Editing Havergal Brian (section)

===Full-time composer===
In 1907 Brian was offered a yearly income of £500 (then a respectable lower-middle-class salary) by a local wealthy businessman, Herbert Minton Robinson, to enable him to devote all his time to composition. It seems Robinson expected Brian soon to become successful and financially independent on the strength of his compositions, and initially Brian indeed found success: his first ''English Suite'' attracted the attention of [[Henry Wood|Henry J. Wood]], who performed it at the London [[The Proms|Proms]] in 1907. The work proved popular and Brian obtained a publisher and performances for his next few orchestral works, although this initial success was not maintained. For a while Brian worked on a number of ambitious large-scale choral and orchestral works, but felt no urgency to finish them, and began to indulge in pleasures such as expensive foods and a trip to [[Italy]].

Arguments over the money and an affair with a young servant, Hilda Mary Hayward (1894-1980), led to the collapse of his first marriage in 1913. Brian fled to London and, although Robinson (who disapproved of the incident) continued to provide him with money until his own death, most of the allowance went to Brian's estranged wife after 1913. The affair with Hilda turned into a lifelong relationship: Brian and she began living together as man and wife, and after Isabel's death in 1933 they were married, by which point Hilda had already borne him another five children. No longer able to rely on Robinson's support, in London Brian began composing copiously whilst living in poverty. On the outbreak of [[World War I]] he volunteered for the [[Honourable Artillery Company]] but saw no service before he was invalided out with a hand injury. He subsequently worked at the Audit Office of the [[Canadian Expeditionary Force]] until December 1915. The family then moved to [[Erdington]], near [[Birmingham]], [[Warwickshire]], until May 1919 and then spent several years in various locations in [[Sussex]]. His brief war service gave him the material for his first opera ''The Tigers''. In the 1920s he turned to composing symphonies, though he had written more than ten before one of them was first performed in the early 1950s. Brian eventually obtained work of a musical kind, copying and arranging, and writing for the journal ''The British Bandsman''. In 1927, he became assistant editor of the journal ''Musical Opinion'' and moved back to London.

In 1940 he retired, living firstly in London, and then in [[Shoreham-by-Sea]], Sussex. Freed from the requirement to work to make a living, he was able to devote all of his time to composition, and the bulk of his compositional output belongs to the last three decades of his life, including four of the five operas (composed between 1951 and 1957) and twenty-seven of the thirty-two symphonies (composed from 1948 onwards). Through most of the 1960s, Brian composed two or three symphonies each year.

This late flurry of activity coincided with something of a rediscovery, in part due to the efforts of [[Robert Simpson (composer)|Robert Simpson]], himself a significant composer and [[BBC]] Music Producer, who asked Sir [[Adrian Boult]] to programme the Eighth Symphony in 1954. A number of Brian works received their public premieres during this time, including the [[Symphony No. 1 (Brian)|''Gothic Symphony'']]. Written decades earlier between 1919 and 1927, it was premiered in a partly amateur performance in 1961 at [[Westminster Central Hall]], conducted by [[Bryan Fairfax]]. A fully professional performance followed in 1966 at the [[Royal Albert Hall]], conducted by Boult. The latter performance was broadcast live, encouraging considerable interest, and by his death six years later several of his works had been performed, along with the first commercial recordings of Brian's music. For a few years after Brian's death there was a revival of interest in Brian with a number of further recordings and performances; two biographies and a three-volume study of his symphonies appeared.

After having heard the ''[[Sinfonia Tragica]]'' (No. 6), the conductor [[Leopold Stokowski]] expressed his interest in conducting Brian's music. The result was the world premiere in 1973 of the 28th Symphony, in a BBC broadcast produced by Robert Simpson in Maida Vale Studio 1, and played by the [[Philharmonia Orchestra|New Philharmonia Orchestra]]. [[Anthony Payne]] in his ''Daily Telegraph'' review wrote: "It was fascinating to contemplate the uniqueness of the event – a 91-year-old conductor learning a new work by a 91-year-old composer."<ref>{{cite book | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=Aw9dAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA172| page= 172 |access-date = 15 April 2020 | title = The Octogenarian Ski-Jumper | first = Martin | last = McGovern | date= 2008| publisher= Lulu.com | isbn= 9781445210612 }}</ref>