Roger Quilter

Quilter was born in Hove, Sussex;[1] a commemorative blue plaque is on the house at 4 Brunswick Square.

[2] He was a younger son of Sir William Quilter, 1st Baronet, a wealthy noted landowner, politician and art collector.

He then moved to Eton College and later became a fellow-student of Percy Grainger, Cyril Scott and H. Balfour Gardiner at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, where he studied for almost five years under the guidance of the German professor of composition Iwan Knorr.

[6] As a gay man during the late 19th century, it was difficult to cope with the pressures that were imposed upon him by his hidden homosexuality,[7] and he struggled with mental illness after the loss of his nephew Arnold Guy Vivian during World War II.

Quilter's setting of verses from the Tennyson poem "Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal" is one of his earliest songs but is nonetheless characteristic of the later, mature style.

[9] Recorded collections of Quilter songs include discs by Benjamin Luxon and David Willison,[10] Charlotte de Rothschild and Adrian Farmer,[11] and James Gilchrist and Anna Tilbrook.