The Royal Academy

At the age of 18, he studied privately with Walter Cecil Hay, the conductor of the Whitchurch choral society and director of music at St Chad's, Shrewsbury.^[6][7] German entered the Royal Academy of Music, where he eventually changed his name to J. E. German (and later simply Edward German) to avoid confusion with another student named Edward Jones. He continued his studies of violin and organ, also beginning a more formal study of composition under Ebenezer Prout.^[8] Many of German's student works were played at Academy concerts.^[9]

In 1884, the Academy appointed German a sub-professor of the violin. During his time as an instructor, he was well regarded and won several medals and prizes, such as the Tubbs Bow for his skill with the violin. In 1885, he won the Charles Lucas Medal for his Te Deum for soloists, choir and organ, leading him to change his focus from violin to composition. He soon wrote a light opera, The Two Poets (for four soloists and piano), in 1886, which was produced at the Academy and then performed at St. George's Hall.^[9] In 1887, his first symphony, in E Minor, was also performed at the Academy.^[10] In 1890 he conducted a revised version of this symphony at the Crystal Palace, while The Two Poets toured successfully in England.^[5]

During his time at the Royal Academy, German taught at Wimbledon School and played the violin in theatre orchestras, including the Savoy Theatre. He visited Germany in 1886 and 1888–89 and was impressed by its opera, particularly at Bayreuth.^[11] His circle of close friends at the Academy included Dora Bright^[12] and Ethel Mary Boyce from Chertsey, Surrey. He and Boyce became engaged. She was also a promising composition student and won the Lady Goldsmid scholarship in 1885, the Sterndale Bennett Prize in 1886 and the Charles Lucas Medal in 1889. Although the engagement was broken off, they remained friends.^[13] German never married.^[4]

Plays and orchestral music

After leaving the Academy, German continued to teach at Wimbledon School and to play the violin in orchestras at various London theatres, including the Savoy.^[4] In 1888, an introduction by conductor Alberto Randegger to theatre manager Richard Mansfield led to German's appointment as conductor and musical director at the Globe Theatre in London. There he improved the orchestra and began providing incidental music for the theatre's lavish productions, starting with Richard III in 1889.^[5] This music was well received (The Times called for a concert suite to be arranged),^[14] and the overture soon became popular in concert halls. This eventually led to other incidental music commissions that gained success. In 1892, German composed music for a production of Henry Irving's version of Henry VIII at the Lyceum Theatre, London, where he incorporated elements of traditional old English dance. Within a year, sheet music of the dance numbers from the play's score had sold 30,000 copies. German was by then in great demand to write music for plays. His commissions included Henry Arthur Jones's The Tempter in 1893, Johnston Forbes-Robertson's Romeo and Juliet at the Lyceum in 1895, Herbert Beerbohm Tree's productions of As You Like It (1896) and Much Ado about Nothing (1898), and Anthony Hope's English Nell (later known as Nell Gwynn) in 1900, starring Marie Tempest.^[8][9]

At the same time, German was writing music for the concert hall, sometimes adapting music from his theatrical scores. His Gipsy Suite met with success similar to that of his overture to Richard III and his popular Henry VIII and Nell Gwynn dances. All were written in "a distinctive, if limited, 'olde English' manner, a species of musical mock Tudor with which German came to be particularly associated."^[11] He also wrote a number of successful drawing-room songs and solo piano pieces during this time. The success of German's theatrical and concert hall music led to his receiving commissions from orchestral music festivals, including his second symphony for the Norwich Festival in 1893. The young critic George Bernard Shaw complained that German's symphonies were limited by the composer's indulgence in a theatricality out of place in symphonic writing. German was thin-skinned, and after receiving this criticism, he wrote no more symphonies. German tried to avoid this charge in the future by characterising his large-scale four-movement works as "symphonic suites". Successful orchestral works included suites for the Leeds Festival in 1895 and The Seasons for Norwich in 1899, and a symphonic poem, Hamlet, at Birmingham in 1897, conducted by Hans Richter. He had planned a violin concerto for the 1901 Leeds Festival, but this was never completed, as German instead turned to light opera.^[9] In 1902, he produced a Rhapsody on March Themes for the Brighton Festival.^[5]

