Frederic Austin
He is perhaps best remembered for his arrangement of Johann Pepusch's music for a 1920 production of The Beggar's Opera by John Gay, and its sequel Polly in 1922; and for his popularization of the melody of the carol The Twelve Days of Christmas.
These included Scott, Gardiner, Norman O'Neill, Roger Quilter, Percy Grainger (owing to their training at the Hoch Conservatory) in Frankfurt and such friends as Ernest Bryson, Benjamin Dale, Gervase Elwes, Eugène Goossens, fils and Arnold Bax.
In August 1900 he completed his first orchestral work, the concert Overture Richard II, which received its first performance on 12 December 1901 by the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra under Dan Godfrey.
In 1904 he moved to Pinner, sang under Felix Weingartner and at Wagner nights at the Prom Concerts, and took the name role in Mendelssohn's Elijah at Gloucester in the Three Choirs Festival.
For Weingartner he gave the Die Walküre finale with Agnes Nicholls, and at Queen's Hall the premiere of Balfour Gardiner's When the lad for longing sighs.
In April 1907 he was at Reading, Berkshire, in Parry's De Profundis and Stanford's Elegiac Ode: at Hanley he gave the premiere of Havergal Brian's By the Waters of Babylon.
Henry Wood introduced Austin's symphonic composition Rhapsody: Spring, and engaged him to sing in two concerts, including that in which Delius's Piano Concerto in C minor was first given.
At the Sheffield Festival of 1908 he was exceptionally busy, with performances of Samson and Delilah, Schumann's Paradise and the Peri, Sir Walford Davies' Everyman, Beethoven's Choral Symphony, and Debussy's L'Enfant Prodigue, specially re-scored by the composer, and delivered under Henry Wood with Austin, Agnes Nicholls, and the tenor Felix Senius.
Austin premiered Granville Bantock's Omar Khayyam Part III (Birmingham 1909), and in that year sang The Apostles (Judas) and Parry's Job at Hereford.
In 1910 Austin commenced his regular operatic career, appearing as Wotan and Wanderer, and doubling as Gunther, in the Edinburgh Denhof Opera Company Ring cycle under Michael Balling.
In 1912 Beecham took the Denhof Ring cycle to Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester, and in these years Austin also appeared with them in the first English Elektra (Richard Strauss), as Kunrad in Feuersnot, Dr Coppelius in The Tales of Hoffmann, Gratiano in Così fan tutte, Tomasso in Tiefland (Eugen d'Albert), Escamillo in Carmen and as Vanderdecken in The Flying Dutchman.
In the fourth concert Austin sang Scott's Helen of Kirconnell again, and gave the premiere of Norman O'Neill's La belle dame sans merci.
Neville Cardus, who saw him in the role beside Agnes Nicholls and Frederick Ranalow, wrote: "Nobody else has passed across the closing scene of the opera with half of Austin's grace of bearing and suggestion of courtly cynicism".
The restoration of the musical score for The Beggar's Opera by John Gay and Dr. Pepusch (originally produced in 1728) was undertaken by Frederic Austin and completed in 1920 in time for the production by Nigel Playfair, with artistic designs by Claud Lovat Fraser, which opened at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith on 6 June 1920 and ran for a record number of 1,463 performances until 23 December 1923.
Austin composed music for a made-for-radio short drama, The Blacksmith's Serenade (based on a poem by Vachel Lindsay), which was aired by the British Broadcasting Company on 15 January 1924.
