Portrait of English musician Frank Bridge (1879-1945). Date: 1923, from Alamy.com
Frank Bridge was an English composer, conductor and viola player, he was born in Brighton in 1879 and died near Eastbourne in 1941. He began his career as a violinist, but later developed into an outstanding viola player, performing with some of the leading string quartets, including Grimson, Joachim and English String Quartets. As a guest conductor, Bridge was much in demand in England and the United States and conducted for many well-known orchestras including Covent Garden. His best known compositions are those for chamber combinations but he also wrote works for orchestra, piano and cello.
1881 Census Frank Bridge is two years old, his father William is a Lithographic printer, his mother is Elizabeth and he has three older siblings. The family is living in Brighton.
1891 Census Frank Bridge is 12 years old, his father William is a Professor of Music Violin and a Lithographic Printer, his mother Elizabeth and he has two older siblings and two younger siblings living at home in Brighton. (I wonder if anyone who taught music at that time called themselves a Professor of Music).
1901 Census Frank Bridge is visiting in Brighton, he is 23 years old and his profession is music - violin.
1908 Marriage of Frank Bridge, bachelor, living in Chelsea, father William Henry Bridge, Professor of Music and Ethel Elmore Sinclair, spinster, father Edwin Benjamin Sinclair on the 2nd September 1908 at St Mary’s Church, Fulham. Alice Bridge, Frank’s sister is one of the witnesses.
1911 Census Frank Bridge, a Professor of Music working on his own account is living at 23 Foster Road, Chiswick with his wife Ethel, one servant and possibly a woman who is a nurse boarding with them. The house has seven rooms.
Sir Henry Wood, conductor from Alamy.com
1913 The appointment Mr. Frank Bridge conductor Covent Garden is another proof the enormous advance of English music in late years. At one time the Royal opera had to find almost all its material abroad. Mr. Frank Bridge became known during the Liverpool Festival of the Musical League - a society unfortunately exists no longer. One of the compositions performed on that occasion proved him a musician of uncommon ability and of serious aims. Since then his reputation has been enhanced by some chamber music and by an orchestral composition, performed by Sir Henry Wood at the Queen's Hall promenade concerts. He is also known as an accomplished viola player, and his knowledge of this instrument augurs well his future success as a conductor. Some of the ablest conductors of the day have been drawn from the ranks of the string players of the orchestra. (From the Liverpool Daily Post and Mercury Thursday 24th July 1913)
1921 Census Frank Bridge and his wife Ethel are living at 4 Bedord Gardens, Kensington. Frank Bridge is a Professor of Music and working on his own account. They have a visitor on the evening of the Census and also they have one servant living working for them.
1926 Travel to the United States.
1939 Register Frank Bridge and his wife are living at Friston Field Hailsham. Frank Bridge was born on the 26th February 1879 and his wife Ethel was born on the 10th July 1881. Frank Bridge is listed as a music composer and conductor.
According to Simon Carey, Friston Field is a large house built in the 1930s and it was named after the filed it was built in as noted in Friston’s 1848 tithe map.
1941 Death of Frank Bridge on 10th January 1941, he is listed as being of 4 Bedord Gardens and Friston Field and the value of his estate is 8101pounds 9s.
There is a gravestone for Frank Bridge and his wife Ethel, who died in 1960 at the St Mary the Virgin Churchyard, Friston East Sussex.
These are a few of the tributes paid to Frank Bridge in British newspapers after his death.
Frank Bridge blue plaque 4 Bedford Gardens, Kensington.
