Henry Walford Davies (1869 - 1941)

Sir Henry Walford Davies KCVO OBE was an English composer, organist, and educator who held the title
Master of the King's Music from 1934 until 1941. He served with the Royal Air Force during the First
World War, during which he composed the Royal Air Force March Past, and was music adviser to the
British Broadcasting Corporation, for whom he gave commended talks on music between 1924 and 1941.

Born in the Shropshire town of Oswestry, he was the seventh of nine children of John Whitridge Davies
and Susan, née Gregory, and the youngest of four surviving sons. It was a musical family: Davies senior,
an accountant by profession was a keen amateur musician, who founded and conducted a choral society
at Oswestry and was choirmaster of Christ Church Congregational church, at which Walford was a chorister. In 1882 Walford was accepted as a chorister at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, by the organist, Sir George Elvey.

When his voice broke in 1885 Davies left the choir and later that year was appointed organist of the Royal
Chapel of All Saints, Windsor Great Park and was secretary to Elvey's successor, Walter Parratt, and Dean
(later Archbishop) Randall Davidson. At this time British universities, including Cambridge, awarded
"non-collegiate" music degrees to any applicant who could pass the necessary examinations. Davies entered
for the Cambridge bachelor of music examinations in 1889, but his exercise (a cantata, The Future, to
words by Matthew Arnold) failed. With the encouragement of Charles Villiers Stanford, professor of music
at Cambridge, Davies made a second attempt; it was successful, and he graduated in 1891.

In 1890 Davies was awarded a scholarship in composition at the Royal College of Music (RCM), London,
where he was a student until 1894. His teachers there were Hubert Parry and (for a single term) Stanford for composition, and W. S. Rockstro (counterpoint), Herbert Sharpe (piano) and Haydn Inwards (violin). While still at the RCM he was organist of St George's Church, Campden Hill, for three months, and St Anne's Church, Soho for a year until 1891, when he resigned for health reasons. In the following year was appointed organist of Christ Church, Hampstead; he remained there until 1897, holding the post in tandem for the last two years with an appointment from 1895 as teacher of counterpoint at the RCM in succession to Rockstro, a post that he held until 1903. He considered resigning the post in 1896, when he failed the counterpoint paper in the Cambridge examinations for the degree of doctor of music; he was successful at his second attempt, and the doctorate was conferred in March 1898.

The current work was written during his student days at the RCM and was certainly tried through with the
help of a fellow student of the horn - J E Borland, (who himself came to write a "Homage Fanfare' for the
Coronation of George V in 1911). However, in his final year at the RCM Walford Davies accompanied Adolf
Borsdorf in the Brahms Horn Trio at a chamber concert in Hampstead. It is not known whether Borsdorf ever played this Sonata but he must have known about it as the Horn Professor at the RCM and London's foremost horn player of the day.

A more recent performance was given by Michael Sheehan on a contemporary (1890s) piston-horn in F by W Brown & Son as part of a Demonstration/Recital at The Gateway, Shrewsbury, on Thursday 25 April 2019. His accompanist was Nigel Pursey, who was and is Organist at Shrewsbury Abbey.

 

Compositions in catalogue

Catalogue no.

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Composer/arranger
 
 
 

Chamber Music series
 
 

Horn and piano
 
 
 
 
 
Sonata for horn and piano
edb 0702045
18.00
  
Henry Walford Davies