Julius Harrison

[2] He was the eldest of four sons and three daughters of Walter Henry Harrison a grocer and candle maker from the village of Powick near Malvern,[3] and his wife, Henriette Julien née Schoeller, a German-born former governess.

[2] The family was musical; Walter Harrison was conductor of the Stourport Glee Union, and Henriette was Julius's first piano teacher.

[4][5] Harrison's setting won the first prize at the Norwich Musical Festival, adjudicated by Frederick Delius, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Ernest Walker.

[4][6][7] The Times commented on the inadequacy of the libretto, and praised Harrison's orchestration and melodies but complained that the work was "a series of pictures of unbridled passion devoid of all that ordinary people call beauty.

"[8] The reviewer in The Manchester Guardian was more complimentary; though he commented on the obvious influence of Bantock, and over-elaborate orchestration, he wrote that Harrison had undoubted talent.

In the latter capacity he wrote several pieces for the choir during 1910 and 1911, and his symphonic poem Night on the Mountains was played at the Queen's Hall by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Harrison at the invitation of Hans Richter.

[2] In early 1913 he was engaged as a répétiteur at Covent Garden, where he had the opportunity of observing Arthur Nikisch prepare Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen.

[15] Harrison died in 1963, aged 78, in Harpenden in Hertfordshire (at The Greenwood, Ox Lane) where he settled after leaving Malvern towards the end of the 1940s.

[16][17] Although he had to focus mainly on conducting as his source of income,[2] Harrison was a fairly prolific composer, beginning in his teens with his Ballade for string orchestra in 1902.

Bredon Hill was the most-publicised new work commissioned by the BBC for the war effort, and in the autumn of 1941 it was broadcast to Africa, North America, and the Pacific.