Horace Stanley Keats (20 July 1895 – 21 August 1945) was an English-born Australian composer, arranger, piano accompanist and conductor.
Farmers founded the radio station 2FC in 1923, and Keats was a frequent broadcaster as conductor of its 17-member ensemble (which would later evolve into the Sydney Symphony Orchestra),[1] and piano accompanist.
[3][1] He was survived by his wife, Janet leBrun Brown (1900–1985),[5] who, as Barbara Russell, was the principal performer of his songs; a young son, Brennan, and a daughter.
An elder son, Russell, a flautist and organist,[6] had been killed on active service on board HMAS Canberra on 9 August 1942 near Guadalcanal.
[4] The poets whose words he set in song included William Blake, Christopher Brennan, Lord Byron, John Drinkwater, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Hugh McCrae, Kenneth Mackenzie, Shaw Neilson, John Cowper Powys, Christina Rossetti and Oscar Wilde.
[1][5] His film scores included two directed by Ken G. Hall: Lovers and Luggers (1937)[1] (aka Vengeance of the Deep) and The Vagabond Violinist (1938; aka The Broken Melody; which also had music by Alfred Hill, and in which future Prime Minister Gough Whitlam had a brief wordless part as a man in a nightclub).
There has been a string of recordings, from Peter Dawson and Harold Williams in the 1920s, to Lauris Elms with Gordon Watson in the 1970s, through to 21st century releases by the ABC.