Martin Shaw (composer)
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Martin Shaw OBE FRCM |
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| Born |
9 March 1875 London, England |
| Died | 24 October 1958 (aged 83) Southwold, Suffolk, England |
| Resting place | St Edmund's Church, Southwold |
| Occupation | Composer, conductor, theatre producer |
| Relatives |
Geoffrey Shaw (brother) Sebastian Shaw (nephew) Mont Campbell (grandson) |
Martin Edward Fallas Shaw OBE FRCM (9 March 1875 – 24 October 1958) was an English composer, conductor and (in his early life) theatre producer. His over 300 published works include songs, hymns, carols, oratorios, several instrumental works, a congregational mass setting (the Anglican Folk Mass) and four operas including a ballad opera.
Shaw delighted in describing himself as a cockney, a title he could claim under Samuel Rowlands's definition of one born within the sound of the Bow Bells. He was the son of the Bohemian and eccentric James Shaw, composer of church music and organist of Hampstead Parish Church. He was the elder brother of the composer and influential educator Geoffrey Shaw and the actor Julius Shaw, whose career was cut short by the First World War – he was killed in March 1918. He studied under Stanford at the Royal College of Music, together with a generation of composers that included Holst, Vaughan Williams and John Ireland. He then embarked upon a career as a theatrical producer, composer and conductor, the early years of which he described as "a long period of starving along". However, he began his career as an organist, serving at Emmanuel Church, West Hampstead, from 1895 to 1903.
With Gordon Craig, he founded the Purcell Operatic Society in 1899, dedicated to reviving the music of Henry Purcell and other English composers of the period, many of whose works had fallen into long neglect. Their first production in 1901 was Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, at the Hampstead Conservatoire. This was well received and transferred to the Coronet Theatre, where it played alongside Ellen Terry's production of Nance Oldfield. It was also Craig's first outing as stage director. The POS's other productions were The Masque of Love from Purcell's semi-opera, Dioclesian (1901) and Handel's Acis and Galatea (1902). In 1903, Martin joined Ellen Terry's company at the Imperial Theatre, where he composed and conducted the music for productions of The Vikings and Much Ado About Nothing, also directed by Craig, Ellen Terry's son.
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