Hamilton Clarke

James Hamilton Siree Clarke (25 January 1840 – 9 July 1912), better known as Hamilton Clarke, was an English conductor, composer and organist. Although Clarke was a prolific composer, he is best remembered as an associate of Arthur Sullivan, for whom he arranged music and compiled overtures for some of the Savoy Operas, including Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado.

Clarke began as an organist, pianist and theatre conductor, becoming a musical director for Gilbert and Sullivan, among others. While conducting at London theatres, he also composed a tremendous volume of church music, organ solos, songs, operettas and orchestral works. Beginning in the late 1870s, he composed incidental music as musical director for many of Henry Irving's spectacular productions at the Lyceum Theatre. He also composed music for many of the German Reed Entertainments and conducted at many other London theatres in the 1870s and 1880s. Clark published a Manual of Orchestration and music criticism, as well as some fiction. In 1889, he took charge of the Victorian National Orchestra in Australia, returning to England in 1892 and soon becoming conductor of the Carl Rosa Opera Company for several years.

Clarke was born in Birmingham, the son of an amateur organist. He began playing the piano at age four, and by six had improvised a tune that he reused in one of his mature works forty years later. He took up the violin when he was eight and played in an orchestra at twelve. In the same year, he became the organist at his church and was composing music by age 19. His parents did not approve of his taking music up as a profession, and he was sent to work first with an analytical chemist and then with a land surveyor. According to The Musical Times, he did not take up music as a profession until he was in his twenties. In 1864 he was awarded the first prize for anthems by the College of Organists.

Clarke held posts as organist in Ireland and was conductor of the Belfast Anacreontic Society. From 1866 he was organist at Queen's College, Oxford, where he also conducted the Queen's College Musical Society. After travelling for several years, he returned to London in 1871 and became the organist of Kensington Parish Church, London, and in 1872 he succeeded Arthur Sullivan as organist of St. Peter's, South Kensington. He left that post soon, however, to become a theatrical conductor.

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