Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/449

 PARRY, CHARLES HUBERT HASTINGS, baronet (1848–1918), composer, musical historian, and director of the Royal College of Music, was born at Bournemouth 27 February 1848. He was the second son and youngest child by his first wife of Thomas Gambier Parry [q.v.], of Highnam Court, Gloucestershire. Gambier Parry was a lover of the arts, a collector of Italian pictures, and himself a painter of more than ordinary amateur ability. He was a keen supporter of the ‘high-church’ movement. Though the religious forms of Hubert's youth were completely outgrown later, and the growth involved some violent reaction from them, the life at Highnam laid a stable foundation for his habit of associating seriousness with art and beauty with seriousness.

Hubert Parry's predilection towards music appeared early. Childish compositions, beginning with single and double chants, appear in note-books which have been preserved from the age of nine. A list of his compositions when he was sixteen contains every form of Anglican church music, with piano and organ pieces, fugues, canons, madrigals, and songs interspersed. He was then at Eton, and the diaries which contain this list give a vivid picture of the zest with which he entered into every phase of public school life. That the keeper of ‘School Field’ should take a leading part as pianist and singer in the concerts of the Eton Musical Society was sufficiently unusual. He further surprised every one by passing the examination for the degree of bachelor of music at Oxford during his last ‘half’ at Eton. The method is typical. Education was for him the accumulation and sorting of diverse experiences. He had no exclusions. He would learn how things were done from the men who knew, whether the thing were the structure of a fugue or the rigging of a yacht. When he knew, he would use the knowledge in his own way. In music, Handel and Mendelssohn, imbibed at a succession of Gloucester festivals, were his first heroes. At Oxford, where he matriculated as a commoner of Exeter College in 1867, concerted chamber music became an absorbing interest, and he was instrumental in founding the University Musical Club. He spent his first long vacation at Stuttgart, studying orchestration and kindred matters with Henry Hugo Pierson [q.v.], learning German, attending the opera, and also taking lessons in viola-playing.

In 1873 Parry settled permanently in London, having married in the previous year Lady Elizabeth Maude Herbert, second daughter of Sidney, first Lord Herbert of Lea [q.v.]. He was at this time a member of Lloyds, and though his diaries and correspondence show that he was fully determined to make music the central interest of his life, the idea of the musical profession as a career was naturally not then entertained. In one sense it may be said that he never was a professional musician, since he was never under the necessity of earning a living by music. Yet his desire to do something of worth imposed on him a stern discipline of study. At first his ambition was towards piano-playing, and during a winter which he spent at Cannes for his wife's health, he gave several concerts with the violinist, Guerini. In London he sought out as his piano teacher Edward Dannreuther, who soon became his closest friend and counsellor. Every new composition was submitted to Dannreuther's judgement for many years after the days of pupillage were passed, and the words ‘Dann approves’ occur constantly in the record of his undertakings. It was through Dannreuther that Parry went to the first Bayreuth festival (1876) and came under the spell of Der Ring des Nibelungen. When Wagner visited London in the following year, Parry formed an acquaintance with him through Dannreuther, and revelled in every opportunity of steeping himself in Wagner's music.

The Wagnerian gospel found the most immediate response in Parry's soul. He was going through a necessary period of revolt against many of the narrow traditions of his upbringing, social, artistic, and religious. In composition he concentrated chiefly on instrumental music. He wrote for the violin and piano a fine Partita in D minor and a Duo for two pianos in E minor, long a favourite work (published by Breitkopf and Haertel). A whole series of concerted chamber works for piano and strings came out at the private concerts which Dannreuther gave regularly at his house in Orme Square, and a Nonet for wind, ‘written as an experiment’, as also the now well-known Fantasia and Fugue for organ (Novello, 1913) belong to these years. A concert of Parry's chamber music given at the house of Mr. A. J. (afterwards Earl of) Balfour in Carlton House Terrace in 1879 has been generally referred to as a landmark in his career. In none of these compositions does the influence of Wagner seem peculiarly strong, but they  423