Biography
Corder was born in Hackney, the son of Micah Corder and his wife Charlotte Hill. He was educated at Blackheath Proprietary School and started music lessons, particularly piano, early. Later he studied with Henry Gadsby. After that he studied harmony with Claude Couldery.
Frederick Corder continued his studies at the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied with George Alexander Macfarren (harmony and composition), William Cusins (piano) and William Watson (violin). In 1875 he earned a Mendelssohn Scholarship, which enabled him to study for four years abroad. He spent the first three in the Cologne Conservatory in Cologne, Germany, where he studied composition with Ferdinand Hiller and piano with Isidor Seiss. He spent his last year in Milan, Italy without formal instruction. He did however meet Arrigo Boito and Giuseppe Verdi. Upon his return to England, in 1879, he became conductor at the Brighton Aquarium.
In August 1884, for a single month, he filled in for William Robinson as musical director with D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, touring Patience and Iolanthe.
Corder became professor of composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London, becoming the Academy's curator in 1889. His students included notable British composers like Granville Bantock, Arnold Bax, York Bowen, Alan Bush, Eric Coates, Benjamin Dale and Joseph Holbrooke, as well as his own son, Paul Corder. With others, Frederick Corder co-founded the Society of British Composers in 1905 and served as its first chairman.
He developed an early fascination with Richard Wagner and produced with his wife the first accepted English translations of The Ring and other works by Wagner. His own compositions included songs, operas and cantatas. Corder's Prospero overture can be heard on CD and is available in full score.
Corder married Henrietta Walford, the daughter of Henry Walford on 25 September 1876. They had a daughter, Dorothea Charlotte (known as Dolly), born on 30 June 1878 (died in her nineties), and a son, Paul Walford, born on 14 December 1879 (died on 7 August 1942). Corder's sister, Rosa Corder, was a friend of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and painted his portrait.
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