Benjamin Burrows - a brief life

Burrows was born on 20 October 1891 at 12, College Avenue, a quiet road off the busier thoroughfare of Conduit Street, Leicester, and there spent the first years of his life. His father, Benjamin Harper Burrows, was a music teacher whose principal instrument was the violin, though he was also an accomplished viola-player and, later in his life, cellist. His mother, Elizabeth Burrows, was also musical, an excellent pianist, to whom Ben paid regular weekly visits after she moved from Leicester to settle in Loughborough, some ten miles away. On 29 June 1893, a daughter, Grace, was born. Throughout their lives she was devoted to her brother, Ben, and even at 87, just before her own death, despite near-blindness and failing powers she continued her efforts to further the cause of his music.
Ben was a pupil at Alderman Newton's Boys' School and, showing exceptional scientific promise, was one of a select number of pupils who were removed to one of the special Science schools which existed at that time in Leicester. Later, as a result of the weakening of a muscle in his left eye, he was withdrawn, as his sister recalled, and taught by a private tutor. This eye-muscle weakness caused the condition known as divergent strabismus, in which one eye turns outwards. About this defect Ben was, naturally, sensitive and it may well have increased his innate shyness. Later in life the left eye was permanently closed. In some of his casual and humorous writings, he would, after Beachcomber, refer to himself as "Dr Strabismus of Utrecht, whom God preserve", revealing that wry sense of humour that so often delighted his friends.
Musical studies continued intensively and, at fifteen, Ben was winner of the Deacon prize, a coveted local award for young musicians. His organ teacher at this time was H. B. Ellis, organist and choirmaster of St Mary's (now Mary de Castro). A story told to Ian Imlay, one of his last pupils, indicates Ben's sense of humour. His ability to write a psalm chant in the time it took for the organ bellows to empty (and, as apprentice to Ellis, it was one of his tasks to pump the organ) was a source of amused satisfaction to him. It is also an early example of the prodigious speed and fluency at composition that was a mark of his superiority as an examination student and for which he was so admired - and envied - by his pupils and colleagues.
His organ teacher, Ellis, was a genial and kindly man who had conducted the Leicester Amateur Vocal Society since 1879. When this developed into the Leicester Philharmonic in 1886, he was chosen, in competition with two other distinguished men, Charles Hancock and Harry Lohr, as conductor. Thus he was the first man to direct the fortunes of what was to become one of Leicester's longest-established and finest musical institutions. He held this position until his death in 1910.
When Ellis died, Burrows was appointed his successor as organist and choirmaster of St Mary's despite some opposition to his youthfulness by certain of the church councillors. Charles Goodger, a member of the choir at that time, described difficulties with discipline over the choirboys that the young, inexperienced Burrows suffered, difficulties no doubt increased by his eye defect. Charles also told how, on occasions when Ben played for choral performances at St John's, Clarendon Park Road, he would go with him to "carry the beat", an essential concomitant of music-making in those churches where the organist is out of visual contact with the conductor, a situation that prevails today in St John's, as one discovered at the 1986 recording of Burrows's Five Psalms! A copy of a photograph of Burrows in his uniform during the 1914-18 war was sent to Charles Goodger with the wry comment:
In July 1912, two years after his appointment to St Mary's, Burrows took the Associate of the Royal College of Organists examination and won the Lafontaine prize. The following January he was equally successful in the Fellowship exam, gaining the Turpin prize. The brevity of the gap between the two achievements leaves no doubt about his supreme talents as an organist. Indeed, there were apparently ideas of his taking up a career as a concert artist at this time. This in view of his nature and reaction against public approbation, was probably more of an enthusiastic parental vision than a practical course of action and his studies were to develop along more academic lines.

Even so, it may be that a concert he gave in the De Montfort Hall on 23 October 1914 may have been by way of a try-out for such a career. It is an early indication of the direction Burrows's musical energies were to take. By this time, he was a student of composition with that redoubtable theorist, Charles Kitson. With characteristic speed he quickly assimilated principles of harmony, counterpoint and orchestration as his early, carefully-preserved student works demonstrate. Kitson can surely have had no student who so clearly grasped his precepts. It was inevitable that he should eventually declare that Burrows had no further need of him as a teacher. But before this realistic and generous recognition of his pupil's keen musical perception, Kitson guided him over the hurdles of B.Mus and D.Mus. (London) in 1913 and 1921. It was in the latter examination that Burrows amazed the examiners by offering two solutions to the eight-part questions.

