Ernest Farrar: Tribute to be paid to the life and work of a forgotten Yorkshire composer
He was a young man, one of many to perish in the First World War.
But how much does anyone now recall the name Ernest Farrar, a man who died on the western front in the last months of the First World War?
He was just one of the 1,163 names inscribed on Harrogate’s war memorial.
But if only he had lived, if only he had been able to resume his career as a composer, might he now be as famous as, say, Edward Elgar or Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Renowned music enthusiast Andrew Hitchen says: “I think that quite a possibility.”
Mr Hitchen, founder of the Wesley Chapel concert series, said: “Although he was only 33 at the time of his death, Farrar left behind a significant body of work, compositions of great quality and beauty.”
At the request of the Harrogate Civic Society, he will be talking about Ernest Farrar, his life and work, at The West Park Centre, Victoria Avenue on Wednesday, November 19 at 7pm for 7.30pm.
This will also be a rare opportunity to hear, reproduced at concert quality, recordings of some of Farrar’s most spectacular orchestral compositions.
Farrar was born in 1885 in Lewisham but grew up in Yorkshire where his father was Vicar of Micklefield.
Educated at Leeds Grammar School and Durham University, he was awarded a scholarship in 1905 at the Royal College of Music.
After graduation, he became an organist at Dresden, before being appointed choirmaster and organist at St Hilda’s Church, South Shields.
In 1912 he moved to Harrogate where he took up post as organist at Christ Church, augmenting his income by teaching composition to pupils, such as the youthful Gerald Finzi.
In August 1916 he joined the Grenadier Guards, undergoing two years of training. It was during this period that he composed “Heroic Elegy”, perhaps his most moving work, dedicated to his fellow servicemen.
He himself conducted the first performance at Harrogate’s Royal Hall on July 3, 1918 but it was to be the last music he was ever to hear.
On September 6, 1918, he was posted to France where, only 12 days later, he was killed by machine gun fire as he was leading his men into battle.
He died on the Western Front at the Battle of Epehy Ronssoy, near Le Cateau in the Somme Valley south, west of Cambrai. He had been at the front for two days.
His grave lies just outside the churchyard wall in Ronssoy Communal Cemetery Extension. A Requiem Mass was said at Micklefield, on September 29, the Feast of St Michael and All Angels.
A concert was dedicated to his memory at Harrogate by Julian Clifford on September 17 1919, including the tone-poem Lights Out, written expressly for Farrar, and Farrar's Variations in G On An Old British Sea-Song for piano and orchestra.
His name is one of the 38 on the War Memorial at the Royal College of Music.
To book a place at the talk, email [email protected].
This will be free to Civic Society members and attendees at the Wesley Concert Series. Otherwise, donations at the door (suggested £5) will be more than welcome.