44 Facts About Hubert Parry

1.

Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, 1st Baronet was an English composer, teacher and historian of music.

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2.

Hubert Parry composed the music for Ode to Newfoundland, the Newfoundland and Labrador provincial anthem .

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3.

In 1895 Hubert Parry succeeded Grove as head of the college, remaining in the post for the rest of his life.

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4.

Hubert Parry wrote several books about music and music history, the best-known of which is probably his 1909 study of Johann Sebastian Bach.

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5.

Hubert Parry was an enthusiastic cruising sailor and owned successively the yawl The Latois and the ketch The Wanderer.

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6.

Hubert Parry was born in Richmond Hill, Bournemouth, the youngest of the six children of Gambier Parry and his first wife, Isabella nee Fynes-Clinton, of Highnam Court, Gloucestershire.

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7.

Gambier Hubert Parry was an eminent collector of works of early Italian art at a time well before it was fashionable or widely known, and was a painter and designer of some talent; he invented "spirit fresco", a process of mural painting appropriate for the damp English climate, which he used in his private chapel at Highnam as well as in Ely Cathedral.

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8.

Besides his love of painting, Gambier Hubert Parry was himself musical, having studied piano and French horn as well as composition during his education at Eton.

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9.

Three of Gambier Parry's children died in infancy, and Isabella Parry died of consumption, aged 32, twelve days after the birth of Hubert.

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10.

Hubert Parry's was buried in the churchyard of St Peter's, Bournemouth, where Hubert was baptised two days later.

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11.

Hubert Parry grew up at Highnam with his surviving siblings, Clinton and Lucy .

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12.

Isabella's untimely death almost certainly affected her children, most obviously the eldest surviving son, Clinton, who was only seven when she died, and, more subtly, Hubert Parry: according to his daughter Dorothea, his stepmother Ethelinda's "love for the young ones", meaning her own children, gave her little or no time for her stepchildren.

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13.

Gambier Hubert Parry was often absent from home, being either away in London or on the Continent.

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14.

From January 1856 to the middle of 1858 Hubert Parry attended a preparatory school in Malvern, from where he moved to Twyford Preparatory School in Hampshire.

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15.

Just as Hubert Parry left Twyford for Eton College in 1861, home life was clouded by Clinton's disgrace: after a promising start at Oxford, studying history and music, Clinton had been sent down for womanising, drinking and indulging in opium.

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16.

That Hubert Parry was deeply affected by this is evident in his 1864 diary where he confessed a profound sense of loss.

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17.

Nonetheless, Hubert Parry threw himself into life at Eton with characteristic energy, and distinguished himself at sport as well as music, despite early signs of the heart trouble that was to dog him for the rest of his life.

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18.

Hubert Parry nonetheless benefited from Elvey's tuition and gained the advantage of being able to write anthems for the choir of St George's Chapel, which under Elvey's direction had reached a standard exceptional in English choral singing of that time.

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19.

Hubert Parry therefore introduced his student to the string quartets of Haydn and Mozart, and ultimately to some of the rudiments of orchestration.

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20.

Hubert Parry did not study music, being intended by his father for a commercial career, and instead read Law and Modern History.

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21.

Hubert Parry was an underwriter at Lloyd's of London from 1870 to 1877.

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22.

Hubert Parry found the work uncongenial and wholly contrary to his talents and inclinations, but felt obliged to persevere with it, to satisfy not only his father, but his prospective parents-in-law.

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23.

Hubert Parry's in-laws agreed with his father in preferring a conventional career for him, although Parry proved as unsuccessful in insurance as he was successful in music.

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24.

Hubert Parry continued his musical studies alongside his work in insurance.

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25.

Brahms was not available, and Hubert Parry was recommended to the pianist Edward Dannreuther, "wisest and most sympathetic of teachers".

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26.

At this stage in his musical development, Hubert Parry moved away from the classical traditions inspired by Mendelssohn.

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27.

Hubert Parry scored a greater contemporary success with the ode Blest Pair of Sirens, commissioned by and dedicated to Charles Villiers Stanford, one of the first British musicians to recognise Hubert Parry's talent.

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28.

Hubert Parry received an honorary degree from Cambridge University in the same year.

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29.

Hubert Parry had provided elaborate incidental music for a West End production by Beerbohm Tree, Hypatia .

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30.

When Grove retired as director of the Royal College of Music, Hubert Parry succeeded him from January 1895 and held the post until his death.

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31.

Hubert Parry's watchword was "characteristic" – that was the thing which mattered.

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32.

Hubert Parry resigned his Oxford appointment on medical advice in 1908 and, in the last decade of his life, produced some of his best-known works, including the Symphonic Fantasia 1912, the Ode on the Nativity and the Songs of Farewell .

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33.

Hubert Parry held German music and its traditions to be the pinnacle of music, and was a friend of German culture in general.

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34.

Hubert Parry was, accordingly, certain that Britain and Germany would never go to war against each other, and was in despair when World War I broke out.

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35.

In May 2015 seventy unpublished works by Hubert Parry came to light after being hidden away in a family archive for decades.

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36.

Hubert Parry's musical style is a complex aggregate reflecting his assimilation of indigenous as well as continental traditions.

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37.

Many colleagues and critics have concluded that Hubert Parry's music is that of a conventional and not strongly creative Englishman.

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38.

Hubert Parry was a Radical, with a very strong bias against Conservatism.

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39.

Hubert Parry was a free-thinker and did not go to my christening.

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40.

Hubert Parry never shot, not because he was against blood-sports, but felt out of touch and ill at ease in the company of those who enjoyed shooting parties.

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41.

Hubert Parry was an ascetic and spent nothing on himself.

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42.

Hubert Parry's father thought music unsuitable as a profession, and the critics of music in the mid-nineteenth century showed no mercy to anyone they considered privileged.

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43.

Hubert Parry himself is partly responsible for another belief about his music, that he was neither interested in nor good at orchestration.

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44.

Hubert Parry wrote some effective incidental music and fine chamber pieces.

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