Frederic Austin - Training and Early Career

Training and Early Career

Frederic Austin, brother of the composer Ernest Austin (1874–1947), was sent at the age of about 12 to live at Birkenhead, where he received organ and music lessons, and had singing training from Charles Lunn. By 1896 he had obtained a B.Mus. from Durham University and was organist in several Birkenhead churches. He became a teacher of harmony, and later of composition, at Liverpool College of Music.

At Liverpool he became close friends with the composer Cyril Scott, and through him was introduced to Balfour Gardiner (who became a lifelong friend). Through them he was received into the circle of young English composers known as the Frankfurt Group, and their friends. These included Scott, Balfour Gardiner, Norman O'Neill, Roger Quilter, Percy Grainger (owing to their training at the Hoch Conservatory) in Frankfurt am Main and such friends as Benjamin Dale, Gervase Elwes, Eugène Goossens, fils and Arnold Bax.

This group, in which Delius sometimes appeared, often performed each others’ music in informal surroundings, and Austin in particular used to improvise at the piano with Arnold Bax. In August 1900 he completed his first orchestral work, the concert Overture ‘Richard II’, which received its first performance in December 1901. In 1902 (the year of his marriage to Amy Oliver) Austin gave lessons in composition to Thomas Beecham, sang Tchaikovsky's Pilgrim Song for a Henry Wood promenade concert, and was introduced to Hans Richter, for whom he later sang Beethoven's Choral Symphony and Missa Solemnis, and Bach's St Matthew Passion.

In 1904 he moved to Pinner, sang under Weingartner and at Wagner nights at the promenade concerts, and took the name role in Mendelssohn's Elijah at Gloucester in the Three Choirs Festival. In June 1905 he took part in Beecham's London debut at the Bechstein Hall, in the first London performance of Scott's Ballad of Fair Helen of Kilconnell (dedicated to him).