Sir Frederic Hymen Cowen: British Composer

An Almost Forgotten British Composer

Cowen. Image: rsno.org.uk

Although only five years older than Edward Elgar, Frederic Hymen Cowen had, by the 1880s, become a world renowned composer of operas, cantatas, oratorios, overtures, a popular song, and at least five symphonies with the young Elgar still frustratingly struggling to get half an hour of time during the London Philharmonic Society concert season to rehearse…