Humphrey Procter-Gregg: A Brief Introduction

For many, Humphrey Procter-Gregg is recalled as one of Peter Maxwell Davies’s teachers at the University of Manchester. He was regarded by students as being “very old fashioned” having “just about got as far as Delius, but nothing beyond that.” (Peter Hope, interview 2010). Other students included John Ogden, Harrison Birtwistle, Alexander Goehr, as well as the “light music” composers Ernest Tomlinson and Peter Hope. 

Humphrey Procter-Gregg was born at Kirby Lonsdale, Westmorland on 31 July 1895. After education at the King William’s College, Isle of Man, and Peterhouse College, Cambridge, he went up to the Royal College of Music. His teachers there included Charles Villiers Stanford, Charles Wood and Julius Harrison. Of great importance was gaining a scholarship to La Scala, Milan. This was critical learning when Procter-Gregg went on to be work in the opera “industry.” He held various appointments with the Carl Rosa Company, Covent Garden, the Art’s Council Touring Opera and the BBC. In 1936, Procter-Gregg was appointed Reader in Music at Manchester University, where he founded the music department.  He remained there until 1962, whereupon he became the first director of the London Opera Centre. Two years later, he retired to Windemere, where he concentrated on composition. He also had a passion for gardening and painting. Humphrey Procter-Gregg died at Grange-over-Sands on 13 April 1980.

The composer’s catalogue is considerable. He contributed to most genres, except for opera and the symphony. He concentrated on chamber music, with many fine sonatas, including four for violin and piano, two for cello and piano and a beautiful clarinet sonata. His contribution to the piano, included the massive Westmorland Sketches, which comprise 27 discreet numbers. Only four of these remarkable pieces have been recorded. There is also an evocative Piano Sonata in C minor (The Sea). Few works were written for orchestra, but his masterpiece is the Clarinet Concerto dating from around 1940. There are sketches for a violin and a piano concerto in his papers.  He wrote many songs and several choral works. Procter-Gregg produced many opera translations as well as assembling a book of reminiscences about Sir Thomas Beecham.

The stylistic parameters of Humphrey Procter-Gregg tend towards the melodic, lyrical, and harmonically sensitive. He did not dabble in modernism of any kind: Brahms and Delius are never too far away from his musical aesthetic.  

Three CDs are currently available, both on the Dutton Epoch Label. The first includes the sonatas for violin, horn, and clarinet, as well as a selection of the Westmorland Sketches. (CDLX7165). Toccata Classics (TOCC0539) have released an album of the Violin Sonatas Nos.1,2 and 4. Procter Gregg’s Clarinet Concerto is coupled with works by John Carmichael, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Leighton Lucas. (CDLX7153)