Walford Davies

Walford Davies studied at Fitzwilliam College, Royal College of Music and St George's School, Windsor Castle. Training under Hubert Parry, Charles Villiers Stanford and William Smyth Rockstro is recorded. The recorded working language is English. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are classical. Employment is recorded with Aberystwyth University. Positions recorded include Master of the King's Music. Distinctions recorded are Officer of the Order of the British Empire and Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order.

• Name — Henry Walford Davies • Honorific Prefix — Major Sir • Honorific Suffix — KCVO • Office — 16th Master of the King's Music • Monarch — George V Edward VIII George VI • Term Start — 6 April 1934 • Term End — 11 March 1941 • Predecessor — Edward Elgar • Successor — Arnold Bax • Birth Name — Henry Walford Davies • Born — 6 September 1869 • Birthplace — Oswestry, Shropshire, England • Died — 11 March 1941 • Place of death — Wrington, North Somerset, England • Education — Royal College of Music

Henry Walford Davies was born in Oswestry, Shropshire. He was the seventh of nine children of John Whitridge Davies and Susan, née Gregory, and the youngest of four surviving sons. His father, although an accountant by profession, was an amateur musician who founded and conducted a choral society at Oswestry and was choirmaster of Christ Church Congregational church: at which Walford was a chorister, and at which Walford's siblings, Charlie and Harold, later held the post of organist. Harold Davies was professor of music at the University of Adelaide from 1919 to 1947. In 1882 Walford was accepted as a chorister at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, by the organist, Sir George Elvey. When his voice broke in 1885 Davies left the choir and was appointed organist of the Royal Chapel of All Saints, Windsor Great Park and was secretary to Elvey's successor, Walter Parratt, and Dean (later Archbishop) Randall Davidson. At this time British universities, including Cambridge, awarded "non-collegiate" music degrees to any applicant who could pass the necessary examinations. Davies entered for the Cambridge bachelor of music examinations in 1889, but his exercise (a cantata, The Future, to words by Matthew Arnold) failed. With the encouragement of Charles Villiers Stanford, professor of music at Cambridge, Davies made a second attempt, which was successful, and he graduated in 1891. In 1890 Davies was awarded a scholarship in composition at the Royal College of Music (RCM), London, where he was a student until 1894. His teachers there were Hubert Parry and (for a single term) Stanford for composition, and W. S. Rockstro (counterpoint), Herbert Sharpe (piano) and Haydn Inwards (violin). While still at the RCM he was organist of St George's Church, Campden Hill, for three months, and St Anne's Church, Soho for a year until 1891, when he resigned for health reasons. In the following year he was appointed organist of Christ Church, Hampstead; he remained there until 1897, holding the post in tandem for the last two years with an appointment from 1895 as teacher of counterpoint at the RCM in succession to Rockstro, a post that he held until 1903. He considered resigning the post in 1896, when he failed the counterpoint paper in the Cambridge examinations for the degree of doctor of music; he was successful at his second attempt, and the doctorate was conferred in March 1898. • Illustration — Walford Davies in the ceremonial uniform of a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order with Lady Davies, Windsor Castle, c. 1940

• Illustration — Walford Davies (left) in about 1932 with fellow musicians Sir Hugh Allen (centre) and Cyril Rootham (right) In 1919 Davies accepted the professorship of music at University College, Aberystwyth, together with the post of director of music for the University of Wales and chairman of the National Council of Music. Here, in the words of his biographer Henry Ley, he "laboured unceasingly for the musical enlightenment of the principality", and in 1922 he was knighted in David Lloyd George's resignation honours. In 1924 he gave the Cramb lectures at the University of Glasgow, gave his first broadcast talk for the BBC, and was appointed Gresham professor of music at the University of London. In the same year, at the age of fifty-four, he married (Constance) Margaret Isabel Evans (1898–1984), daughter of the Rev William Evans, Rector of Narberth, Pembrokeshire; she was his junior by twenty-eight years. Davies wrote his famous piece God Be In My Head at Witham Hall. Davies and his wife (who was secretary of the Windsor and Eton Choral Society) were the godparents of Bridget Lyons: who was the daughter of the choral-educator James William Webb-Jones (who was the headmaster of the choral foundation of St George's School, Windsor Castle) and the wife of the choral-educator Peter Stanley Lyons (who was subsequently the headmaster of Witham Hall School). After her husband's death, Lady Walford Davies married Julian Harold Legge Lambart, who was Vice-Provost of Eton College. Davies resigned his professorship at Aberystwyth in 1926, when he was appointed by the BBC as a music adviser, but he remained chairman of the National Council of Music until his death. He was from 1927 to 1932 organist and director of St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. Davies's BBC broadcast in April 1924 was the first of many he made between then and 1941. He became well known for his programmes "Music and the Ordinary Listener" (1926–9), his wartime broadcasts for children (1939–41), and "Everyman's Music" (1940–41). The Musical Times called him "one of the world's first great broadcasters"; The Times, in an obituary tribute said: Colles wrote that Davies's regular listeners felt a proprietorial interest in him, recording one of them as remarking, "He always seemed to come right into the room with us." On the death of Sir Edward Elgar in 1934, Davies was appointed to succeed him as Master of the King's Music. As musical adviser to the BBC Davies moved from London to Bristol when the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the corporation's music administration moved there on the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. Davies died at Wrington, near Bristol, on 11 March 1941, and his ashes were interred in the graveyard of Bristol Cathedral.

• Temple for the hymn 'O King enthroned on high' by John Brownlie (hymnist) 1857-1925 (New English Hymnal #421). • Oswald's Tree (Oswestry, his place of birth) for the hymn 'Great Shepherd of they people, hear' by John Newton 1725-1807 (Hymns Ancient & Modern New Standard #164).