Leonard N. Fowles

Leonard Nowell Fowles (6 October 1870 – 18 January 1939) was an English organist and choirmaster, classical music composer, arranger, teacher, adjudicator and conductor, best remembered for his hymn tunes “Golders Green” and “Phoenix”. Early years and education Fowles was born on 6 October 1870, at Portsea Island near Southsea, Hampshire, to Helen Nowell and Albert Godwin Fowles. His father, a native of the Isle of Wight, was a highly regarded professor of music and a free church organist; his mother was born on Jersey, the Channel Islands. His was a musical family. Fowles’ paternal aunt, Miss Margaret Fowles, was organist and choir director at the important post of St. Michael’s Church, Hyde, the Isle of Wight, and thereafter served as the conductor of the Letchworth Orchestral Society, Letchworth Garden City. His younger brother Bernard Fowles was also a noted musician. Fowles was raised in comfortable circumstances. Having mastered the keyboard and the violin, at the age of fourteen Fowles went to study at the Brussels Conservatory. In 1887, he was awarded the Whitcomb Scholarship for solo violin at the Royal College of Music. He studied at Oxford in the years 1896-1899. In Nove