As early as 1914, Burrows had embarked upon his teaching career and Clifford Twigger, a noted Leicester industrialist, expressed pride at being his first pupil. The two remained lifelong friends and further examples of their comradeship are referred to later.

Though mainly engaged in composing exercises for Kitson, many of Burrows's piano pieces from this time were published between 1913 and 1925. Nocturne appears to be the first and was issued in 1913 by the publishing house, Donajowski. Subsequently, Burrows was taken up by the better-known firm, Augener.
The eight-year interval between Burrows's B. Mus. and D. Mus. degrees is attributable to his national service in the Kite Balloon Section of the Army. It was in 1917 that he became a private and served his time at Orford Ness in Suffolk. During his War Service, Ben made the acquaintance of a violinist, a fellow-soldier, Fred Tomlinson. For him he wrote his satirical Second Concert Piece, subtitled, March of the Kite-Ballooners. Any serviceman who has experienced the regular frustrations of forces life will identify with the drily-written programme with which the work is prefaced.

While at Orford Ness, Ben was to continue and develop an even more significant friendship with Doris Katharine Hayes who had been a violin student of his sister's, living in her home in Highfield Street, Leicester. After his return to civilian life, they were married in St Cuthbert's Church, Thetford, on 6 September 1921 and their only child, Benjamin Hayes Burrows, was born on 30 March 1925.

After returning to civilian life, Burrows resumed his work as a music teacher in Leicester. He was organist at the annual speech day of his old school, Alderman Newton's, in the De Montfort Hall - a fact recalled by John Reymes-King, a pupil of Ben's and of the school, later to become a professor of music at the University of Massachusetts. In 1923 Burrows resigned from his position at St Mary's where he had returned after army service. Apart from a brief period as organist at Leicester Cathedral from the beginning of May 1927, after the incumbent Charles Hancock died on 6th February, until August 1927 when Dr Gordon Slater assumed Hancock's position, he did not resume this type of work until his appointment to Victoria Road Church in 1929.

National recognition as a composer gradually came. His music was reviewed in Musical Times from 1922 on.

In November 1926 Jane Vowles came to start theory lessons with Burrows. On March 1 1927, four months after their first meeting, Ben wrote for Jane the first of the ninety-three songs that were to occupy him to the exclusion of all other compositions until she left Leicester in 1929. Some of the poems he set were from volumes which she gave him, it was she apparently who introduced him to much new music of the day, and Delius, Warlock, van Dieren and many others are mentioned in their correspondence. During her two years as a pupil with the composer, it is apparent that Jane Vowles shook this quiet, reticent man out of his domesticity and fanned into full blaze the creative powers that had so far been but a warm glow. Their association ended when Jane left Leicester to continue music at the Royal College of Music.

One other event of these years helps to paint the picture of Benjamin Burrows, the musician. On Wednesday, 5 December 1928, he was the organ soloist in a concert given by the Leicester Symphony Orchestra. His contribution to the programme was a Handel Concerto in B flat. His performance was reported to be " such as to rouse the audience to demand an encore".

In his home city, Burrows was becoming a well-established musician, noted for his brilliance as an organist, as the previous quotations verify. But even earlier, the University College of Leicester had recognised his growing reputation as a teacher and appointed him to their faculty in 1924. This was the fifth year of the College's existence and Burrows was one of four additional staff engaged for music; another of them was his sister, Grace Burrows. Grace's musical activities in Leicester were numerous and distinguished. In his biography of Malcolm Sargent Charles Reid describes her when she led Sargent's orchestra in Leicester as a remarkable young woman who...later was to help him mobilize the Leicester Symphony Orchestra and lead that as well.
At the time of their appointments, the lecturer in charge was Dr E. Markham Lee. He was responsible for piano, organ and theoretical studies, while Burrows shared the organ teaching. James Ching joined the department in 1926 and shared with Burrows the teaching of all the theory from Elementary to Advanced Harmony, Counterpoint and the Musical Appreciation Class. By 1927-8 all this was listed as taught by Burrows. By 1929, Burrows seems to have taken over the leadership. Dr Gordon Slater, organist of Leicester Cathedral, who was to become a close friend of Burrows, has also been appointed. George C. Gray, Slater's successor at the Cathedral, appears in the 1931 prospectus, taking over the solo voice and choral training. By the time of the1946-7 prospectus the department had shrunk to two lecturers, Burrows and Gray, who shared all the teaching.

