Christopher Wilson

Born in Melbourne, Derbyshire, on October 7, 1874, he came from a strongly musical family: his mother and grandmother were pianists, and his uncle Francis William Davenport taught at the Royal Academy of Music. Early on, he showed talent not just as a composer but also as a performer on piano, organ, violin, and viola.

He became known chiefly for theatre music, especially music connected with Shakespearean productions. He also wrote concert works, including pieces for strings and violin, and his book Shakespeare and Music helped preserve his ideas about how music lived inside Shakespeare’s plays and their later performance history.

His career was relatively short: he died in London in February 1919, still in his forties. Even so, the mix of practical stage experience and musical scholarship he left behind gives his work a distinctive character.