Cowen, Sir Frederic

**Pabmusic** · 08-08-21, 00:07

He was also Jewish - his father changed the name from Cohen. F. H. was mainly a conductor (Liverpool, Halle, Scottish and the Royal Philharmonic Society mainly). He was the first conductor to tour Australia.

Here's part of a programme note I wrote for the Scandanavian symphony:

Late Victorian Britain saw a desire to create a ‘national’ school of music to rival the German tradition. As with the Mighty Handful in Russia, though working separately, five composers were at the forefront of this move: Arthur Sullivan, Frederic Hymen Cowen, Alexander Mackenzie, Charles Villiers Stanford, and Hubert Parry. They achieved varying degrees of success with their own music (one commentator said that it would have been greater had they been called ‘Sullivanski, Cowenkoi, Mackensikoff, Stanfordtscheff and Parrykine’) but they did lay the foundations for the next generation of Vaughan Williams, Holst, Bax, Ireland and the like. The least well remembered of these musicians is Cowen.

He was born at Kingston, Jamaica, the fifth child of Frederick Augustus Cohen, his birth being registered in the name of Hyman Frederick Cohen. Frederick Augustus later moved to London, changed the family name to the less Jewish ‘Cowen’, and became treasurer of Her Majesty’s Opera and subsequently of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. The brothers and sisters were all gifted, and included a recognised artist, Lionel, and an accomplished actress, Henrietta. Frederic showed an early aptitude for music, being encouraged by Sir Henry Bishop, taking lessons with John Goss and Julius Benedict, before eventually studying at Leipzig and Berlin with Ignaz Moscheles, Carl Reinecke, Louis Plaidy and Friedrich Kiel. His career was to be mainly as a conductor, notably of the Royal Philharmonic Society, the Halle, Liverpool Philharmonic and Scottish orchestras, and of the Handel Triennial Festival. It was through his conducting that Cowen became acquainted with Liszt, Rubinstein, Brahms, Grieg, Dvořák and many other contemporary musicians.

As a composer, he achieved most success with his songs (more than 300 of them) and choral works, but he regarded his six symphonies as the pinnacle of his output. The Third Symphony (“The Scandanavian”) was his most successful and all six show a comfort with large structures, as well as a genuine flair for orchestration. That said, none could be said to be ‘forward looking’, and each is a good example of a post-Mendelssohn, post-Schumann European symphony. It would take the maverick Edward Elgar and the young Ralph Vaughan Williams to breathe new life into the British symphony.

**edashtav** · 08-08-21, 01:27

That’s a fine piece of work, Pabmusic - many thanks for sharing it with us!

Sir Landon Ronald, the conductor and composer, in a tribute to Sir Frederic Cowen, said to a ' Press and Mirror ' reporter:

"He was one of my oldest and dearest friends. He had known me since I was a boy, and he helped me very much mv early days. One the pleasantest memories I have is that after many years— not through their having quarrelled but simply because their lives had drifted apart —I brought Sir Frederic and Sir Edward Elgar together, and we used to spend many happy days in the country. several occasions during the War when we could not go abroad the three of us spent summer holidays together at Crowborough, in Sussex."

**edashtav** · 08-08-21, 15:19

I fear that Frederic Cowen wrote too much, too quickly and that he was insufficiently self-critical. He wrote to pay his bills and that led to him churning out sentimental ballads that paid extremely well in late Victorian times as he revealed in interview: his ballad factory could earn more in an hour than many a man could gain in a year of employment:

Among the trials that Sir Frederic has survived, it is to be noted that classes the burden of fame that has come to him as sentimental songwriter:— “I had the misfortune to write song for Antoinette Sterling, called ‘The Better Land.’ It has, like a Frankenstein monster, haunted me ever since. When I have wanted to be quiet a cornet has played in the street. When I have thought to read a nice eulogium on myself in the papers it has been the chief topic of the article. And to add to my injuries, while the fiend was still in his infancy, I parted with his copyright! Over this last circumstance I ought, perhaps, not to grumble, as I received for the song £300, not a bad sum for about an hour's work.”

Hardly less troublesome was another, equally famous: “One song I wrote, ‘The Children’s Home,’ was, I think, responsible for more musical passings away and transportations to heaven of little children than any severe epidemic of measles in real life ever could be. For a long while afterwards nearly all songs were cast in this infanticidal mould, and I was always afraid of opening any sets of verses sent to me case I should doomed to read about the inevitable little child, with a faded flower in its hand, occupying a prominent seat among the angels.”

Cowen, Sir Frederic

Cowen, Sir Frederic

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