Holbrooke enjoyed particular success in the early years of the twentieth century, with a successful performance of his choral and orchestral setting of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, dedicated to the conductor Sir August Manns and given a successful performance at the Crystal Palace in 1900, followed three years later by a setting of the same poet’s The Bells, dedicated to Elgar. Poe remained an important literary influence, providing inspiration for a number of other works. There were other compositions on a similar scale and, most notably, a large-scale operatic trilogy derived from the Mabinogion and commissioned by Lord Howard de Walden, who had written a poem of epic dimensions based on this source.
A prolific composer, Holbrooke continued to write music throughout much of his long life, until his death in 1958. Performance of the larger scale works is now exceptional, since, like Havergal Brian, he made very considerable demands on the resources of promoters and the patience of listeners. Like other contemporaries and, in particular, his composition teacher Frederick Corder, he was much influenced by Wagner, notably by The Cauldron of Annwyn. Apart from this, he wrote ballet scores, one for Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death, seven symphonies, of which four remain in manuscript, and concertos for piano, for cello, for violin and for clarinet or saxophone. He also left a quantity of chamber music, including sonatas, quartets, quintets and sextets, some with programmatic suggestions in their titles. His son Gwydion Brooke, for some years a leading player in Sir Thomas Beecham’s orchestras, has been among the most distinguished bassoonists in England, exercising a wide influence on younger players in his style of playing.
