Harry Baynton-Power

Harry Baynton-Power 1890-1952

Composer and pianist Harry Baynton-Power wrote extensively for de Wolfe in the mid-twentieth century. Through his compositions, teaching and work with youth bands, his influence can still be felt today.

Born in September 1890 in Chorley, Lancashire, Harry Baynton-Power was a Hallé Memorial Pianoforte Scholarship winning graduate of the Royal Manchester College of Music. He was a well-known musician in Manchester as a pianist, teacher and composer.

He began composing for de Wolfe in 1932 with his comedy song, As The Bishop Said To The Chorus Girl and went on to write hundreds of works, often with his wife and fellow de Wolfe composer Olive Turner whom Baynton-Power married in 1925.

Much of his catalogue consists of mood music used in TV and film, as well as wartime pieces representative of the time, be it jingoistic or ceremonious. Baynton-Powers sheet music was available for purchase; a copy of Happy Landing, dedicated ‘To my son and his brother pilots’, is held in the Theatre and Performance Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Testament to his versatility as a composer, Baynton-Power’s music was also used to soundtrack films in the 1930s and his library music continues to evoke this era of cinema today. He was known for Sherlock Holmes’ Silver Blaze (1937), Fighting Stock (1935) and The Vicar Of Bray (1937).

Apart from the very act of playing and composing, 1937 saw Baynton-Power publish How to Compose Music with Pitman. ‘A simple guide to the composition of melodies and to their effective harmonization’, this was a text designed to aid the man in the street, as he put it, who might have in their mind a ‘melody capable of swaying the world’ without the capabilities to develop it into a full instrumental piece. It is indicative of his interest in the proliferation of music as a vital and democratic medium for creative expression.

To the same end, Baynton-Power was also significant musically in shifting the perceptions of brass bands in the Manchester area. A prevailing view had emerged amongst the press that they were rough and unruly, with one writer insisting that ‘the exhaustion in blowing a wind instrument for any length of time in the street naturally leads the members of a band to a beer shop, where they too frequently indulge to excess’. Baynton-Power therefore formed the Children’s Concert Society to provide affordable and accessible opportunities for the younger generation to experience the great masters’ music in wartime Lancashire.

The first concert was held in 1916 for a hall full of school children from Manchester and Salford. This contributed to the subsequent prevailing view that brass bands were a positive influence in society throughout this period.

The musical legacy of Harry Baynton-Power and his wife Olive Turner continues today in the music of their grandson, David Baynton-Power, who plays drums for longstanding English rock band James.

Harry Baynton-Power died in Fulham, London in 1952. Representative of the long arc of de Wolfe’s history and the evolution of music more generally, the influence of Harry’s compositions and wider involvement in music is clear as his music continues to play a part in the de Wolfe library.