Comic operas

Though German had little experience with opera or choral music, Richard D'Oyly Carte invited him to finish Arthur Sullivan's The Emerald Isle for the Savoy Theatre after Sullivan's death in 1900.^[15] He accepted, giving up his violin concerto commission for the Leeds Festival to meet the deadlines. The success of his score for the opera (which was performed into the 1920s) opened up a new career for him.^[9] His next comic opera, in 1902, was Merrie England, with Basil Hood, the librettist for The Emerald Isle. This was perhaps German's greatest success, and its dance music was popular separately. It was revived frequently, becoming a light-opera standard in Britain, while several of its songs, including "The English Rose", "O Peaceful England" and "The Yeomen of England", remained popular until the middle of the 20th century.^[5] Merrie England has been so frequently chosen by amateur groups in England that it probably has been performed more often than any other British opera or operetta written in the 20th century.^[9]

Gilbert, Workman and German at a rehearsal

After this, German and Hood collaborated again in 1903 to write A Princess of Kensington. This opera was unsuccessful, although it toured briefly and had a New York production. German turned to other endeavours, composing music to Rudyard Kipling texts, including the twelve songs in the Just So Song Book in 1903. He also received a steady flow of orchestral commissions, leading to works such as his Welsh Rhapsody for the Cardiff Festival in 1904, featuring as its climax "Men of Harlech".^[8]

German returned to writing comic operas, achieving another success with Tom Jones for the Apollo Theatre in 1907, produced by Robert Courtneidge for the Fielding bicentenary. The score is one of German's finest works. It received a production in New York, with German conducting, and was performed for decades, spawning separate performances of its dance music.^[5] He next collaborated with W. S. Gilbert on his final (and unsuccessful) opera, Fallen Fairies, at the Savoy in 1909. With German's agreement, Gilbert cast his protege, Nancy McIntosh, as the Fairy Queen, Selene. Critics found her performance weak. Shortly after the opening, the producer C. H. Workman, acting at the request of the syndicate he had gathered, replaced McIntosh with Amy Evans and asked for restoration of a song that Gilbert had cut during rehearsals. Gilbert was outraged and threatened to sue, demanding that German join him. This placed German in a distressing position, and the composer, who habitually preferred to avoid legal battles, declined.^[16] In maintaining the Savoy tradition of comic opera, German was composing a style of piece for which public taste had dwindled as fashions in musical theatre had changed with the new century.^[11]

Later years

In the wake of the failure of Fallen Fairies and his unhappy experience with it, German effectively ended his career as a composer of new works, only returning to composition on a few rare occasions. In 1911 he became the first composer to write music for a British film; he was commissioned for 50 guineas to write 16 bars of music for the coronation scene in the film Henry VIII.^[8][17] The same year, he composed his march and hymn for the coronation of King George V.^[18]

German in later years

Among the few works of his later years was the Theme and Six Diversions in 1919, and his final major work, the Othello-inspired tone poem The Willow Song in 1922.^[8] After that, German all but ceased composing. Correspondence shows that he felt uncomfortable with the changing musical styles, such as jazz and modernist classical music. Like Sullivan before him, he regretted that his popularity stemmed mostly from his comic operas.^[4] However, German was a perfectionist and continually revised his works and produced new arrangements for publication. He also recorded some of them and encouraged their production and broadcast on the radio.^[8]

German lived, from 1886, in Hall Road, Maida Vale, near Lord's Cricket Ground, London, where he was an avid enthusiast of that game. He lived a quiet life, enjoying walking, cycling and fishing, though he often attended the theatre.^[19] He developed a strong friendship with Sir Edward Elgar.^[4] German was injured in a road accident during World War I, but continued to be a highly sought-after conductor, accepting many conducting engagements, until he suffered an eye condition that left him blind in his right eye in 1928. He was the first British conductor invited by Dan Godfrey to conduct his own music at Bournemouth.^[9] Beginning in 1916, he was also one of the first composers to conduct his own music for recording, producing full renderings of Merrie England and Theme and Six Diversions.^[5]

German was knighted in 1928, when the respect in which he was held by fellow musicians was shown by the number of eminent musicians who attended the celebratory dinner, including Elgar, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, Sir Hugh Allen, Sir Landon Ronald, and Lord Berners.^[20] In 1934 German received the Royal Philharmonic Society's highest honour, its gold medal, presented by Sir Thomas Beecham at an RPS concert.^[21] He was elected an Honorary Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Musicians in 1936, and he was a leader of the Performing Rights Society, which fought for composers' rights to fair compensation for the performances of their works.

German died of prostate cancer at his Maida Vale home, aged 74.^[22] He was cremated at Golders Green,^[23] and his ashes are interred in the Whitchurch cemetery.^[5] He left an estate valued at £56,191.^[24]