Walter Macfarren

Walter Cecil Macfarren (28 August 1826 – 20 September 1905) was an English pianist, composer and conductor, and a teacher at the Royal Academy of Music.

He was born in London in 1826, youngest son of the dramatist George Macfarren, and brother of the musician Sir George Alexander Macfarren. In his fourth year he showed gifts for music; he was a choir-boy at Westminster Abbey under James Turle (1836-41), and sang at the coronation of Queen Victoria. When his voice broke, he had thoughts of becoming an artist, and took some lessons in painting, and then served as salesman in a piano shop in Brighton.

At the persuasion of his brother, he entered the Royal Academy of Music in October 1842, studying the piano under W. H. Holmes and composition under his brother and Cipriani Potter. In January 1846 he became a Sub-professor of the pianoforte, and remained on the staff of the Royal Academy for fifty-seven years, for many years lecturing there six times annually and teaching the piano.

The assessment of the Dictionary of National Biography was that "He always remained a sound performer of the older school. He composed many small but solid piano pieces, natural, pleasing, and always highly finished in style, recalling Felix Mendelssohn and William Sterndale Bennett."

His vocal works included two church services and many short secular pieces; the part-song "You stole my Love" was successful. He produced an overture to The Winter's Tale (1844); an overture to The Taming of the Shrew (1845); and Beppo, a concert overture (1847).

From 1873 to 1880 he conducted the concerts at the Royal Academy, and from 1877 to 1880 was treasurer of the Royal Philharmonic Society. Resuming the composition of large works, he produced with success at Wilhelm Kuhe's Brighton Festivals his Pastoral Overture (1878), Hero and Leander (1897), and a Symphony in B flat (1880).

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