Frederick Ouseley

Sir Frederick Arthur Gore Ouseley, 2nd Baronet (12 August 1825 – 6 April 1889) was an English composer, organist, musicologist and priest.

He was born in London, the son of Sir Gore Ouseley, and manifested an extraordinary precocity in music, composing an opera (L'Isola disabitata) at the age of eight years. In 1844, having succeeded to the baronetcy, he entered at Christ Church, Oxford, and graduated BA in 1846 and MA in 1849. He was ordained in the latter year, and, as curate of St. Paul's Church, Knightsbridge, served the parish of St. Barnabas, Pimlico until 1851.

Throughout his life, he experienced a social conflict between his aristocratic heritage and his interest in the performance of Anglican church music, an activity which was seen as beneath someone of his stature. In 1850 he took the degree of Mus.B. at the University of Oxford, and four years afterwards that of Mus.D., his exercise being the oratorio The Martyrdom of St Polycarp. He was Heather Professor of Music at Oxford from 1855 to 1889. In 1856 Ouseley both founded and endowed with his own funds St Michael's College on the outskirts of Tenbury Wells, a choir school intended to serve as a model for Anglican church music. He also became the school's first Warden.

Ouseley's works, which are little known today, include a second oratorio, Hagar (Hereford, 1873), a great number of services and anthems, psalm chants, cantatas, chamber music, organ pieces and songs. Among his instructional treaties on harmony, counterpoint, fugue, and composition are Harmony (1868) and Counterpoint (1869) and Musical Form (1875).

He also added a series of chapters on English music to the English translation of Emil Naumann's History of Music, the subject having been practically ignored in the German treatise.

Ouseley died in Hereford, where he had been precentor at Hereford Cathedral since 1855. Probably his most notable student was Sir John Stainer.

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