By Edwardx - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37942334
FRANK BRIDGE BRITISH COMPOSER’S SUDDEN DEATH The sudden death at Eastbourne on Saturday of Mr. F. Bridge, the British composer, is reported. He was in his 62nd year, being born in February, 1879. To concert-goers generally he was best known, perhaps, through some of his songs—especially Love Went Riding,” which achieved great popularity but he was a com- poser of works in several other forms, particularly chamber music. He entered the Royal College of Music as a violin student, but was successful in gaining a scholarship in composition 1899, and had the benefit of Mr. F, Bridge working under Sir Charles Stanford for four years. He left the College and joined a string quartet as second violinist, but at this time turned his attention to the viola and acquired a degree of virtuosity on that instrument and played it in several combinations for some years. He also worked hard to acquire the art of conducting, and made such progress that he was entrusted with the baton for some English operatic ventures and also took command of the players in a number of the concerts of the Royal Philharmonic and Queen’s Hall Orchestras. He also went to America after the last war and did some conducting in New York. His reputation as a composer of chamber music dates from 1904 and he was definitely in the front rank of English writers of this class of composition. He naturally could always write very well for the strings. (From the Birmingham Mail Monday 13th January 1941)
Mr. Frank Bridge. Composer of chamber music, has died at his home at Eastbourne. He was a noted composer of string quartets, and until 1915 was associated with the English String Quartet. In 1910 and 1911 he directed opera at the Savoy Theatre, and occasionally conducted the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra, on more than one occasion deputising for Sir Henry Wood. (From the News Chronicle January 13th 1941)
DEATH OF MR. FRANK BRIDGE COMPOSER, CONDUCTOR, AND VIOLA PLAYER Mr. Bridge, the composer, conductor, and viola player who died at Friston Field, near Eastbourne, on Friday, was cremated at Brighten on Wednesday. His reputation was made us a composer of chamber music but he produced some excellent orchestral works, those most frequently performed the 'Lament" for strings, written in memory of a child drowned in the sinking of the " Lusitania," a German crime of the war, and the " Sea Suite'', published in connection with the Carnegie Trust. Born at Brighton on February 26, 1879, Frank Bridge received bis musical training at the Royal College of Music, where he was a student of the violin. In 1899 he won a composition scholarship, and for four years he studied under Stanford. After a period as a violinist with the Grunion Quartet he made a name as a viola player, and in 1901 joined the Joachim Quartet, and later the English String Quartet, with which he was associated until 1915. At the same time he was becoming known as a conductor of merit, with the New Symphony Orchestra, and at the Savoy Theatre in 1910 and 1911 he conducted opera. In 1913 be was one of Raymond Rose's conductors at Covent Garden, and he also conducted the Audrey Chapman Orchestra, the Philharmonic, the London Symphony, and other known orchestras. He visited the United States in 1923 and conducted his own compositions. Among his best known works were Fantasy quartet; Fantasy trio; Fantasy quartet, piano and strings. He also composed a piano quintet (1906), a string sextet violoncello sonata, and one for piano solo and many piano pieces and songs. Bridge’s fine technique which he acquired in his early days remained with him to the end of his life. He married Ethel Elmore Sinclair, of Melbourne. (From the Eastbourne Chronicle Saturday January 18th 1941).
Through the recent death of Frank Bridge we have lost yet another notable representative of the twentieth century school of British composers. Frank Bridge first became known as a fine viola player and member of leading string quartets; and it is evident that his excellence as an executant not only led him to write felicitously for that instrument, "the Cinderella of the quartet," but also shed its influence upon his string writing in general, which is of a style peculiarly grateful to players of his many chamber works. Not less felicitous is his piano writing, which always "lies well" for the hands and realises, with a fidelity none too common with his English contemporaries, the best resources of the instrument. Bridge, one of Stanford's many pupils, was a member, as I have said, of the 20th century British school; yet he was not of it in spirit. It is not easy to place him, for in truth his style fluctuated through the years; and he was not always happiest when venturing upon the prickly path of modern discord. Certainly there is a distinct influence of Debussy in his piano writing; and, indeed, there is a certain Gallic exquisiteness in the best of all his writing. In brief, he was a delightful impressionist, whose strain of winsome romanticism was sometimes obscured by a presumable urge to appear the child of his age. His best works deserve a permanent and honourable place in the literature of our time. (From Belfast Telegraph Saturday 8th March 1941)
The first photo shows Benjamin Britten with Frank Bridge and his wife Ethel. Both of these photos are from the National Gallery UK.
References
Ancestry.com
British Newspapers online
www.wikipedia.org