for counter-tenor and piano (1958) Other destroyed works include the early Short Symphony, part of which was absorbed into the Octet, and a Mass setting.

Bibliography

*Ferguson, Howard: ''Keyboard Interpretation from the 14th to the 19th Century: An Introduction'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975) *Ridout, Alan (ed.): ''The Music of Howard Ferguson: A Symposium'' (London: Thames Publishing, 1989) *Ferguson, Howard: ''Music, Friends and Places: A Memoir'' (London: Thames Publishing, 1997) *Howard Ferguson and Michael Hurd (eds.):
Letters of Gerald Finzi and Howard Ferguson
' (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2001). *Euan Tait: "Quia Amore Langueo: The Friendship of Howard Ferguson", in: ''Abraxas Unbound'' (St. Austell: Abraxas Editions, 2007)

Recordings

Ferguson's music has had many distinguished interpreters. These have included

, who recorded the Piano Sonata in 1942, and

Jascha Heifetz Jascha Heifetz (; December 10, 1987) was a Russian-born American violinist. Born in Vilnius, he moved while still a teenager to the United States, where his Carnegie Hall debut was rapturously received. He was a virtuoso since childhood. Fritz ...

who recorded the first violin sonata in 1966. In addition, a live recording of ''Discovery'', performed by

Kathleen Ferrier Kathleen Mary Ferrier, CBE (22 April 19128 October 1953) was an English contralto singer who achieved an international reputation as a stage, concert and recording artist, with a repertoire extending from folksong and popular ballads to the c ...

and Ernest Lush in 1953, has been issued by Decca (475 6060). More recent recordings include: *''Hyperion'' CDA 66130 (1984): Piano version of the ''Partita'' and the Piano Sonata, performed by

Howard Shelley Howard Gordon Shelley (born 9 March 1950) is a British pianist and conductor. He was educated at Highgate School and the Royal College of Music. He was married to fellow pianist Hilary Macnamara (her death), with whom he has performed and recor ...

and Hilary MacNamara. *''EMI'' 0777 7 64738 2 6 (1986): ''Concerto for piano and strings'' and ''Amore langueo'' performed by

(piano),

Martyn Hill Martyn Hill (b. 14 Sept 1944) is a British tenor. Life and career Hill was born in Rochester, Kent on September 14, 1944. He studied at King's College, Cambridge, followed by the Royal College of Music. He pursued further vocal training with Audr ...

(tenor), the London Symphony Chorus and the

City of London Sinfonia City of London Sinfonia (CLS) is an English chamber orchestra based in London. CLS performs regularly across the city of London in venues from East London clubs to traditional Central London concert halls. CLS is orchestra-in-residence at Oper ...

, conducted by

Richard Hickox Richard Sidney Hickox (5 March 1948 – 23 November 2008) was an English conductor of choral, orchestral and operatic music. Early life Hickox was born in Stokenchurch in Buckinghamshire into a musical family. After attending the Royal Gramm ...

. *''Chandos'' CHAN 9082 (1992): Contains ''Two Ballads'', the orchestral version of the ''Partita'' and ''The Dream of the Rood''. Performed by Anne Dawson (soprano), Brian Rayner Cook (baritone), the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by

. *''Chandos'' CHAN 9316 (1995): Contains the two violin sonatas, ''Three Medieval Carols'', ''Four Short Pieces'', ''Love and Reason'', ''Discovery'', ''Three Sketches'', and ''Five Irish Folksongs''. Performed by Sally Burgess (mezzo-soprano), Reiner Schneider-Waterberg (countertenor),

John Mark Ainsley John Mark Ainsley (born 9 July 1963) is an English lyric tenor. Known for his supple voice, Ainsley is particularly admired for his interpretations of baroque music and the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In the course of his career, he has ...

(tenor), David Butt (flute),

Janet Hilton Janet may refer to: Names * Janet (given name) * Janet (French singer) (1939–2011) Surname * Charles Janet (1849–1932), French engineer, inventor and biologist, known for the Left Step periodic table * Jules Janet (1861–1945), French p ...

(clarinet), Lydia Mordkovitch (violin) and Clifford Benson (piano). *''Naxos'' 8.557290 (2005): Concerto for piano and strings, performed by Peter Donohoe and the

Northern Sinfonia Royal Northern Sinfonia is a British chamber orchestra, founded in Newcastle upon Tyne and currently based in Gateshead. For the first 46 years of its history, the orchestra gave most of its concerts at the Newcastle City Hall. Since 2004, th ...

References

External links

Howard Ferguson biography and list of works at Boosey and HawkesHoward Ferguson biography Banbridge District Online
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ferguson, Howard 1908 births 1999 deaths 20th-century classical composers 20th-century male musicians 20th-century musicians from Northern Ireland 20th-century British musicologists Academics of the Royal Academy of Music Alumni of the Royal College of Music Classical composers from Northern Ireland Composers from Northern Ireland Honorary Members of the Royal Philharmonic Society Male classical composers from Northern Ireland Musicians from Belfast People educated at Rockport School People educated at Westminster School, London