Eaton Faning

At the age of five he made his first public appearance at a local function, when he played a violin solo on a tiny fiddle.

[2] At the age of twelve, he became organist of All Saints' Church Holbrook, a village seven miles from Ipswich, where he had to walk when the carrier's cart was not available.

He played at the daily evening service for five years, and was deputy trainer of the choir, which consisted of sixty voices.

He studied composition under Sterndale Bennett (then Principal) and Arthur Sullivan, and, with other professors, singing, piano, cello and organ.

As a student, he sang in the chorus at the Royal Albert Hall when Richard Wagner conducted, and he visited Bayreuth and Dresden.

In 1873 he was elected an extra Mendelssohn Scholar, and in 1876 he obtained the Charles Lucas Medal for composition for his setting of the Magnificat.

Sir John Stainer heard the work and selected it for performance at the Festival of the Sons of the Clergy in 1878, and the publishers Novello & Co printed an edition of the score.

He conducted two amateur musical societies and "Mr. Eaton Faning's Select Choir," a professional group that sang at Boosey's London Ballad Concerts.

Another critic praised the music and the staging, though adding that as it was a student performance, "there was a necessary elongation of those garments over which the Lord Chamberlain traditionally keeps such jealous watch and ward.

[2] In October 1881, Faning's second comic operetta, Mock Turtles, was produced at the Savoy Theatre as a curtain-raiser to Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience.

[6] In 1882 Faning wrote his third short operetta The Head of the Poll, presented by the German Reeds, with a libretto by Arthur Law.