Henry Balfour Gardiner (7 November 1877 – 28 June 1950) was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 musician, composer, and teacher. Between his conventional education at Charterhouse School

Charterhouse School

Charterhouse School, originally The Hospital of King James and Thomas Sutton in Charterhouse, or more simply Charterhouse or House, is an English collegiate independent boarding school situated at Godalming in Surrey.Founded by Thomas Sutton in London in 1611 on the site of the old Carthusian...

 and New College

New College, Oxford

New College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.- Overview :The College's official name, College of St Mary, is the same as that of the older Oriel College; hence, it has been referred to as the "New College of St Mary", and is now almost always...

, Oxford

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

, where he obtained only a pass degree, Gardiner was a piano

Piano

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

 student at the Hoch Conservatory

Hoch Conservatory

Dr. Hoch’s Konservatorium - Musikakademie was founded in Frankfurt am Main on September 22, 1878. Through the generosity of Frankfurter Joseph Hoch, who bequeathed the Conservatory one million German gold marks in his testament, a school for music and the arts was established for all age groups. ...

 in Frankfurt am Main where he was taught by Knorr

Iwan Knorr

Iwan Knorr was a German composer and teacher of music. A native of Mewe, he attended the Leipzig Conservatory where he studied with Ignaz Moscheles, Ernst Friedrich Richter and Carl Reinecke. In 1874 he became a teacher and in 1878 director of music theory instruction at the Imperial...

 and Uzielli, who had been a pupil of Clara Schumann

Clara Schumann

Clara Schumann was a German musician and composer, considered one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era...

. He belonged to the Frankfurt Group

Frankfurt Group

The Frankfurt Group was a group of English speaking composers and friends who all studied at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt am Main in the late 1890s.This group included Balfour Gardiner, Percy Grainger, Roger Quilter, Norman O'Neill and Cyril Scott....

, a circle of composers who studied at the Hoch Conservatory in the late 1890s. Gardiner collected folk songs in Hampshire (1905-1906),, taught music briefly at Winchester College

Winchester College

Winchester College is an independent school for boys in the British public school tradition, situated in Winchester, Hampshire, the former capital of England. It has existed in its present location for over 600 years and claims the longest unbroken history of any school in England...

 (1907), and composed. His works included compositions in a variety of genres, including two symphonies

Symphony

A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...

, but many of his scores are lost and only a very limited amount of his music survives.

His best-known work Evening Hymn (1908), a setting of the Compline hymn Te lucis ante terminum

Te lucis ante terminum

Te lucis ante terminum is an old Latin hymn. It is the hymn at Compline in the Roman Breviary.-Origin:The authorship of Ambrose of Milan, for which Pimont contends, is not admitted by the Benedictine editors or by Luigi Biraghi...

, is a lush, romantic work for eight-part choir and organ, of dense harmonies. For most of the time, it sits in four parts, though the treble, alto, tenor, and bass parts all subdivide at various points. It is considered a classic of the English choral repertoire and is still regularly performed as an anthem

Anthem

The term anthem means either a specific form of Anglican church music , or more generally, a song of celebration, usually acting as a symbol for a distinct group of people, as in the term "national anthem" or "sports anthem".-Etymology:The word is derived from the Greek via Old English , a word...

 at evensong

Evening Prayer (Anglican)

Evening Prayer is a liturgy in use in the Anglican Communion and celebrated in the late afternoon or evening...

 in Anglican

Church of England

The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...

 churches.

The fame of this work has overshadowed his surviving orchestral works, which include Overture to a Comedy and the Delius

Delius

Delius is a surname. It may refer to:* Ernst von Delius - German racing car driver* Frederick Delius - English composer* Nicolaus Delius - German philologist* Tobias Delius Delius is a surname. It may refer to:* Ernst von Delius (1912–1937) - German racing car driver* Frederick Delius...

-like A Berkshire Idyll.

Gardiner's most important work, arguably, was his promotion as a conductor of contemporary British composers, notably in a series of concerts at Queen's Hall

Queen's Hall

The Queen's Hall was a concert hall in Langham Place, London, opened in 1893. Designed by the architect T.E. Knightley, it had room for an audience of about 2,500 people. It became London's principal concert venue. From 1895 until 1941, it was the home of the promenade concerts founded by Robert...

 London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 in 1912-1913. The composers represented included Arnold Bax

Arnold Bax

Sir Arnold Edward Trevor Bax, KCVO was an English composer and poet. His musical style blended elements of romanticism and impressionism, often with influences from Irish literature and landscape. His orchestral scores are noted for their complexity and colourful instrumentation...

, Frederic Austin

Frederic Austin

Frederic Austin was an English baritone singer, a musical teacher and composer in the period 1905–30. He is best remembered for his restoration and production of The Beggar's Opera by John Gay and Johann Christoph Pepusch, and its sequel, Polly, in 1920–23...

, Gustav Holst

Gustav Holst

Gustav Theodore Holst was an English composer. He is most famous for his orchestral suite The Planets....

, Percy Grainger

Percy Grainger

George Percy Aldridge Grainger , known as Percy Grainger, was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist. In the course of a long and innovative career he played a prominent role in the revival of interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th century. He also made many...

, Roger Quilter

Roger Quilter

Roger Quilter was an English composer, known particularly for his songs.-Biography:Born in Hove, Sussex, Quilter was a younger son of Sir William Quilter, 1st Baronet, who was a noted art collector...

, Cyril Scott

Cyril Scott

Cyril Meir Scott was an English composer, writer, and poet.-Biography:Scott was born in Oxton, England to a shipper and scholar of Greek and Hebrew, and Mary Scott , an amateur pianist. He showed a talent for music from an early age and was sent to the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, Germany to...

 and Norman O'Neill

Norman O'Neill (composer)

Norman Houston O'Neill was an Irish and British composer and conductor who specialized largely in works for the theatre. He studied in London with Arthur Somervell and with Iwan Knorr at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt from 1893-1897. His studies there were facilitated by his lover, Eric...

. (The last four had also studied with him at Frankfurt.) He financed these concerts himself; he continued to be notably generous with his personal fortune, paying for a private benefit performance of The Planets

The Planets

The Planets, Op. 32, is a seven-movement orchestral suite by the English composer Gustav Holst, written between 1914 and 1916. Each movement of the suite is named after a planet of the Solar System and its corresponding astrological character as defined by Holst...

for Gustav Holst in 1918, and purchasing Frederick Delius

Frederick Delius

Frederick Theodore Albert Delius, CH was an English composer. Born in the north of England to a prosperous mercantile family of German extraction, he resisted attempts to recruit him to commerce...

's house at Grez-sur-Loing

Grez-sur-Loing

Grez-sur-Loing is a commune in the Seine-et-Marne department in north-central France.-People:It is located 70 km south of Paris and is notable for the artists and musicians who have lived or stayed there...

 to enable him to continue living in it at the end of his life.

Gardiner gave up composing in 1925 largely because he was intensely self-critical: much of his lost music was probably destroyed by him. Thereafter, he devoted himself to a pioneering afforestation

Afforestation

Afforestation is the establishment of a forest or stand of trees in an area where there was no forest. Reforestation is the reestablishment of forest cover, either naturally or artificially...

 programme on his Dorset

Dorset

Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...

 farm.

He was the great-uncle of the conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner.