Granville Bantock

Sir Granville Ransome Bantock (7 August 186816 October 1946) was a British composer of classical music.

Biography

Granville Ransome Bantock was born on 7 August 1868 in London. His father was an eminent Scottish surgeon. His younger brother was the dramatist and film director Leedham Bantock. Granville Bantock was intended by his parents for the Indian Civil Service but he suffered poor health and initially turned to chemical engineering. At the age of 20, when he began studying composers' manuscripts, at South Kensington Museum Library, he was drawn into the musical world. In 1888, he entered the Royal Academy of Music where he studied harmony and composition with Frederick Corder winning the Macfarren Prize in the first year it was awarded.

Early conducting engagements took him around the world with a musical comedy troupe. With his brother Leedham Bantock he wrote a couple of music hall songs which met with some success. He founded a music magazine, The New Quarterly Music Review, In 1934, he was elected Chairman of the Corporation of Trinity College of Music in London. He was knighted in 1930. Among his other better-known works are the overture The Pierrot of the Minute (1908) and the Pagan Symphony (1928). Many of his works have been commercially recorded since the early 1990s.

From 1926 to 1933 Bantock's Birmingham home was Metchley Lodge (now Metchley Abbey; despite the name, the building has no religious connection), which a Birmingham Civic Society blue plaque on the building records.

Shortly after the composer's death in London, in 1946, a Bantock Society was established. Its first president was Jean Sibelius, whose music Bantock championed during the early years of the century. Sibelius dedicated his Third Symphony to Bantock.

Edward Elgar dedicated the second of his Pomp and Circumstance Marches to Bantock.

In 1898 he married Helena von Schweitzer (1868–1961) who acted as a librettist for him. Granville Bantock was also the father-in-law of the composer Margaret More (1903–1966) via her marriage to Granville's son, Raymond Bantock. Their son, Granville Bantock's grandson, is Gavin Bantock, a poet.