With the outbreak of war in 1939, Ben Burrows, a great patriot, chose to help the war effort by working in the factory of his friend, Clifford Twigger, who had converted his type-setting business into a plant for making flanges for tanks. The delivery van bore the slogan Speed the Tanks. Later, Burrows was sub-contracted to the firm of Gents, also of Leicester, to repair ships' chronometers, a task which he undertook in his small garden workshop. His inventive genius was again displayed in a design of a process to recondition micrometers, essential equipment in his war work. Yet another Burrows invention was an adjustable spirit level for use in the installation of machinery. Written evidence of his engineering skill is available in articles he wrote for the Model Engineer.

By the 1940s his small Bodnant Press had assumed great importance in Burrows's life. Its administration must have added many hours to an already full week. With limited help he prepared stencils of his publications, ran the organisation of subscribers he had acquired and duplicated the copies on a hand-operated Gestetner.
Burrows was a pioneer in teaching by correspondence, and so the Bodnant Press became quite widely known from the publicity it received from the network of postal students to whom the teaching material was sent. Its editions were also sold by music shops in many parts of the country. In 1942, the Leicestershire Reference Library joined the subscription list and received copies of Bodnant Press publications. It is here that one may find the most comprehensive stock of the material for teaching that Burrows produced, and the music, both his own and that of his pupils and friends, that he published.

His pupils, including members of the overseas forces, were widespread, and Burrows kept a map in his studio with flags locating those in Australia, Canada, Germany, Gibraltar, Hong Kong, India, Malaya, South America and South Africa.
It is incredible how many in posts of great musical responsibility were students of Ben Burrows. Many testimonies have been made to his unique achievements in examination coaching. His last advertisement in the Musical Times lists his successes. Among them are 24 D Mus, 56 B Mus and 104 FRCO. These statistics need no comment.
Those students who received personal tuition from Ben Burrows witnessed at first hand the efficiency of his highly systematic approach. The files he built up over the years included his workings, not only of final examination papers, but even of exercises from his own and others' textbooks. With relatively - and typically - few words, Ben would correct a pupil's efforts and rework them with a rapidity that could be, at the moment, demoralising. But to have studied on a direct basis with him was to have come into contact with an intellect of such power and versatility as one could expect to encounter only seldom. Another distinct benefit the personal student had over the correspondent was Ben's physical presence to decipher for the perplexed reader his handwriting, a constant problem for those at a distance. He was not a little irritated by people's inability to read his writing though a glance at any example of it would convince one that he had little cause for irritation!
His encouragement to students was generous and sympathetic. To any who attempted composition, he would recommend an abandonment of many of the techniques he taught for examination purposes. Though involved life-long in diploma and degree coaching, he fully realised the sterility that such an occupation could lead to: possibly after the 1927-35 period of his own composing career he never really escaped from it himself. He was at one time approached - or considered applying - to examine for the University of London but felt that he would rather be on the side of the student! Perhaps there was also a certain psychological resistance to the amount of commuting to and from London that would have been required. Examinations were something of a game to him and it was with almost boyish delight that he would study various examination papers as they were issued and crack them. He complained once with reference to the new M.Mus.R.C.M. degree, which started about 1950, of the difficulty of obtaining specimens of the papers so as to penetrate their inner mysteries.

Ben Burrows had a multitude of friends but there were few who could claim to have known him intimately. His was a nature that protected its privacy; that was loth to display itself in the least way. To meet him was to be powerfully impressed, paradoxically, by his modesty. One recalls him standing in the dinginess of his north-facing Edwardian studio, in 2, University Road. The room was unlit by sun and shrouded by high hedges. Shelves of bound volumes, from which a long array of back numbers of Punch stands out vividly in the author's memory, lined the walls. Of less than medium height, Dr Burrows had a deep forehead, the depth emphasized by his receding grey hair. His closed left eye caused a momentary shock that was soon dispelled by his quiet, gentle and friendly manner.
It was with sadness and regret for loss of further opportunities of meeting with him, that his friends heard of his death on 28 January 1966. One learnt subsequently of his persistence during months of pain in carrying on with his work, even walking, as he had done for forty years, the two miles to his studio for as long as he possibly could.

Edited from an account by Brian Blyth Daubney

This page last amended 17/9/05