At our next Evensong on Saturday May 14 at 5pm the anthem will be ‘And I saw a new heaven’ by Bainton.
Edgar Bainton (1880-1956) was born in Hackney, London, before moving to Coventry with his family. He won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music where he studied with Walford Davies and Stanford, and formed friendships with George Dyson and William Harris. He began a long association with the Newcastle upon Tyne Conservatory of Music in 1901, becoming principal in 1912. He was in Germany attending the Bayreuth Festival at the outbreak of the First World War; as an enemy alien he was arrested and spent the duration of the war in internment. In 1934 he was appointed director of the New South Wales State (now Sydney) Conservatorium of Music (pictured), a post he held until 1948. He was responsible for establishing the opera school, and almost tripling enrolment numbers. He lived the rest of his life in Sydney. ‘And I saw a new heaven’, composed in 1928, is his best-known work.
Source: Helen Bainton, 1979, Article in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bainton-edgar-leslie-5101
Photo: OSX – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14640244
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