Frederic Hymen Cowen
At Leipzig, overseen by Ernst Friedrich Eduard Richter, Cowen studied under Moritz Hauptmann (harmony and counterpoint), Ignaz Moscheles (piano), Carl Reinecke (composition) and Ferdinand David (ensemble work).
Cowen's fellow students and companions in Leipzig included Swinnerton Heap, Johan Svendsen, Oscar Beringer and Stephen Adams.
[citation needed] In 1887, shortly after conducting his Scandinavian Symphony, he was taken ill with Scarlet fever and recovered at the specialist convalescent home of Mary Wardell in Stanmore.
[3][4] Returning home on the outbreak of the Austro-Prussian War, he appeared as a composer for the orchestra in an Overture in D minor played at Alfred Mellon's Promenade Concerts at Covent Garden on 8 September 1866.
[1] His cantata, The Rose Maiden, was given at London in 1870, his Second Symphony in F major by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society in 1872, and his first festival work, The Corsair, in 1876 at Birmingham.
3 in C minor, Scandinavian, which was first performed at St. James's Hall in 1880 and went on to establish itself for a decade as one of the most popular symphonic works in the repertoire, brought him some international recognition.
[6] His employment there came to an abrupt termination in 1892 when he apologised for any shortcomings in the orchestra's performance of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony before they had rendered it, due to the lack of rehearsal time that he felt he had been given.
In the year of his appointment to the Philharmonic Society, 1888, he went to Melbourne as the conductor of the daily concerts given in connection with the Exhibition there for the unprecedented sum of £5,000.
He was one of the first British-born professional conductors to have the respect of critics, orchestral musicians, and the public, and he held lengthy tenures with every major British orchestra active before 1900.
Whether in his cantatas for female voices, his charming Sleeping Beauty, his Water Lily or his pretty overture, The Butterfly's Ball (1901), he succeeds in finding graceful expression for the poetical idea.
[1] Indeed, his choral works, written for the numerous musical festivals around Victorian and Edwardian Britain, typify the public taste of his time.
The following major scores were published: Many of Cowen's unpublished orchestral manuscripts, together with the relevant orchestral performing material, are presumed lost including the Piano Concerto, the first two symphonies, the 1866 Overture, the Festival Overture, The Maid of Orleans, One Too Many, The Corsair, The Deluge, Saint Ursula, Pauline,[9] the Sinfonietta, Niagara, In the Olden Time, the Barbaric March, the 1886 March, the 1886 Overture, A Song of Thanksgiving, St John's Eve, Thorgrim, the ode In Memoriam Carl Rosa, Signa, Harold, The Transfiguration, Jephthah and the complete version of The Magic Goblet - The Luck of Edenhall.
