Edric Cundell

[1] Born in London, Edric Cundell came from a musical family: his grandmother worked in Paris as an opera singer and both his parents were talented amateur musicians.

He was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School in Hertfordshire, and went on to study at the London Trinity College of Music, taking French horn with Adolf Borsdorf and piano with Henry Richard Bird (1842–1916).

[4] While at the front line, Cundell made a cello out of petrol cans and boxes, using a horse's tail for the bow.

At this time he became involved in conducting amateur orchestras, such as the Westminster Orchestral Society, with which he performed his own piece The Tragedy of Deirdre on 4 May 1923 at Kensington Town Hall.

In 1946 he conducted the National Symphony Orchestra in the film The Magic Bow about the life of Paganini in which Yehudi Menuhin played the violin.

[4] As a composer, he first came to notice through the symphonic poem Serbia, dated "Macedonia, 1917" and written while in a dugout close to the Bulgar front lines.

According to a note in the score, the music "is based on folk songs, which the Serbian soldiers used to sing during the time of their great trial, following their tragic retreat over the Albanian mountains.