Robert Still

He also studied under Wilfred Dunwell at Trinity College of Music (modern harmony and counterpoint) and later in life under Hans Keller.

After Oxford, Still returned to Eton to teach music, moving on in 1938 to become conductor and arranger of the Ballet Trois Arts, a travelling company.

Having refused a commission, he spent the Second World War first manning a searchlight in the Cotswolds and then with the Royal Artillery travelling orchestra, which he conducted.

Visitors there included Sir Eugene Goossens, Edmund Rubbra, Deryck Cooke, Heather Harper and Myer Fredman.

Describing a tale explaining the name and sign of the pub, the composition's debut performance was at the Royal Festival Hall on 23 October 1957.

[3] Stanley Bayliss of The Musical Times described it as "duly bucolic" with "pleasant tunes", but said that it failed to send a "shiver down the spine.

His local friends included the composer Anthony Scott (1911-2000, Finzi's only pupil), painter and critic Adrian Stokes, the harpsichordist Michael Thomas (1922-1997) and Newbury Choral Society conductor and pianist John Russell.

[1] In an obituary, The Musical Times wrote of him as "a song writer of genuine lyrical impulse [who] set words by Byron, Keats and Shelley; he was also a symphonist, in a conservative vein.

Early in his career he wrote songs and a since-lost light opera for the Windsor Operatic Society, for which he was the conductor while still teaching at Eton.