44 Facts About Edmund Rubbra

Edmund Rubbra composed both instrumental and vocal works for soloists, chamber groups and full choruses and orchestras.

Edmund Rubbra was greatly esteemed by fellow musicians and was at the peak of his fame in the mid-20th century.

Edmund Rubbra was the brother of the engineer Arthur Rubbra.

Edmund Rubbra was born Charles Edmund Rubbra at 21 Arnold Road, Semilong, Northampton.

Edmund Rubbra's parents encouraged him in his music, but they were not professional musicians, though his mother had a good voice and sang in the church choir, and his father played the piano a little, by ear.

Edmund Rubbra remembered waking one winter's morning when he was about three or four years old, and noticing something different about the light in his bedroom; there was light where there was usually shadow, and vice versa.

When his father came into the room, Edmund Rubbra asked him why this was.

Edmund Rubbra's father explained that there had been a fall of snow during the night, and so the sunlight was reflecting off the snow and entering Edmund's bedroom from below, instead of above, thus reversing the patterns of light and shade.

Edmund Rubbra then set these two melodies together, but slightly offset from one another, so that the listener hears the melody going up, say, then an echo where it goes down instead.

Edmund Rubbra was out walking with his father on a hot summer Sunday.

Edmund Rubbra was lost in the magic of the moment, losing all sense of the scenery round about him, just being aware of "downward drifting sounds that seemed isolated from everything else around".

Edmund Rubbra took piano lessons from a local woman with a good reputation and a piano with discoloured ivory keys.

At this house, above the shop, Edmund Rubbra had the back bedroom for his work, but the stairs were not wide enough to allow the piano to be brought up, so the window frame of his room had to be removed to get the piano in from outside.

Edmund Rubbra would have been very familiar with hymn tunes, as he attended a Congregational church and played the piano for the Sunday School.

Edmund Rubbra worked as an errand boy whilst he was still at school, giving some of his earnings to his parents.

Edmund Rubbra was delighted to be able to accrue a number of stamps from parcels and letters sent to this factory, as stamp-collecting was one of his hobbies.

Edmund Rubbra, influenced by his mother's lack of enthusiasm for the idea, declined.

Edmund Rubbra continued to study harmony, counterpoint, piano and organ, working at these things daily, before and after his clerk's job.

Edmund Rubbra used to meet with the keen, young composer, William Alwyn, who was from Northampton, to compare notes.

Edmund Rubbra was deeply affected by a sermon he heard given by a Chinese Christian missionary, Kuanglin Pao.

At the age of 17, Edmund Rubbra decided to organise a concert devoted entirely to Cyril Scott's music, with a singer, violinist, cellist and himself on the piano, at the Carnegie Hall in Northampton Library.

The minister from Edmund Rubbra's church attended the concert, and secretly sent a copy of the programme to Cyril Scott.

Edmund Rubbra was able to obtain cheap rail travel because of his job with the railway, so he was able to get to Scott's house by train, paying only a quarter of the usual fare.

Holst taught at the Royal College of Music and advised Edmund Rubbra to apply for an open scholarship there.

Edmund Rubbra's advice was followed and the place was secured.

Edmund Rubbra accepted this offer despite this meaning that he missed his last term.

Edmund Rubbra was happy to oblige, and the trio, with William Pleeth the cellist, Joshua Glazier violinist and himself on the piano took six months acquiring a repertoire of chamber music.

From 1947 to 1968 Edmund Rubbra was a lecturer at the Music Faculty and a Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford.

The army trio kept meeting, playing at clubs and broadcasting, for a number of years, but eventually Edmund Rubbra was too busy to continue with it.

Edmund Rubbra received a request from the BBC to write a piece for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

Edmund Rubbra initially accepted, but later withdrew; Britten then asked Arthur Oldham and Humphrey Searle to take his place.

Edmund Rubbra died in Gerrards Cross on 14 February 1986.

Edmund Rubbra was married three times, firstly in 1925 to his landlady Lilian Duncan.

In 1975, Edmund Rubbra married Colette Yardley, with whom he had had one son was born on 1974 and called Adrian.

Edmund Rubbra did not base his composition on formal rules, preferring to work from an initial idea and discover the music as he composed.

Edmund Rubbra's style is more concerned with the melodic lines in his music than with the chords, and this gives his music a vocal feel.

Edmund Rubbra found his method of composition, working from a single melodic idea and letting the music grow from that, to be very exciting.

Edmund Rubbra himself identified this when he said, "in much of my later music a particular musical interval rather than a key underlies the building of the structure".

Edmund Rubbra wrote for children's voices and madrigals, as well as producing masses and motets, including the Nine Tenebrae Motets, Op.

Edmund Rubbra's songs are not well known, but, again they spanned his whole composing lifetime: Rosa Mundi, Op.

Edmund Rubbra did write diverse chamber music throughout his career.

Edmund Rubbra's last completed work was his Sinfonietta for large string orchestra, Op.

Edmund Rubbra is well known for his 1938 orchestration of Johannes Brahms's piano work Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel.

Edmund Rubbra wrote numerous articles during his lifetime, about both his own music and that of others, including Gerald Finzi, Constant Lambert, John Ireland, Paul Hindemith, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, Benjamin Britten, Johann Sebastian Bach, Alexander Scriabin, Bela Bartok and Dmitri Shostakovich.