Percy Young

British composer, conductor, editor, musicologist, organist and teacher Percy Marshall Young was born in Northwich, Cheshire on 17 May 1912. As an organ scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge, he studied composition with Cyril Rootham.

He was a world-renowned Elgar expert who wrote biographies of both Elgar and his wife Alice. In 1991, Young reconstructed an incomplete Elgar opera, The Spanish Lady, publishing a suite.

In addition to his Elgar Research activities, Young was the author of several other important books on classical music, including on Handel, Vaughan Williams, Schumann, Sullivan and a biography of George Grove. In total, he published over fifty books.

His own compositions include the 1932 Virgin's Slumber Song, a 1941 setting of Robert Louis Stevenson: From a Child's Garden, Passacaglia (violin and piano, 1931), a Fugal Concerto in G minor for two pianos and strings (1951) and a 1960 Elegy for String Orchestra.

Percy M Young died in York on 9 May 2004, aged ninety one.

 

A selection of articles about Percy Young

A Major Pleasure - A new study score of Elgar's 'Empire March', reviewed by Robert Anderson