Montague Phillips
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Montague Fawcett Phillips (13 November 1885 – 4 January 1969) was a British composer of light classical music and songs, including the popular operetta The Rebel Maid of 1921.[1]
Born in Tottenham, London, Phillips began his musical career as a choirboy at Saint Botolph's Church, Bishopsgate. He studied piano and organ and made his debut as an organist at the age of twelve. In 1901 he attended the Royal Academy of Music, studying with Frederick Corder and John Blackwood McEwen. His contemporaries at the academy included Arnold Bax, York Bowen and Benjamin Dale.[2]
From 1904 Phillips was organist and choirmaster at Christ Church Wanstead, and from 1908 organist at Esher Parish Church, a position he held for 43 years. During the First World War he was part of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in Scotland, where he was stationed with the librettist Gerald Dodson. It was during this time that the first sketches for his operetta The Rebel Maid were created.[3] In 1926 he became a professor at the Royal Academy, while working as a freelance composer and performing as a pianist, accompanist and conductor.[2] His students there included Dennis Brain.[4]
Phillips was friendly with the composers Eric Coates and Haydn Wood. He lived in Esher for more than 50 years, residing at Clare Cottage, Clare Hill[5] where he died in 1969 at the age of 84, outliving most of his contemporaries. His obituary in The Times described him as "essentially a composer in the salon tradition of the late nineteenth century, to which his musical idiom belonged".[6] His wife Clara Butterworth, with whom he had a son and a daughter, survived him and most of her family, dying at the age of 109 in 1997.[7]
