Charles King Hall

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Charles King Hall (1845-1895), often credited as King Hall, was a versatile English composer of both sacred and secular music. He favored the sentimental ballad and the church anthem. He specialized in arranging for piano and voice the works of famous composers such as Gounod and Mendelssohn. In addition, he wrote primers for the harmonium. Active in the London theatre, he contributed regularly to the popular German Reed Entertainments at St. George's Hall, Langham Place.Image:Charles king hall.jpg

[edit] Life and career

King Hall was born 17 August 1845, St Pancras, London. His father, Charles Frederick Hall, played violin in the Drury Lane Theatre orchestra and was later musical director at the Adelphi Theatre. King Hall's mother, Eleanor Eliza Jane Vining, came from a well-known acting family. She was cousin to George James Vining (1817-1875), the London actor and theatre manager, and Fanny Elizabeth Vining (1821-1891), the actress and mother of American actress Fanny Davenport (1850-1898).

In 1876, King Hall married Isabel Maud Penton (1852-1932) at All Saints Church, Gordon Square. They had five children. Their younger son, Ernest Vincent (1885-1941), married Hylda May Shallard, who sang in the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in the early 1900s. The only one of King Hall's children to follow in his footsteps was Lucy Harriet Greenfield (1879-1900), a student at the London Conservatory at the time of her early death.

King Hall supported his family as an organist, teacher, composer, and consultant to Chappell & Co., the theatre music publishers, who brought out much of King Hall's sheet music.

As church organist, King Hall served the Anglican parishes of St. Paul's, Camden Square; St. Luke's, Oseney Crescent; and Christ Church, Brondesbury.

On 1 September 1895, King Hall died of throat cancer at the age of 50 at his home in Islington. He is buried in Highgate Cemetery.

[edit] Music

In its obituary, The Musical Times (1 October 1895) called King Hall's German Reed music "his most popular works." He supplied the scores for librettists Frank Burnand, Arthur Law, Gilbert Arthur à Beckett, and J. Comyns Carr in the following operettas: "A Happy Bungalow" (1877), "Foster-brothers," "Doubleday's Will" (1878), "A Tremendous Mystery" (1878), "Grimstone Grange" (1879), "A Christmas Stocking" (1880), "A Strange Host" (1882), "The Automaton," "The Naturalist" (1887), "The Verger" (1889), and "Missing" (1894).

King Hall published throughout his adult life. From 1867 ("Golden Moments Gallop for the Pianoforte") to the year of his death ("An Emblem of Life; A Duet for Female Voices"), his work appeared regularly in both England and America. The key to his success was his ability to create simple, graceful melodies in a variety of musical styles.