Donald Francis Tovey

Sir Donald Francis Tovey (17 July 1875 – 10 July 1940) was a British musical analyst, musicologist, writer on music, composer, conductor and pianist. He had been best known for his Essays in Musical Analysis and his editions of works by Bach and Beethoven, but since the 1990s his compositions (relatively small in number but substantial in musical content) have been recorded and performed with increasing frequency. The recordings have mostly been well received by reviewers.

Tovey began to study the piano and compose at an early age. He eventually studied composition with Hubert Parry.

He became a close friend of eminent violinist, and friend of Brahms, Joseph Joachim, and played piano with the Joachim Quartet in a 1905 performance of perhaps Brahms's most highly regarded chamber work, the F minor Piano Quintet, Op. 34. He gained moderate fame as a composer, to the point of having his works performed in Berlin and Vienna as well as in London. He performed his own Piano Concerto under Sir Henry Wood in 1903, and under Hans Richter in 1906. During this period he also contributed heavily to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, writing many of the articles on music of the 18th and 19th centuries.

In 1914 he began to teach music at the University of Edinburgh, succeeding Frederick Niecks as Reid Professor of Music; there he founded the Reid Orchestra. For their concerts he wrote a series of programme notes, many of which were eventually collected into the books for which he is now best known, the Essays in Musical Analysis.

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