Frank bridge composer biography
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Frank Bridge
Biography
The distinguished English composer, Frank Bridge, was a younger child in a large family. He first learned to play the violin from his father, and enjoyed the benefit of early exposure to practical musicianship as a player in music-hall orchestras which his father conducted. In 1896 at age 17 he entered the Royal College of Music, where he studied violin and piano for three years. Following this, he received a scholarship to study composition for another four years under Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. On graduating in 1903, he was awarded the gold Tagore medal reserved for the 'most generally deserving pupil' and received the highest praise from respected composer and teacher at the RCM, Sir Hubert Parry.
On leaving the RCM, Frank Bridge earned his living by teaching and performing. As a violin/viola player, he played in London's leading orchestras and was a member of three string quartets, and regularly coached student chamber groups at the RCM. In 1904, he performed in the British première of the newly completed Debussy String Quartet. In 1906 Bridge composed his own first String Quartet (in E minor) as an entry in a competition sponsored by the Filharmonica Accademica of Bologna, Italy. The same year, he formed a friendship with German-born bus
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Frank Bridge, underappreciated, underplayed, and still little known even in his native England, is most frequently recognized today as the teacher of the young Benjamin Britten, who acknowledged his teacher's influence in a popular early work. Bridge's sizable musical catalog is devoted primarily to chamber music and songs; he wrote orchestral music but composed no symphonies and only one work he called a concerto, Oration, Concerto Elegiaco for Cello and Orchestra.
Born in Brighton in 1879, Frank Bridge was the tenth of twelve children of William Henry Bridge, a violin teacher and music hall conductor, and the first child of his third marriage. Frank began violin lessons with his father and by age eleven had started to compose, play in his father's orchestra, sometimes substituting on other instruments, and occasionally to arrange and conduct. In 1896 he entered the Royal College of Music as a violin and piano student and after winning the Foundation Scholarship became a composition student of Charles Villiers Stanford. His first surviving composition is dated 1900. After switching to the viola he continued performing, especially in string quartets and he conducted frequently, often called upon to fill in at short notice for ailing conductors. A shy, re
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