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GCU People
Frederick Haggis (1886–1976), founder and first Music Director of the Goldsmiths Choral Union
Frederick Haggis: an Appreciation
FREDERICK HAGGIS, the founder and first Music Director of the Goldsmiths Choral Union, was born in London on 22 April 1886.
Mr Haggis received his musical education mainly privately, and started teaching at an early age. By the time he left school at 17, he had a number of young piano pupils and was a deputy church organist. He also conducted a local string orchestra and trained a children’s choir. At 18, he was appointed organist and choirmaster of a church in Croydon, transferring two years later to a similar post at Streatham Congregational Church, a position he held for 28 years.
In 1919, following the end of World War I, Frederick Haggis founded the Streatham School of Music and remained its director for ten years. During this time, he conducted the Streatham Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra, and with this Society produced and conducted the first performances of Rutland Boughton’s Nativity play Bethlehem in London in 1924.
From 1926 to 1928, Frederick Haggis was External Examiner to the Saffron Walden Training College, and in 1928 he became one of the examiners for the Daily Express National Piano Playing Contest, when 2,000 of the 20,000 entrants passed through his hands. In 1929, he was appointed Lecturer in Music at Goldsmiths College, and a little later Director of Music at the South East Essex Technical College at Dagenham.
A cartoon of Freddie Haggis, published in
an issue of "The Smith".
In 1932 he formed the Goldsmiths Choral Union (GCU), followed a year later by the Goldsmiths Symphony Orchestra. Over the next decade, these two groups were to transform his musical life and sphere of influence. Not only did he develop the GCU into a first-class choir capable of performing both the classical and modern reperoire, but he carried out pioneer work in nurturing an orchestra for both student and amateur players at the college. Many of our senior professionals have paid tribute to his training, most notably the claranettist Jack Brymer in his book From Where I Sit. The affection in which Frederick Haggis was held is indicated by the caricature opposite, which appeared in an edition of the college magazine, The Smith.
At the outbreak of war in 1939, Mr Haggis had to give up his teaching posts as the colleges were evacuated. The orchestra had to disband, but the GCU transferred its concerts to central London and went from strength to strength under his guidance. By the end of the war, choir and conductor were in the forefront of London’s music making, performing with the major symphony orchestras and broadcasting frequently for the BBC. In 1946, Mr Haggis was presented with an inscribed silver bowl by the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths "In recognition of his outstanding contribution to choral singing in London during the war".
For the next 25 years, Frederick Haggis continued to direct all aspects of the choir’s activities, from the musical to the financial. Many distinguished international conductors who worked with the choir expressed their recognition of his outstanding qualities as a choral trainer, and his own performances of such choral masterpieces as The Dream of Gerontius and Messiah were considered classics of their time.
He conducted his final Gerontius in 1971 at the Royal Albert Hall to celebrate his 85th birthday. Following his retirement as Music Director in 1973, he kept a fatherly eye on the choir until his death in 1976.