EDWARD GERMAN,
COMPOSER, 74, DEAD

 English Composer of Light Operas and Incidental Music for Shakespearean Plays.
WON KNIGHTHOOD IN 1928
Royal Philharmonic Gold Medal Awarded Him--Wrote March for King George.

 Wireless to THE NEW YORK TIMES

LONDON, Nov. 11--Sir Edward German, whose light operas, such as "Merrie England," made him one of the most popular British composers of a generation ago, died at his London home today after a long illness.  his age was 74.

Caught Spirit of Old England

Sir Edward was a son of The Wrekin.  He was born near that famous hill in the old market town of Whitchurch in Shropshire on Feb. 17, 1862, and undoubtedly, the associations of his childhood were in a measure responsible for the delightful felicity with which he shaped into music the English landscape and its old-time merrymaking.  He carried on the vogue of English light opera of Sir Arthur Sullivan, who himself used to declare that Sir Edward was the one person likely to continue the Gilbert and Sullivan tradition.

Educated at Bridge House School, Chester, he returned to his home town in 1878, where he performed at village concerts and organized a local band, for which he composed the music.  he played and taught the violin, studied with Walter Hay in Shrewsbury and entered the Royal Academy of Music to study the organ under Dr. Steggall.

Studies of the Violin under Weist-Hill and Alfred Burnett followed, and after he had won the Charles Lucas Medal with a Te Deum for chorus and organ he became a sub-professor of this instrument at the Academy.  His principal composition while engaged there was an operetta, "The Rival Poets," performed at St. George's Hall in 1886.

Wrote Dances for "Henry VIII"

In 1892, Henry Irving produced "Henry VIII" at the Lyceum, for which Sir Edward wrote the "Three Dances" and the "SHepherd's Dance," which rapidly went round the world and are as popular now as they were more than forty years ago.  Next to it, his best known work is perhaps a similar set of dances he wrote for the play "English Nell," by Anthony Hope, which Frank Curzon produced at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1900.  Marie Tempest played the leading part and she had stipulated that Sir Edward should write the music.

The composer, much in request for the theatre, did not, however, neglect symphonic music.  His first symphony, in E minor, was produced at the Crystal Palace in 1890, and many successful orchestral suites and symphonic poems followed.  His "Theme and SIx Diversions" gained him highest respect, and his "Welsh Rhapsody," produced for the Cardiff Musical Festival of 1904, went far beyond the boundaries of the principality and was hailed as superior to anything he had achieved for some years.

However, Sir Edward suffered from the same misfortune as Sullivan, inasmuch as the popularity of his lighter work was inclined to overshadow the merits of his more ambitious creations.  He wrote the "Coronation March and Hymn" for King George's coronation in 1911 and he undertook the difficult task of completing Sullivan's last unfinished opera, "The Emerald Isle," which Sir Arthur had started with Basil Hood.  He did it so skillfully that it reflected Sullivan's mood without drifting into mere imitation.  Its success led to his charming "Merrie England," also in collaboration with Basil Hood, in which the copmoser's musical idiom of happiness is perhaps heard at its best.

Affronted Popular Tastes

It looked for a while as if Sullivan'ssuccess of long standing at the Savoy Theatre was to be continued by German.  But in his next work, "A Princess of Kensington," the composer took liberties which the public did not endorse, and he who had been hailed as the legitimate successor of Sullivan destroyed the dream of many who had hoped for a new era of national light opera.

In later years, when his eyesight failed him, he was troubled with what he considered to be extravagant tendences of the ultra-modern school of composers.

Sir Edward also wrote music for "Romeo and Juliet," "As You Like It," and "Much Ado About Nothing."  He composed "Gypsy Suite," "The Seasons," "Funeral March," and a symphonic poem "Hamlet."  He wrote in 1922 "Willow Song" for the centenary of the Royal Academy of Music, and with Rudyard Kipling the "Just So Song Book."

He was knighted in 1928, and received the gold medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society two years ago.