Christopher Edmunds

Biography

Christopher Montague Edmunds (26 November 1899 – 2 January 1990) was an English composer, academic and organist who lived and worked in Birmingham.

Edmunds was born in Small Heath, Birmingham. After serving as a young soldier in the war, he studied music with Granville Bantock at the Birmingham School of Music and went on to teach there from 1929 under Bantock. In 1945 he became Principal of the School (following Dr A.K. Blackall who had succeeded Bantock in 1934), a position he held until 1956. He was organist and choirmaster at Aston Parish Church from the 1930s until 1957.

His most popular composition remains the Sonatina for recorder and piano which has always stayed in print. A song, The Bellman was performed twice at The Proms, in 1929 and 1931. But he also composed widely for the choral festival movement in the 1920s and 1930s, and produced two significant works foreshadowing the war: the B minor Piano Sonata and the Symphony No 2. The Sonata was premiered by Tom Bromley in Birmingham in May 1938. It was recorded for the first time in 2021 by Duncan Honeybourne. Lewis Foreman has called the Second Symphony "a notable example of music responding to the challenges of the war in 1939 and 1940". The first complete performance, with the BBC Northern Orchestra conducted by Julius Harrison, was broadcast in April 1944.

A short opera, The Blue Harlequin, received performances in 1929 and 1937. As with the later short opera, The Fatal Rubber, it was based on a "diminutive drama" by Maurice Baring. There were also lighter orchestral and band pieces, often played during the 1960s by the BBC Midland Light Orchestra. Examples include the Festival of Youth overture and the Harlequinade suite for strings. The University of Birmingham archive includes three symphonies, four operas, 10 choral works, 25 chamber pieces and many pieces for solo piano.

For many years Edmunds lived at 19, Blythe Way in Solihull. He died in Whixley, Yorkshire.

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