R. O. Morris

Reginald Owen Morris (3 March 1886 – 15 December 1948), known professionally and by his friends by his initials, as R.O. Morris, was a British composer and teacher. Teacher and author Morris was born in York, son of Army officer Reginald Frank Morris and Georgiana Susan (née Sherard). He was educated at Harrow School, New College, Oxford and the Royal College of Music (RCM) in London. On the outbreak of World War I he enlisted in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, along with his friends George Butterworth and Geoffrey Toye. After a time writing for The Nation as music critic he re-joined the RCM as a professor of counterpoint and composition in 1920. From 1926 for two years he taught at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia before returning to the RCM. Morris became famous as an exceptional teacher of counterpoint, and wrote several texts including Contrapuntal Technique in the Sixteenth Century (Oxford, 1922), Foundations of Practical Harmony and Counterpoint (London, 1925), Figured Harmony at the Keyboard (London, 1931), The Structure of Music (London, 1935) and Introduction to Counterpoint (London, 1944). His students included the composers Gerald Finzi, Sir Michael Tippett, Constant Lambert, Robin Milford, Anthony Milner, Edmund Rubbra, Bernard Stevens and Jean Coulthard. Composer His compositions have been overshadowed by his formidable reputation as a teacher. However, Morris enjoyed a ten year period of creativity as a composer roughly between 1922 and 1932, writing symphonic and chamber music, songs and choral works. One of the first, the Fantasy String Quartet in A, won a Carnegie Trust Award and was published as part of the Carnegie Collection of British Music.