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Hubert Parry
February 27, 1848 - October 7, 1918
born in Bournemouth, Dorset, England, composed during the Romantic period
Biography
The importance of Hubert Parry to the renaissance of English musical life is often underestimated, but like his equally great colleague in that endeavor, Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, Parry is more often found in music encyclopedias than on the programs of modern orchestras. His profound influence on generations of composers, exerted during his years as director of the Royal College of Music, qualifies him as a genuine paterfamilias to music in the British Isles.

Parry's family was distinguished. His father, Thomas Gambier Parry, was a director of the East India Company; Thomas' great-uncle was Lord Gambier, Admiral of the Fleet. Salt water was, as it were, in Parry's blood, and one of his lifelong favorite recreations was piloting his own seaworthy yacht.

Parry must have seemed unusually talented for a young man of his day. One summer while at Eton, Parry had to travel to Stuttgart in order to study composition with the English pedagogue Henry Hugo Pierson, who had left England for an artistic climate more congenial to his endeavors. While still at Eton, Parry earned the Oxford bachelor of music degree, subsequently entering Exeter College at Oxford. His marriage to Maude Herbert, sister of his school chum George Herbert, 13th Earl of Pembroke, forced him to seek nonmusical work with Lloyd's register in London while establishing himself as a composer, but it was while working in London that he met and allied himself with teacher and pianist Edward Dannreuther, who was a great influence on the young man, arranging for private performances of much of Parry's early chamber music, and introducing him to the music of Wagner by procuring for Parry tickets for the second ever performance at Bayreuth of the Ring.