William Henry Bell

William Henry Bell ( born August 20, 1873 in St Albans, † April 13, 1946 in Gordon 's Bay in Somerset West ) was an English composer, conductor and university professor.

Life

Bell studied in London among others, Charles Villiers Stanford and Frederick Corder at the Royal College of Music and at the Royal Academy of Music, where until 1912 he was a lecturer from 1903. In 1912 he went to South Africa and became director of the Cape Town South African College of Music, for whose development he acquired great merit and which he directed until 1935. In 1919 he became a professor at the University of Cape Town and reached that the college was established in 1923 affiliated to the Faculty of Humanities of the University. Bell founded the Little Theatre, a training center for opera and led at times the Cape Town Music Society.

Works (selection)

Symphonies

• Walt Whitman Symphony, 1890
• Symphony No. 2, 1918
• Symphony No. 3, 1919
• South African Symphony, 1927
• Symphony No. 5, 1932

Operas

• The Mouse Trap, 1928
• Doctor Love, 1930
• The Wandering Scholar, libretto by C. Bax, Cape Town 1935
• The Duenna, 1939