Grimson (musical family)

The Grimson family was a family of classical musicians active in London from the early 1870s.^[1]

Samuel Dean Grimson (1841 – 7 April 1922) was a violinist and viola player active in London orchestral and chamber music. He played with the Holmes Quartet and was the author of A First Book for the Violin, published in 1881 and (with Cecil Forsyth) Modern Violin Playing (1920). He married Maria Mary Anne Bonarius (1848 – 1896) and they lived in Ealing. A portrait of Grimson with his violin, painted in 1914 by Frank Brooks, is owned by the Royal Society of Musicians of Great Britain.^[2]

All seven of his surviving children (an eighth, Dean, died as an infant) were musicians who were trained by their father and then went on to study at the Royal College of Music.^[3] On January 21, 1896 at the Queen's (small) Hall, Grimson and his seven children performed Mendelssohn's Octet as a family.^[4] The concert became an annual event for several years, with the family performing Gade's Octet in 1897^[5] and Svendsen's Octet in 1898.^[6]

• Annie Maria Grimson (later Wallis) (4 September 1870 – 9 October 1949) studied piano and violin, and later became a pupil of Tobias Matthay. She composed orchestral and chamber music, some of which was performed at the South Place Concerts, Conway Hall.^[7] She wrote a symphony (now thought lost) at the age of 17.^[8] Other works include the Fidelité Waltz for full orchestra, the Nocturne for violin and piano (1892, published Augener & Co),^[9] and the Canzona for violin and piano (1898, published C. Woodhouse). In the Summer of 1912 she married Joseph Wallis, a retired architect, aged 78, who died the following year.
• Amy Jane Grimson (11 September 1872 – 23 January 1935) was a cellist and pianist who trained at the Royal College of Music from the age of 14, and later with Tobias Matthay. For a while she played with the Rev. E. H. Moberley's Ladies Orchestra,^[10] and as a soloist.^[8] She lived in Sunbury.
• Jessie Grimson (later Mason) (26 November 1873 – 19 October 1954) won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in 1889, where she studied violin with August Wilhelmj, Henry Holmes and Richard Gompertz. She was one of the first women (along with Rebecca Clarke) to play in Henry Wood's Queen's Hall Orchestra. Her debut as a soloist took place at the Crystal Palace Concerts in 1896 where she performed Spohr's Violin Concerto in A Minor Op.47.^[11] She formed the Grimson Quartet in which Frank Bridge played second violin after leaving college. (The Quartet put on the first performance of Bridge's Three Idylls in 1907).^[12] Her husband Edward Mason, whom she married in 1905, was a cellist and also played with the quartet. (He was killed serving in the War on 9 May 1915).^[13][14][15] She retired from performing in 1927 but continued to appear occasionally into the 1930s.^[16] Like her older sisters Annie and Amy, she was long associated with music making at Conway Hall.^[17] One of her pupils was Nona Liddell.^[18][19]
• Ellen Elizabeth Grimson (later Woodroffe) (1877 – 8 April 1941) was a concert pianist, sometimes referred to as Nellie Grimson. She was interested in Theosophy, and married the British orientalist John Woodroffe in 1902.^[20][21]
• Samuel Bonarius Grimson (7 January 1879 – 29 November 1955) was an orchestral (London Symphony Orchestra) and concert violinist who also composed several songs. His performing career was ended by injuries sustained while serving in Italy towards the end of the War. After the war he became a collector of art and musical instruments. Samuel Grimson moved to America, where he married twice: to sculptor and author Malvina Hoffman on 4 June 1924 (divorced 1936); and then to the psychoanalyst Bettina Warburg.^[22] He forged a new career as a research scientist in colour cinema and television, and died in New York.^[14]
• Robert Alfred Grimson (22 February 1881 – 30 January 1953) trained at the Royal College of Music and later in Berlin. His was a cellist, violist and organist. He taught at the Basle Conservatory of Music, later returning to the UK, where he married Dorothy Astley Cottrell in 1927.
• Harold Grimson (April-May 1882 – 1 December 1917), was a violinist who studied with Émile Sauret, Wilhelmj and Joachim. He was known professionally as Harold Bonarius, performing as a soloist and as leader of the Torquay Orchestra. He enlisted early in the War and was killed in action during the Battle of Cambrai on 1 December, 1917.^[14]