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Edward German Quotes

Sir Edward German was an English musician and composer of Welsh descent, best remembered for his extensive output of incidental music for the stage and as a successor to Arthur Sullivan in the field of English comic opera. Some of his light operas, especially Merrie England, are still performed.

As a youth, German played the violin and led the town orchestra of Whitchurch, Shropshire. He also began to compose music. While performing and teaching violin at the Royal Academy of Music, German began to build a career as a composer in the mid-1880s, writing serious music as well as light opera. In 1888, he became music director of Globe Theatre in London. He provided popular incidental music for many productions at the Globe and other London theatres, including Richard III , Henry VIII and Nell Gwynn . He also wrote symphonies, orchestral suites, symphonic poems and other works. He also wrote a considerable body of songs, piano music, and symphonic suites and other concert music, of which his Welsh Rhapsody is perhaps best known.

German was engaged to finish The Emerald Isle after the death of Arthur Sullivan in 1900, the success of which led to more comic operas, including Merrie England and Tom Jones . He also wrote the Just So Song Book in 1903 to Rudyard Kipling's texts and continued to write orchestral music. German wrote little new music of his own after 1912, but he continued to conduct until 1928, the year in which he was knighted. Wikipedia  

✵ 17. February 1862 – 11. November 1936
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Edward German: 8   quotes 0   likes

Famous Edward German Quotes

“I should like to shake Eric Coates but I won't. When I meet him he says, "I just love every note you have written." and I believe he does--but--as you say--well!”

Edward German

German's exasperation with the perception of fellow composer Coates imitating his own style, in a letter to his sister Rachel (4 January, 1925)

“It is an immortal masterpiece. Anybody and everybody today would, I should say, give the rest of their lives to have written it. Anyway I would.”

Edward German

Dame Ethel Smyth, on Merrie England

“When Adam and Eve were dispossessed / Of the garden hard by Heaven / They planted another one down in the West / Twas Devon, glorious Devon”

Edward German

Lyrics from the song "Glorious Devon", incorrectly attributed to German in a contest sponsored by the Devon County Council. Though German did write the music, the lyrics were written by Sir Harold Boulton.
Misattributed

“If you can't do anything as good as or even better than what you have already done, then don't do it.”

Edward German

In a letter to his sisters in 1927.

“Every picture shop is filled with pictures of the Emperor; every photographer's with photos--all sizes and in all kinds of positions, in and out of uniform, in different uniforms, looking condescending, looking dignified, on horseback in uniform, on horseback in plain clothes, on donkeyback, head and shoulders without legs, legs without head and shoulders, helmet in hand, helmet on head, helmet on tail, flying in mid air etc. etc. All the statuary too turns on the Emperor. There are busts chiselled in all sizes and the number of different varieties to be seen in halls, houses, shop windows etc. is something quite unbearable. The toy shops are filled with toy Emperors; when he was young the boy Emperor; then the man Emperor; in fact Berlin is saturated with the blessed Emperor as man, woman, boy, girl, soldier, tinker, tailor. The end of it all will be that the people will go stark staring mad and the Emperor himself will go off with a bang the verdict being: "Death from explosion owing to his receiving more hero-worship than the human frame can bear!"”

Edward German

In a letter to his sister, describing his observations from a trip to Germany of the cult-like status given the Kaiser.

“My music cannot possibly have given you one hundredth part of the joy your music has given me.”

Edward German

Edward Elgar, in a letter to German (1924)

“I am one of those men who never enter into controversies but I shall certainly speak my views to anybody whom I may meet on the subject.”

Edward German

In a letter to Sir Seymour Hicks (December 1910)

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