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First name: Henry Walford
Last name: Davies
Dates: 1869-1941
Category: Quartet
Nationality: british
Opus name: Second quartet in D Major (1893)
Publisher: unpublished
Peculiarities: manuscript: Royal College of Music
Information: Sir Henry Walford Davies KCVO OBE (6 September 1869 – 11 March 1941) was a British composer, who held the title Master of the King's Musick from 1934 until 1941. Henry Walford Davies was born in Oswestry on the Welsh/English border, seventh of nine children of John Whitridge Davies and Susan, née Gregory, and the youngest of four surviving sons. His middle name Walford was his maternal grandmother's maiden name; he later dropped his first name Henry, becoming generally known as Walford Davies. Walford Davies grew up, like his siblings, playing any instrument he could lay his hands on, often in an informal band with his brothers, cousins and friends, but it was as a singer that he was first noticed and entered, against misgivings from his Nonconformist family, for a choristership at St. George's Chapel, Windsor. In this he was successful, and from the age of twelve he was singing fourteen services a week as well as attending school. Here he came under the influence of Walter Parratt, a leader in the late Victorian organ renaissance, and Randall Davidson, as Dean of Windsor. Davies studied under, and was assistant to, Parratt for five years before entering the Royal College of Music in 1890 where he studied under Hubert Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford. Davies remained at the College as a teacher of counterpoint from 1895. During this time he held a number of organist posts in London, culminating in his appointment in 1898 as organist of the Temple Church. He continued there until 1917. In that year he was appointed the first director of music to the newly created Royal Air Force, which led to him writing the march, "RAF March Past", still played by many marching bands today. In 1919, Walford Davies was made professor of music at Aberystwyth. He subsequently did much to promote Welsh music, becoming chairman of the Welsh National Council of Music. From 1927 he was organist at St. George's Chapel, Windsor. One of his assistant organists was Malcolm Boyle. In 1924, Davies became Professor of Music at Gresham College, London: a part-time position giving public lectures. From the 1920s, he also made a series of records of lectures, which led to his being employed by the BBC. He made radio broadcasts on classical music under the title Music and the Ordinary Listener. These lasted from 1926 until the outbreak of World War II in 1939, and Davies became a well-known and popular radio personality. His book The Pursuit of Music (1935) has a similar non-specialist tone. Walford Davies was knighted in 1922. Following the death of Sir Edward Elgar in 1934, he was appointed Master of the King's Music. He died in 1941 in Bristol and is buried in the grounds of Bristol Cathedral.