A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Holmes, William Henry

HOLMES, William Henry, son of a musician, born at Sudbury, Derbyshire, Jan. 8, 1812, entered the Royal Academy of Music at its opening in 1822, and gained two of the first medals granted there for composition and the piano. In 1826 Mr. Holmes became Sub-professor and subsequently Professor of the Piano, and is now (1879) the father of the Academy. As a teacher he has been remarkably successful, and has trained some of the most eminent of English musicians: among them Sterndale Bennett, the two Macfarrens, J. W. Davison, and others. His knowledge of P.F. music is very great, and as a virtuoso he long enjoyed a high reputation. His first appearance at the Philharmonic was in Mendelssohn's Introduction and Rondo, March 24, 1851; and as late as 1876 he performed at the Alexandra Palace a concerto of his own, in A major, written for the Jubilee of the R. A. M. His compositions are numerous and of all classes—symphonies, concertos, sonatas, songs, and an opera—still in MS. Like his friend Cipriani Potter he was always ready to welcome new composers and new music, in proof of which we may name the fact that it was at his instigation and under his care that Brahms's P.F. Concerto was first played in England by Miss Baglehole, at the Crystal Palace, March 9, 1872.

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