Howard Ferguson

Among the most important 20th century composers from Northern Ireland, Howard Ferguson was also active as a musicologist and even wrote a cookbook. His style, though essentially Romantic, had a compactness and rigor that marked it as part of the modern era. In 1933, Ferguson scored an early success with his Octet for winds and strings, Op. 4. That work became one of Ferguson's greatest successes and has been recorded multiple times, most recently by the Wigmore Soloists in 2023. Ferguson was a prominent figure in British musical life. With pianist Myra Hess, he organized a series of concerts at London's National Gallery during World War II. Living in Cambridge, he issued a cookbook, Entertaining Solo, in the 1990s. Ferguson died in Cambridge on November 1, 1999. His output was not large, running to just 19 opus numbers plus a few other works, but his works are esteemed.