We continue today a two-part series “Composer of the Week”, on two of the composers whose works will feature in the Musical Oratory in our church on Friday 27th March:
Born in London in 1877, Henry Balfour Gardiner began playing the piano at the age of 5 and composing at the young age of 9. After studying at Charterhouse and New College, Oxford, he took further studies in music at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt. Gardiner composed music of a variety of genres, including two symphonies, the second of which premiered at the Proms in 1908.
He also dedicated much of his life to promoting the music of his contemporaries. Through Gardiner’s personal financing, the music of the likes of composers such as Arnold Bax and Gustav Holst was able to be performed in London in a series of concerts at Queen’s Hall from 1912 to 1913. Gardiner also spent two years working with George Barnet Gardiner collecting folk songs from the Hampshire region.
Gardiner was deeply critical of his own compositions. In 1925, he gave up composing altogether. Many of his compositions were lost, including his symphonies. It is suspected that he himself destroyed them out of dissatisfaction. He lived out the rest of his life on a pig farm in Dorset, dying in 1950. He was the great uncle of the famed British conductor, Sir John Eliot Gardiner.
At our Musical Oratory on 27 March, we shall hear his perhaps most famous piece, his Evening Hymn, a setting of the Te lucis ante terminum, a text that is traditionally prayed at the Office of Compline. He started writing this work while teaching at Winchester College in 1907 and had it published in 1908. Though Gardiner did not consider himself particularly religious at this point in his life, the work is magnificently emotive, with soaring melodies and dense, warm harmonies that lift one’s mind and heart to the glory of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. This recording by Norwich Cathedral Choir shows off the dynamic range of both the organ and the eight voices this brilliant work permits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ4rqjZKb4I
Queen’s Hall in London. The concert venue and its organ were destroyed during the Blitz in May 1941.
Henry Balfour Gardiner