Alfred Hill

Alfred Francis Hill CMG OBE (16 December 186930 October 1960) was an Australian-New Zealand composer, conductor and teacher. Life and work Alfred Hill was born in Melbourne in 1869. His year of birth is shown in many sources as 1870, but this has now been disproven. He spent most of his early life in Wellington. He studied at the Leipzig Conservatory between 1887 and 1891 under Gustav Schreck, Hans Sitt and Oscar Paul. Later he played second violin with the Gewandhaus Orchestra, under guest conductors including Brahms, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Bruch, and Reinecke. While there, some of his compositions were played with fellow students, and several were published in Germany. These included the Scotch Sonata for violin and piano. Hill returned to New Zealand, where was appointed director of the Wellington Orchestral Society. He also worked as a violin teacher, recitalist, chamber musician, and choral conductor. He was active in the push for a New Zealand Conservatorium of Music, and for the foundation of an institute of Māori studies at Rotorua. During this period he completed his first string quartet, on Māori themes, which later would achieve some familiarity in the United States through regular programming by the Zoellner Quartet in the period surrounding World War I. In 1897 Hill returned to Australia, where he taught for a number of years. He married his first wife, Sarah Brownhill Booth, a New Zealander, on 6 October 1897 in Paddington, New South Wales. They were to have three children, who were given the Wagnerian names Isolde, Tristan and Elsa. In 1921 he divorced his wife, and on 1 October of that year married his former student Mirrie Solomon, also a composer. Alfred Hill's daughter Isolde Hill became a noted opera singer, and granddaughter Patricia Hill, a noted actress.