Frederic Archer

Frederic Archer (16 June 1838 – 22 October 1901) was a British composer, conductor and organist, born in Oxford. He moved to the US in 1880, where he established the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.

Education and UK career From the age of eleven he was a chorister at All Saints, Margaret Street, and afterwards studied at Leipzig. He held various musical positions in England and Scotland, including organist at the Panopticon in Leicester Square (succeeding Edmund Chipp), Merton College Oxford and (from 1878) the first organist at the Alexandra Palace in London, where his many public recitals on the original and then on the restored organ (post fire) drew large crowds. He conducted the Glasgow Select Choir between 1878 and 1880, arranging part songs based on Scotch airs for the choir. During this period he was also an Examiner at Glasgow University.

New York and Pittsburgh In 1880 he moved to the United States, becoming organist of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, New York, and a year later at the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation in Manhattan.

Author and composer In 1883 Archer founded a music journal, The Keynote, which for a time he edited, and also published several books and numerous organ compositions. He published a cantata, King Witlaf's Drinking Horn, setting Longfellow, in 1857. solo piano works such as the Three Impromptus and Two Gavottes, and various songs and part songs. A Complete Method for the American Reed Organ followed in 1889, published by Schirmer.

Death Archer died of cancer at his home in Pittsburgh on 22 October 1901, aged 63. He, his wife, and daughter rest in apparently unmarked graves at Pittsburgh's Homewood Cemetery.