Arthur Somervell

According to Michael Hurd, his most important work is found in the five song cycles, particularly his settings of Tennyson in Maud (1898) and Housman in A Shropshire Lad (1904).

[4] Somervell was initially educated at Uppingham School and King's College, Cambridge,[5] where he studied composition under Sir Charles Villiers Stanford.

Through their daughter Katherine ('Kit'), who became a dancer with Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, they were grandparents of writer Elizabeth Jane Howard.

He worked for twenty-eight years as one of His Majesty's Inspectors of Schools (HMI), with special responsibility for the teaching of music.

He achieved success in his own day as a composer of choral works such as The Forsaken Merman (1895), Intimations of Immortality (which he conducted at Leeds Festival in 1907), and a short oratorio The Passion of Christ (1914).

[14] Today he is chiefly remembered for his song cycles, such as Maud (after Tennyson, 1898) and the first known musical setting (1904) of A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad.

[15] Trevor Hold points out that Somervell had "a genuine, deep affection for literature", reflected in his wide and eclectic choice of texts.