Keith Falkner

Sir Donald Keith Falkner (1 March 1900 – 17 May 1994), known simply as Keith Falkner, was a distinguished English bass-baritone singer especially associated with oratorio and concert recital, who later became Director of the Royal College of Music in London.

Falkner was born at Sawston, Cambridgeshire. At the age of nine he won a place in the choir of New College, Oxford, in which there were 18 boys, two altos, four tenors and four basses, under the direction of Dr Hugh Allen. During his years as a chorister the choir sang almost all the repertoire of Johann Sebastian Bach's choral music, including particularly the motets, and also much other Elizabethan and more modern church music, and works by Palestrina, Schütz and Handel. These were usually performed with minimal rehearsal or at sight. In this period Hugh Allen laid the foundation of Falkner's technique, his breathing, intonation and phrasing.

During the early part of World War I he was a schoolboy at The Perse School, Cambridge, but in 1917-19 he was a pilot in the Royal Naval Air Service, working in hazardous early aircraft spotting submarines in the English Channel.

Late in 1919 he gained the recommendation of Sir Hugh Allen (by then Director of the Royal College of Music) for an ex-serviceman's grant to enable him to study singing at the College. For five years he studied there with Albert Garcia, taking organ as his second subject. In 1920 he accepted the post as an assistant vicar-choral at St Paul's Cathedral, which helped to support his continued studies and gave him a start as a professional singer until 1926. At St Paul's, the cavernous acoustic caused his voice to develop a 'lugubrious quality'. He took part in a number of public performances during the early 1920s, but did not begin to make a permanent impression until he sang in Hubert Parry's oratorio Job, the role including the great dramatic passage of the Lamentations, at the Three Choirs Festival at Gloucester in 1925.

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