Roger Quilter - Biography

Biography

Born in Hove, Sussex, Quilter was a younger son of Sir William Quilter, 1st Baronet, who was a wealthy noted landowner, politician and art collector. Quilter was educated first in the preparatory school at Farnborough, then moving to Eton College and later becoming a fellow-student of Percy Grainger, Cyril Scott and Henry Balfour Gardiner at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, where he studied for almost five years under the guidance of Russian professor of composition, Iwan Knorr. He belonged to the Frankfurt Group, a circle of composers who studied at the Hoch Conservatory in the late 1890s. His reputation in England rests largely on his songs and on his light music for orchestra, such as his Children's Overture, with its interwoven nursery rhyme tunes, and a suite of music for the play Where the Rainbow Ends. He is noted as an influence on several English composers, including Peter Warlock.