1877–1953 · United Kingdom · 20th century
Roger Quilter (1877–1953) was a British composer, born in Hove and died in London. He is known above all for his art songs: there are over a hundred, and many set words by Shakespeare. On this site his music is songs for voice and piano, from intermediate to advanced level.
Roger Cuthbert Quilter was born on 1 November 1877 in Hove, Sussex. In Hove, a blue plaque is fixed to 4 Brunswick Square. His father, Sir William Quilter, 1st Baronet, was a rich landowner, a politician and an art collector, and Roger was one of his younger sons.
Quilter first attended a preparatory school at Farnborough and then moved on to Eton College. Later he moved to Frankfurt and the Hoch Conservatory, where for nearly five years he studied under Iwan Knorr, a German professor of composition.
Cyril Scott, Balfour Gardiner and Percy Grainger studied alongside him. Quilter himself was a member of the so-called "Frankfurt Group": composers who were students there in the late 1890s.
In England Quilter's standing rests mainly on his songs and his light music. The latter includes the Children's Overture, in which nursery-rhyme tunes are woven together, and the music he composed for the play Where the Rainbow Ends. In the list of his works this music is dated 1911.
Several English composers, Peter Warlock among them, are said to have been influenced by Quilter. His partnership with the tenor Gervase Elwes was a productive one and lasted until Elwes died in 1921.
Quilter's opera Julia reached the stage in November 1936 at Covent Garden. The British Music Drama Opera Company performed it under Vladimir Rosing, but it ran for just seven performances.
Quilter later revised it heavily. The new version dates from 1940 and was published as Love at the Inn. In the list of his works Julia is called a light opera.
Quilter struggled with mental illness after losing his nephew, Arnold Guy Vivian, in the Second World War. The Arnold Book of Old Songs is dedicated to this nephew; the list of works dates it to 1921 and 1942, and it was published in 1950.
On 21 September 1953 Quilter died at home in St John's Wood, London. His burial took place at Bawdsey in Suffolk, in the family vault of St Mary's Church.
Quilter is known above all for his songs. There are more than a hundred of them, and they belong to the English art-song tradition that is still sung. His favoured poets were Shakespeare, Herrick and Shelley. Among the most popular are By the Sea and Weep You No More, together with O Mistress Mine, Go, Lovely Rose, Come Away, Death, Fair House of Joy and Love's Philosophy.
Seventeen of his songs set Shakespeare, and perhaps the most successful of these are the Three Shakespeare Songs (1905, revised in 1906). There is also the collection Seven Elizabethan Lyrics, which ends with Fair House of Joy. Perhaps his best-known piece is Non Nobis, Domine (1934), a Kipling setting composed for the Pageant of Parliament in the Royal Albert Hall. Many girls' schools across the English-speaking countries adopted it as a school song, or hymn.
His other works include To Julia, to texts by Robert Herrick (1905), Four Songs of the Sea (1901) and Five English Love Lyrics (1922–28). There are also Four Child Songs (1914, revised in 1945).
The site offers his songs for voice and piano. Julia’s Hair is at the intermediate level. At the upper-intermediate level are Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind, Prelude, The Maiden Blush, Come Away, Death, Interlude, The Night Piece and To Daisies. At the advanced level are O Mistress Mine, Cherry Ripe and The Bracelet. To begin, try Julia’s Hair, then Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind and The Maiden Blush.