Havergal Brian

William Havergal Brian (29 January 1876 – 28 November 1972) was an English composer, librettist, and church organist.

He is best known for having composed 32 symphonies—an unusually high number amongst his contemporaries—25 of them after the age of 70. His best-known work is his Symphony No. 1, The Gothic, which calls for some of the largest orchestral forces demanded by a conventionally structured concert work.

He also composed five operas and a number of other orchestral works, as well as songs, choral music and a small amount of chamber music. Brian enjoyed a period of popularity earlier in his career and rediscovery in the 1950s, but public performances of his music have remained rare and he has been described as a cult composer. He continued to be extremely productive late into his career, composing large works even into his nineties, most of which remained unperformed during his lifetime.

William Havergal Brian was born on 29 January 1876 in Dresden, in the Potteries district of Staffordshire, near the Stoke-on-Trent suburb of Longton. He was one of a very small number of composers to originate from the English working class. Brian's middle name Havergal, by which he went beginning at a young age, was for Frances Ridley Havergal of the prominent Havergal hymn-writing family.

Brian's earliest musical education appears to have been as a choirboy; he sang in the choir at St James' church in Longton. In 1887 he and other choristers from his home town participated in a concert in Lichfield Cathedral marking the Jubilee of Queen Victoria. This experience gave the boy an interest in large-scale musical effects. At the age of 12, after leaving the elementary school attached to the church, he started work; he tried a variety of trades. In his spare time, he continued to study music including the organ for which he showed talent at a young age; as a composer he was virtually self-taught. From 1896 he was organist of All Saints', a Gothic Revival church in Odd Rode, just across the county border in Cheshire. The post involved playing at Sunday services; his main job at this time was with a timber company.

Around the time he started at All Saints', he was influenced by hearing King Olaf, a composition for soloists, choir and orchestra by Edward Elgar. Now one of the composer's lesser-known works, King Olaf was commissioned for the North Staffordshire Music Festival of 1896, where it was well received. Brian sent a sample composition to Elgar who gave him encouragement. Brian became a fervent enthusiast of the new music being produced by Richard Strauss and the British composers of the day. Through attending music festivals he began a lifelong friendship with composer Granville Bantock (1868–1946).

In 1898, Brian married Isabel Priestley, by whom he had five children. One of his sons was named Sterndale after the English composer Sir William Sterndale Bennett.

In 1907 Brian was offered a yearly income of £500 (then a respectable lower-middle-class salary) by a local wealthy businessman, Herbert Minton Robinson, to enable him to devote all his time to composition. It seems Robinson expected Brian soon to become successful and financially independent on the strength of his compositions, and initially Brian indeed found success: his first English Suite attracted the attention of Henry J. Wood, who performed it at the London Proms in 1907. The work proved popular and Brian obtained a publisher and performances for his next few orchestral works, although this initial success was not maintained. For a while Brian worked on a number of ambitious large-scale choral and orchestral works, but felt no urgency to finish them, and began to indulge in pleasures such as expensive foods and a trip to Italy.