George Grove

About the George Grove

Sir George Grove was an English engineer and writer on music, known as the founding editor of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians.

Grove was trained as a civil engineer, and successful in that profession, but his love of music drew him into musical administration. When responsible for the regular orchestral concerts at the Crystal Palace, he wrote a series of programme notes from which eventually grew his musical dictionary. His interest in the music of Franz Schubert, which was neglected in England at that point in the nineteenth century, led him and his friend Arthur Sullivan to go to Vienna in search of undiscovered Schubert manuscripts. Their researches led to their discovery of the lost score of Schubert’s Rosamunde music, several of his symphonies and other music in 1867, leading to a revival of interest in Schubert’s work.

Grove was the first director of the Royal College of Music, from its foundation in 1883 until his retirement in 1894. He recruited leading musicians including Hubert Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford as members of the College faculty and established a close working relationship with London’s older conservatoire, the Royal Academy of Music.

In addition to his musical work, Grove had a deep and scholarly knowledge of the Bible. He contributed to the English literature on the subject, including a concordance in 1854 and about a thousand pages of Sir William Smith’s 1863 Bible Dictionary. He was a co-founder of the Palestine Exploration Fund.