Somervell, Arthur (1863–1937)

English composer and educationist. His songs, especially settings of lyrics from Tennyson's ‘Maud’, Housman's ‘A Shropshire Lad’, and Browning's ‘James Lee's Wife’, are his best-known works. He also composed Masses, choral works, and edited Songs of the Four Nations and other folk songs.

He was educated at Uppingham School and King's College, Cambridge, where he studied composition with Stanford. He later went to Kiel and Berlin, to the Royal College of Music in London in 1885, and to Hubert Parry as a private pupil in 1887. In 1894 he became professor at the Royal College of Music. In 1901 he became an inspector of music in schools, which led to an appointment as official inspector of music to the Board of Education, which he resigned in 1928.

Works Choral and orchestral Masses in C minor (1891) and D minor (the latter for male voices, 1907), anthem ‘Let all the world’, oratorio The Passion of Christ; cantatas, including A Song of Praise, The Power of Sound, The Forsaken Merman (Matthew Arnold), Ode to the Sea; setting of Wordsworth's ‘Intimations of Immortality’.

Orchestral and chamber symphony in D minor, Thalassa (1912), concerto in G minor and Concertstück for violin and orchestra; clarinet quintet; violin and piano sonata; Variations on an Original Theme for two pianos; violin pieces; piano pieces; song cycles Maud (Tennyson), A Shropshire Lad (A E Housman, 1904).