Name Eric Fogg | Role Composer | |
Died December 19, 1939, Lambeth, London, United Kingdom | ||
Charles William Eric Fogg (21 February 1903 – 19 December 1939) was an English composer and conductor. His early works were influenced by Igor Stravinsky, though his later pieces owe more to Granville Bantock and Richard Strauss and even William Walton. Much of his music has been lost.
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Early life and career
Fogg was born in Manchester, the son of Charles H. Fogg, the organist for the Hallé Orchestra, who was his first teacher. His mother, Madame Sadler-Fogg, was also musical (she trained the young Isobel Baillie in singing) and contributed to his musical education. He became a boy chorister at Manchester Cathedral from ages 10 to 14 and then studied with Granville Bantock in Birmingham. He started composing very early and his output was considerable. On 30 March 1920 the British Music Society presented an evening of the 17-year-old Fogg's music, in which 25 of his works were given a hearing. The meeting was addressed by Leigh Henry. He had written 57 works by the age of 18.
On 16 June 1921, the "Chinese suite" The Golden Valley (1919) was premiered by Adrian Boult with the Queen's Hall Orchestra at the Royal College of Music, on the same concert as the first and only performance of Ivor Gurney's War Elegy. He joined the BBC in Manchester in 1924 as an accompanist, rising to assistant music director. In the 1930s he was well known as "Uncle Eric" of the radio programme Children's Favourites. He succeeded Archie Camden as the conductor of the Manchester Schoolchildren’s Orchestra. He moved to London and became musical director of the BBC's Empire Service in 1934. In 1935 he conducted the Empire Orchestra in the first performance of Peggy Glanville-Hicks's Sinfonietta in D minor for small orchestra.
Death
Eric Fogg died on 19 December 1939, when he either fell or jumped under the wheels of a train at Waterloo Station in London. He had been on his way to Brighton for his second wedding. The coroner delivered an open verdict, however his death is often described as suicide.
Music
Fogg's music attracted differing opinions and even some hostility during his lifetime. Some critics felt that he was too modernistic, but others complained that he did not wholeheartedly encompass modernism. It soon fell from the repertoire, but of recent years his music has started to be performed once more, and recorded.
Other works include:
Fogg orchestrated Walter Carroll's Seascape: A Children's Suite. The piece has been recorded by the Northern Chamber Orchestra under Nicholas Ward.
The writer Pebblehead dedicated "The Nuts Of Narcolepsy" to Eric Fogg.