Henry Balfour

Henry Balfour FRS (11 April 1863 Croydon – 9 February 1939) was a British archaeologist, and the first curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum.

He was President of the Royal Anthropological Institute, the Museums Association, the Folklore Society, the Royal Geographical Society, and a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Biography

Henry Balfour, the only son of Lewis Balfour (1833–1885), silk broker of Croydon, and Sarah Walker Comber (1836–1916), was born in 1863. His parents had been married on 28 July 1857. He had two older sisters: Edith Balfour (born c. 1859) and Marian Balfour (born c. 1860). His father died on 1 May 1885, at 15 Hanover Terrace, Regent's Park, London, at 52 years of age.

In 1887 Henry married Edith Marie Louise Wilkins, only daughter of Robert Francis Wilkins of Kingswear, south Devon. They had one son, Lewis Balfour (1887–1974). The Balfours lived at 11 Norham Gardens, Oxford before moving to Langley Lodge, Headington, Oxford later in life. A few months after the death of his wife, Balfour died in his home in Headington, Oxford, on 9 February 1939.

H. Balfour Gardiner

Henry Balfour Gardiner (7 November 1877 – 28 June 1950) was a British musician, composer, and teacher.

Between his conventional education at Charterhouse School and New College, Oxford, where he obtained only a pass degree, Gardiner was a piano student at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt am Main, where he was taught by Iwan Knorr and Lazzaro Uzielli, who had been a pupil of Clara Schumann. He belonged to the Frankfurt Group, a circle of composers who studied at the Hoch Conservatory in the late 1890s. Gardiner collected folk songs in Hampshire (1905-1906), taught music briefly at Winchester College (1907), and composed. His works included compositions in a variety of genres, including two symphonies, but many of his scores are lost and only a very limited amount of his music survives.

His best-known work Evening Hymn (1908), a setting of the Compline hymn Te lucis ante terminum, is a lush, romantic work for eight-part choir and organ, of dense harmonies. For most of the time, it sits in four parts, though the treble, alto, tenor, and bass parts all subdivide at various points. It is considered a classic of the English choral repertoire and is still regularly performed as an anthem at evensong in Anglican churches.