Percy Turnbull (14 July 1902 – 9 December 1976) was an English composer and pianist best known for his piano character pieces and songs.

Early life

Percy Purvis Turnbull trained as a chorister at the Cathedral Church of St Nicholas in Newcastle and took piano lessons from Sigmund Oppenheimer. After leaving school in 1916 he began working for the

Tyne Improvement Commission The Port of Tyne comprises the commercial docks on and around the River Tyne in Tyne and Wear in the northeast of England. History There has been a port on the Tyne at least since the Romans used their settlement of Arbeia to supply the g ...

, but kept up his musical interests in his spare time, encouraged by one of the leading musicians of the area,

William Gillies Whittaker William Gillies Whittaker (Newcastle upon Tyne, July 23, 1876 – Orkney Islands, July 5, 1944) was an English composer, pedagogue, conductor, musicologist, Bach scholar, publisher and writer. He spent his life promoting music. The University ...

, founder and conductor of the Newcastle Bach Choir. He won a scholarship to attend the

Royal College of Music The Royal College of Music (RCM) is a conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, UK. It offers training from the undergraduate to the doctoral level in all aspects of Western Music including pe ...

in 1923 and studied there with

Gustav Holst Gustav Theodore Holst (born Gustavus Theodore von Holst; 21 September 1874 – 25 May 1934) was an English composer, arranger and teacher. Best known for his orchestral suite ''The Planets'', he composed many other works across a range ...

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 ...

and

John Ireland John Benjamin Ireland (January 30, 1914 – March 21, 1992) was a Canadian-American actor and film director. Born in Vancouver, British Columbia and raised in New York City, he came to prominence with film audiences for his supporting roles i ...

.Dibble, Jeremy. 'Turnbull, Percy (Purvis)' in Grove Music Online (2001)
/ref> While there he won the Mendelssohn Scholarship and Arthur Sullivan Prize for his composition. He also began to give piano recitals and worked as an accompanist for 2LO and early

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

radio.

Career

After college, Turnbull took on a variety of musically-related jobs, editing piano rolls at the

Aeolian Company The Aeolian Company was a musical-instrument making firm whose products included player organs, pianos, sheet music, records and phonographs. Founded in 1887, it was at one point the world's largest such firm. During the mid 20th century, it surp ...

(where his boss was

Percy Scholes Percy Alfred Scholes (pronounced ''skolz''; 24 July 1877 – 31 July 1958) was an English musician, journalist, vegetarianism activist and prolific writer, whose best-known achievement was his compilation of the first edition of the '' Oxford Co ...

), playing for the Empire Theatre in Swansea and working as a music copyist for Hubert Foss at the

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, as well as teaching piano.Anne Pimlott Baker. 'Turnbull, Percy Purvis', ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''
/ref> In 1941 he began serving in the

Royal Artillery The Royal Regiment of Artillery, commonly referred to as the Royal Artillery (RA) and colloquially known as "The Gunners", is one of two regiments that make up the artillery arm of the British Army. The Royal Regiment of Artillery comprises t ...

, manning anti-aircraft batteries on the East Yorkshire coast. After the war Turnbull became principal piano teacher at the

Surrey College of Music The Surrey College of Music was founded in 1946 by music teacher and educational composer John Longmire (1902-1986) with composer and organist Reginald Jevons (1901-1981). It was based at Fitznells Manor in Ewell, and received support from many of ...

in Ewell, the most settled period of his career, which lasted until the College closed in 1956. From then until the end of his life Turnbull lived with his second wife Mary Parnell in Broomers Hill,

Pulborough Pulborough is a village and civil parish in the Horsham district of West Sussex, England, with some 5,000 inhabitants. It is located almost centrally within West Sussex and is south west of London. It is at the junction of the north–south A29 ...

, Sussex, close enough for frequent visits to see his friend John Ireland, living ten miles away in his windmill near

Steyning Steyning ( ) is a town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Horsham District, Horsham district of West Sussex, England. It is located at the north end of the River Adur gap in the South Downs, north of the coastal town of Shoreha ...

. He stopped composing in 1960 and took up watercolours.

Music

As a composer, Turnbull was influenced by the standard classical repertoire (

Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age ...

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. He is one of the most revered figures in the history of Western music; his works rank among the most performed of the classical music repertoire ...

Brahms Johannes Brahms (; ; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor of the mid- Romantic period. His music is noted for its rhythmic vitality and freer treatment of dissonance, often set within studied ye ...

) he learned as a pianist and taught to his pupils. This was tempered by an enthusiasm for the Russian pianist composers

Scriabin Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin, scientific transliteration: ''Aleksandr Nikolaevič Skrjabin''; also transliterated variously as Skriabin, Skryabin, and (in French) Scriabine. The composer himselused the French spelling "Scriabine" which was a ...

Rachmaninov Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff; in Russian pre-revolutionary script. (28 March 1943) was a Russian composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of ...

and Medtner, as well as the Francophile influence of Faure and

Ravel Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism in music, Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composer ...

, and also something of his friend and teacher John Ireland. Starting at the Royal College of Music, he began composing in all forms. A string quartet won first prize in the Newcastle Music Tournament and was performed there on 8 February 1923. An orchestral ''Northumbrian Rhapsody'' for orchestra was first performed by the London Symphony Orchestra at a Patrons' Fund Concert conducted by Sir Adrian Boult in 1925, and the piece was broadcast from London about a year later. His most extended instrumental work, the Violin Sonata, also dates from 1925 when it was played by Marie Wilson with Turnbull as pianist at the Royal College of Music. After that he composed mostly piano music and songs with piano accompaniment. Few were published in his lifetime, but there are eleven volumes of piano music posthumously published by the Turnbull Memorial Trust, including ''Seven Character Sketches'' (1923–1927), a five movement Piano Suite (1925), Six Preludes (1934–41), the Sonatina (1948), ''Three Winter Pieces'' (1951) and the ''Pasticcio on a theme of Mozart'' (1957) – the latter applying the styles of Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Fauré, Ravel, Delius and Bartok to the original Mozart theme. There are also two volumes of songs and partsongs. Peter Jacobs performed a selection of the piano music on a SOMM CD released in 2000, and a CD of the songs and partsongs followed in 2001.''The Songs & Part-Songs of Percy Turnbull'', SOMM CD 020
/ref>

References

External links

Portrait of Ralph Vaughan Williams
by Percy Turnbull, Royal College of Music {{DEFAULTSORT:Cundell, Edric 1902 births 1976 deaths 20th-century English classical pianists 20th-century English classical composers 20th-century English male musicians Alumni of the Royal College of Music British Army personnel of World War II British piano educators English male classical composers Royal Artillery personnel