Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This is the first study of the life and music of Balfour Gardiner (1877-1950), a composer of some distinction and a generous patron of British music. But it is necessarily more than the story of just one man: it is an account of many friendships (chiefly musical) during that exciting period of British music's struggle out of mediocrity to prominence. It was Balfour Gardiner who, before the First World War, launched in Queen's Hall a remarkable series of concerts that did much to establish the reputations of several young composers. It was he, too, who made possible in a war-torn England the first performance of Holst's The Planets, and who gave considerable assistance to his close friend Delius, the plight of whose last years forms a tragic undercurrent to this book. Stephen Lloyd brings to light for the first time the full story of this once greatly respected musician and benefactor. He has traced Gardiner's student days in Germany, his early struggles as a composer, his involvement first in the folk-song movement and later with the ill-fated Musical League, his extensive patronage of music, his dabbling in architecture, and his eventual forsaking of composition for afforestation, which proved an equally remarkable undertaking.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• List of illustrations
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1 One of the Frankfurt Group 1877-1901
• 2 A civilised being 1902-1903
• 3 Hampshire folk-song collecting 1903-1906
• 4 Delius, Beecham and Hardy 1907-1911
• 5 a place of enchantment 1909-1911
• 6 Oriana will sing for me 1912-1913
• 7 Full of unexpected harmonies 1912-1914
• 8 The wasted years 1914-1919
• 9 Philharmonic patronage 1919-1922
• 10 None shall revive the flame that perisheth 1922-1924
• 11 My substituted occupation 1919-1927
• 12 If I might have two rows of trees 1927-1933
• 13 This is a terrible time 1934-1936
• 14 We are growing old 1937-1950
• Appendix
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Discography
• Index