[6] In 1898, Tovey graduated from Balliol College at Oxford University, where he had studied the classics and developed his interest in music, particularly that of Bach.

For their concerts he wrote a series of programme notes, many of which were eventually collected into the books for which he is now best known, the Essays in Musical Analysis.

His proposers were Ralph Allan Sampson, Cargill Gilston Knott, John Horne and Sir Edmund Taylor Whittaker.

[9] As he devoted more and more time to the Reid Orchestra, to writing essays and commentaries and producing performing editions of Bach and Beethoven, Tovey composed and performed less often later in life; but the few major pieces he did complete are on a large scale, such as his Symphony of 1913 and the Cello Concerto completed in 1935 for his longtime friend Pablo Casals.

[10] Tovey made several editions of other composers' music, including a 1931 completion of Bach's Die Kunst der Fuge (The Art of Fugue).

His influential Essays in Musical Analysis based on his Reid Orchestra programme notes, were first published at this time, in six volumes between 1935 and 1939.

[11] He was knighted by King George V in 1935, reportedly on the recommendation of Sir Edward Elgar, who greatly admired Tovey's edition of Bach.

Following a tumultuous relationship, in part strained by Cameron's mental health issues, the couple divorced in July 1922.

[16] His patron Sophie Weisse helped fund his concert appearances, and also financed the publication of his epic, but not overtly virtuosic Piano Concerto in A major, Op.

[17] The Concerto, with its particularly expressive F♯ minor adagio movement, was first performed on 4 November 1903 by the Queen's Hall Orchestra, conducted by Sir Henry Wood, with Tovey himself as the soloist.

[25] The Bride of Dionysus, an ambitious music drama based on the Greek legend, was begun in 1907, using a text written by his friend R. C. Trevelyan.

The Times described it as "a work of considerable power and beauty",[26] but the subsequent London performances, on 11 and 12 November 1935, were ill-prepared and the press notices were negative.

[27][28] Famously, in reviewing a later Queen's Hall performance and broadcast on 17 November 1937[29] Constant Lambert commented that "the first movement...seemed to last as long as my first term at school".

In his essays, Tovey developed a theory of tonal structure and its relation to classical forms that he applied in his descriptions of pieces in his famous programme notes for the Reid Orchestra, as well as in more technical and extended writings.

He was fond of using figurative comparisons to illustrate his ideas, as in this quotation from the Essays (on Brahms' Handel Variations, Op.