Charles Swinnerton Heap

[1] Heap was born in Birmingham in 1847 and educated at the town's King Edward VI School, where he studied the organ under Walter Brooks.

[3] He then returned to study organ with W T Best, and to attend St John's College, Cambridge, where he was awarded Mus Bac.

He later taught at the Royal College of Music where his notable pupils included Rosina Buckman and Herbert Sanders.

Elgar later wrote that without Heap he would have "remained in outer darkness", and dedicated his Organ Sonata and the oratorio The Light of Life to him.

[6] After Heap's death - unexpectedly, of pneumonia at his home, 22 Clarendon Road, Edgbaston[7] - the composer Havergal Brian wrote to the secretary of the Royal Philharmonic Society, comparing Heap favourably to the better-known Frederic Cowen and Alexander Mackenzie: "What was the old Phil doing to miss such a genius?

Choral works include his oratorio The Captivity, a motet Salvum fac Regem (performed at Leipzig), cantatas The Voice of Spring (1882, Liverpool) and The Maid of Astolat (1886, for the Wolverhampton Musical Festival).