Harry Waldo Warner (4 January 1874 – 1 June 1945) was an English violist and composer, one of the founding members of the London String Quartet and several times a Cobbett Competition winner for his chamber music.

Early life Born in Northampton (at 57 Grafton Street)Ancestry.co.uk Warner studied from the age of 14 at the Guildhall School of Music under Alfred Gibson for violin and Orlando Morgan for composition, later becoming a professor there. After giving some violin recitals, he began to concentrate on the viola.

The London String Quartet In 1908, Charles Warwick-Evans (1885–1974) was leader of the Queen's Hall cellos, and Warner was first viola in Thomas Beecham's New Symphony Orchestra. Warwick-Evans formed the idea of a string quartet worked up to the standard of a solo virtuoso, and approached Warner.'British Players and Singers – vii: The London String Quartet, Musical Times 1 August 1922 He was enthusiastic, and then Thomas W. Petre (second violin) was found and finally Albert Sammons, the new Concertmaster of Beecham's orchestra, was asked to lead the quartet.

They rehearsed four times a week for nearly two years before giving their first concert on 26 January 1910, at Bechstein Hall, as the 'New' Quartet, playing Dohnányi in D-flat, Tchaikovsky in D, and the Fantasy Quartet No. 1 by Warner. Reviews were excellent. Their second concert was in June 1910, with Debussy in G minor, Beethoven Op. 59 no. 1, and a Fantasy of H. Balfour Gardiner. Warwick-Evans suggested the name London String Quartet, and in 1911, it was adopted.Acoustic Chamber Music Sets (1899–1926): A Discography, by Frank Forman

The quartet gave concerts mainly in the UK but travelled to Amsterdam and Paris, with a repertoire extending from the classical period to contemporary works – including Verklärte Nacht in the presence of the composer.Potter Tully, "Britain's early chamber ambassadors", Classical Recordings Quarterly, Autumn 2010, p12-20. Warner also played in the first performance in England of Debussy's Sonata for flute, viola and harp (at an otherwise London String Quartet concert) on 2 February 1917 at the Aeolian Hall, which may have been its first public performance anywhere.Musical Times, October 1968, p 914 Warner retired from the Quartet in 1929 for health reasons, and William Primrose took his place.Woolf, Jonathan. 'The London String Quartet: 1917-1951 Recordings', Decca box set (2011), reviewed at MusicWeb International

Music Warner composed his first opera while still a student, but established himself as a composer by writing a number of "phantasie" works – the single movement genre specifically defined for William Cobbett's chamber music competitions. The first was his String Quartet, Op. 12, which won fifth place in the first Cobbett competition of 1906. This was followed by his early piano trio in 1907. The Folk Song Fantasy Quartet, Op. 18, based on a folk melody from Berkshire, achieved some level of popularity after World War I, having won first prize in the 1917 Cobbett competition. According to Herbert Antcliffe, writing in 1920, the work "is probably heard more frequently than any other chamber work by a young British composer, and is popular in the fullest and best sense of the term".Antcliffe, Herbert. "The Recent Rise of Chamber Music in England", in Musical Quarterly, Vol 6 No 1, January 1920, p 18

A performance of the Folk Song Fantasy by the London String Quartet on 24 September 1920, along with Frank Bridge's String Quartet No. 1 in E minor, was attended by the American patron of arts Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge.Banfield, Stephen. "Too Much of Albion"?: Mrs Coolidge and her British Connections, in American Music, Vol 4 No 1 (Spring 1986) It was probably her first hearing of Bridge's music, whose work she supported financially for the rest of his life. But she also became a champion of Warner, whose Trio for piano, violin and cello in A minor went on to win first prize at Mrs Coolidge's 1921 chamber music competition in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.New York Times, 1 October, 1921, Section A, p 22 The prize was a thousand dollars. The Trio, which was subsequently published by Ricordi, has been recorded by Trio Anima Mundi.Divine Art: Harry Waldo Warner Recordings The three movement piece "shows great vigour and metrical flexibility, both pungent and elegant, and with hints of both French models and of then-popular chinoiserie".'English Piano Trios', reviewed by MusicWeb International

There are two other later published works for string quartet: The Pixy Ring (String Quartet No. 5), each movement being concerned with fairy lore; and the Suite in Olden Style, Op. 34 (String Quartet No. 6, 1929).Bruno Aulich and Ernst Heimeran, The Well-Tempered String Quartet (Translation by D Millar Craig), Revised enlarged edition (Novello, Sevenoaks 1951), p.125). The Divertimento in D, Op. 45, (1945) is another "olden style" suite of seven pieces for violin, viola and piano.Recorded on A Musical Soirée, Meridian CDE84686 (2026) Warner also adapted Stanford's Clarinet Concerto, Op. 129, for the viola.The Stanford Legacy, CD. Nimbus NI 6334 (2016)

Beyond chamber music, Warner also wrote orchestral suites, most notably the Three Elfin Dances (1905), performed twice at the BBC Proms in 1917 and 1924,BBC Proms archive subsequently broadcast on BBC Radio on several occasions,Radio Times, Issue 489, 12 February 1933, p 31 and The Broad Highway: Sketches from a Tramp's Diary. The tone poem Hampton Wick, Op. 38, based on a text he wrote himself under the pen-name "Onslow Frampton", was an unlikely prize winner at the 1932 Hollywood Bowl Competition.Barnfield, Paul. Old Hampton Wick poem - fascinating new information revealed, Hampton Wick Association, 2017 It was first performed by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra two years later.The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Year Book (no date), p.16-17 A Suite in D minor, Op. 58, with a viola soloist, has been orchestrated by Tim Seddon from a viola and piano manuscript that was in the collection of Lionel Tertis and passed on to his pupil Harry Danks.Dutton Epoch - July 2016 There are also two comic operas written early in his career – The Royal Vagrants: A Story of Conscientious Objection (1899)Griffel, Margaret Ross. Opera in English: A Dictionary (2012) and Cupid's Market – as well as many songs for solo and chorus.

Personal life In 1896, Warner married the professional model Rose Amy Pettigrew (1872–1958), who from an early age had sat for artists including William Holman Hunt, Frederic Leighton, John Everett Millais, John Singer Sargent, Walter Sickert, Philip Wilson Steer and, especially, James McNeill Whistler.University of Glasgow. 'Rose Amy Pettigrew' in The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler After their marriage, she retired from modelling. They lived in Chiswick.

They had one child, Onslow Boyden Waldo Warner (1902–1988), who also studied at Guildhall. Under the name Ken Warner, he became well-known as a dance band musician (playing saxophone and violin with Peter Yorke and Fred Hartley). From 1940 until 1959, he performed, arranged and composed light music and library music at the BBC.Ken Warner biography, Naxos A CD of his music was issued by Extreme Music.Ken Warner: Maestro Edition, Francis Day & Hunter, FDH 0010 (2024)

Harry Waldo Warner died in 1945, survived by his wife. Rose completed her memoirs two years later.Jiminez, Jill Burk. Dictionary of Artists' Models (2013), p 422Memoirs, Glasgow University Library Special Collections, D.S. MacColl Papers, P/64)

References

External links

Piano Trio, performed by Trio Amini Mundi (2019) on YouTube