Arthur Somervell

Sir Arthur Somervell (5 June 18632 May 1937) was an English composer and educationalist. After Hubert Parry, he was one of the most successful and influential writers of art song in the English music renaissance of the 1890s–1900s. According to Michael Hurd, his most important work is found in the five song cycles, particularly his settings of Tennyson in Maud (1898) and Housman in A Shropshire Lad (1904). Career He was born in Windermere, Westmorland, the son of Robert Miller Somervell and his wife. His father was a shoe manufacturer who served as a JP, of “Hazelthwaite” at Windermere (1821-1899). The Somervell (originally Somerville) family came from Scotland, settling in London in the 1700s. Somervell’s brother, Colin Somervell, became a shoe-manufacturer like their father and later served as High Sheriff of Westmorland in 1916. Colin’s son, Maj. Arnold Colin Somervell, O.B.E., served in this office in 1936; later, other members of the Somervell family also served. Somervell was initially educated at Uppingham School and King’s College, Cambridge, where he studied composition under Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. From 1883 to 1885 he studied at the High School for Music, Berlin,