Sir Arthur Somervell (1863–1937)

Born in Windermere on 5th June 1863, Somervell was one of the school of composers to come out of the first years of Charles Villiers Stanford’s tuition at King’s College, Cambridge and Hubert Parry’s at the Royal College of Music.

After Cambridge and before going to the Royal College of Music, Somervell spent two years in Berlin at the Hochschule following the normal pattern of the day. A life spent in teaching, which led to his eventual appointment as Inspector of Music to the Board of Education and to his knighthood in 1929, left him little time for composition. Nevertheless, he made an important contribution to English music, particularly in his five song-cycles of which Maud, to poems by Tennyson, remains a masterpiece.