German, J. Edward

(Real name German Edward Jones)

1862-

English composer, whose real name is German Edward Jones, born at Whitchurch, Shropshire. Displayed interest in music at a very early age, blowing the organ for his father, who was for thirty years organist of the Congregational Church in that town. His mother encouraged his musical tendencies, and when he left school, at eighteen, it was decided to educate him for a professional musician. From January to September,  1880, he studied harmony, orchestration, violin and piano under Walter Cecil Hay, an active and enthusiastic musician, who conducted an orchestra, a choral society and concerts. In the fall of the same year he entered the Royal Academy of Music to study organ under Steggall, but the second year made the violin his principal study. Here he remained for six years longer, working at the theoretical branches of music also, and becoming prominent in the school both as a performer and as a composer, producing a symphony at a students' concert. In 1885 he won the Charles Lucas medal for composition with a Te Deum for chorus and organ, and was made an assistant teacher of violin. His comic operetta, the Two Poets, was performed at the Academy the next year, and was later revived by the students, in 1901. This was a work of much promise, and other compositions written before he left the Academy were used in concerts.

In 1887 he gave up his work at the Academy, but was made an associate. For over a year he played the violin in orchestras here and there, sometimes as a soloist, teaching and composing in the meantime, and was then appointed musical director of the Globe Theatre, London, with Richard Mansfield as manager. His incidental music to Richard III., produced in 1889, and that for Henry VIII., given at the Lyceum in 1892, proved an entering wedge. His incidental music to plays was soon in demand, and was composed for The Tempter; Romeo and Juliet; and As You Like It. His first symphony, in E minor, was produced at the Royal Academy of Music in 1896 and at the Crystal Palace in 1890. Three years later he conducted concerts at the Crystal Palace, and in 1895 his own suite in D minor at the Leeds Festival; and the latter year he was made a fellow of the Royal Academy of Music. Other orchestral works and suites have been performed, and in the latter he has given preference to wind-instruments over his own solo instrument, the violin. One unusual combination is a serenade for tenor with accompaniment of piano and wind-instruments. In 1901, when Sir Arthur Sullivan's death left The Emerald Isle hardly more than begun, the work of finishing it was assigned to German, and it was done so well that it was thought he would inherit the place of the former in English music. German's opera, Merrie England, would confirm that opinion, though he is in no sense an imitator of Sullivan; but though German has had the  rare good fortune to please the musicians and the general public alike, he has been criticized for a certain weakness in allowing suggested changes to creep into some recent works, which has caused a lowering of the standard in light opera maintained by the Savoy Theatre under Sullivan. So far as his music itself is concerned, he has a prolific vein of melody, and the good effects of his early orchestral training are evident in his compositions.

German's compositions include incidental music to the plays, Much Ado About Nothing, Nell Gwyn, and The Conqueror; the orchestral suites; Gipsy Suite, Four Characteristic Dances; Symphonic Suite, in D minor; English Fantasia, Commemoration; Symphonic Poem, Hamlet; Symphonic Suite, The Seasons; Rhapsody on March Themes, and Welsh Rhapsody. Other orchestral works are Funeral March, D minor; Serenade for voice, piano, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn; Pizzicato movement, The Guitar; and Bolero for violin and orchestra. His operas are Emerald Isle (above mentioned), Merrie England, A Princess of Kensington, The Rival Poets, an operetta, and a comic opera, Tom Jones. German came to America in the fall of 1907 to conduct this opera at its first performance in New York, where it had a run of some weeks. He has also written many piano solos and duets ; violin solos; a Scotch sketch for piano and two violins; three sketches for cello and piano; suite for flute and piano; flute solos; pastorale and bourree for oboe and piano; and many songs, including three albums of lyrics (with Harold Boulton); the Jnst So Song Book, with Rudyard Kipling; Orpheus with his lute, a trio; and a Te Deum in F.

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