Frederick Septimus Kelly

29 May 1881 – 13 November 1916

 

F.S. Kelly website story

F.S. Kelly archive document

SEN resources

F.S. Kelly symbol story

 

• Biography

  Frederick Septimus Kelly was the seventh child of an enormously wealthy Australian family. His father Thomas Kelly had started off as a wool trader, but by the time of his death sat on a variety of boards of what would now be called ‘multinational corporations’. After grammar school in Australia, Frederick and his two brothers were sent to Eton in 1893, where he progressed to Balliol College, Oxford.

  Music had been his passion since his youth; he had allegedly memorised Mozart piano sonatas by the age of five and began composing at around the same age. However, his parents dissuaded him from leaving Eton to attend a conservatoire aged 14, and Frederick found a substitute in sporting pursuits; football, cricket, but especially rowing. During his life, he achieved most fame as a rower, winning the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley 1903 and 1905 and gold at the 1908 London Olympics as part of the men’s eight, plus a multitude of other events. He was apparently considered one of the finest ‘sculls’ of his generation, with a poise and effortless technique unrivalled by any of his contemporaries. His musical and sporting pursuits were detrimental to his BA studies at Oxford (he graduated with a fourth class degree in history in 1903), but he had made the connections and friends he needed, and a large inheritance on his father’s death in 1901 and his mother's in 1902 meant that he never wanted for money, although the emotional impact of losing both of his parents within the space of a year marked a period of readjustment for the young composer.

  Although a proud Australian and frequent traveller, Frederick was to make his home in England, purchasing Bisham Grange, a fine manor house on the banks of the River Thames in Berkshire, where he lived with his sister Maisie and hosted select gatherings. With a highly-strung, blunt personality, he was noted for his eccentric behaviour when overcome by high spirits when he apparently “rolled on the ground or indulged in war-dances and animal impressions” (ODNB). He seems to have also gained the sobriquets 'Sep' and the more abstruse 'Cleg', presumably a reference to Samuel Rutherford Crockett's 1896 novel Cleg Kelly: Arab of the City. He is frequently referred to as 'Cleg' in wartime correspondence. Oxford had given him the opportunity to mix with like-minded individuals and after his father’s death he recommenced a more serious study of music. In terms of his compositions, he is largely agreed to have been a late starter in terms of gaining a unique voice; reviews of his published works usually state that they are competent but unremarkable, although recordings of his works remain scarce and some works are still in manuscript in Australia. His music was neglected during the 20th century, although a large project by the National Library of Australia in 2004 led to a rediscovery of his work including a very complete set of personal diaries from 1907-1915 which reveal his friendships and connections to the ‘great and good’ of the day. From 1903 onwards he attended the Hochschule Konservatorium in Frankfurt to study piano and composition, a choice perhaps influenced by the attendance there of another Australian, Percy Grainger, with whom Kelly had made an acquaintance previously, although it was also had an English contingency in Cyril Scott, Balfour Gardiner and Roger Quilter. Frederick wrote in his diary in 1907 of his desire ‘to be a great player and a great composer’; he toured several concert programmes around England as well as Australia where he performed national premieres of new works by Debussy and Skryabin. For the next five years his experience as a concert pianist fluctuated; his diaries record some triumphant public performances, but also disappointments (on one occasion, his memory failed him during a piano concerto).

  Meanwhile, he composed steadily, with his works making semi-regular appearances in London performances, although there was no 'break out' work and his archives reveal many half-completed works. As a patron of the arts, he also encouraged other musicians, for example taking over the running of the Classical Concert Society. It was through this that he met the Hungarian violinist Jelly Arányi, for whom he composed several works and it is widely assumed he would have married, although this period of his life was marked by several relationships that cooled off before engagement.
  
  At the outbreak of war in August 1914, Kelly was quick to volunteer, joining the newly-formed Royal Naval Division in September 1914. Posted in the Drake Battalion, he was transferred to the Hood Battalion sailing aboard the Grantully Castle towards the Dardanelles in the eastern Mediterranean where he found himself among acquaintances such as the composer William Denis Browne, Arthur ‘Oc’ Asquith, son of the Prime Minister, the banker Patrick Shaw Stewart (now best known for the war poem "Achilles in the Trench"), Charles Lister and most famously, the poet Rupert Brooke, whose midnight burial on the Isle of Skyros among the olive groves is one of the more famous episodes in the early part of the war. At Gallipoli, Kelly was wounded in the ankle during the Third Battle of Krithia (4.6.1915). Denis Browne was fatally wounded in the same battle. While recuperating Kelly composed his Elegy for strings and harp "in memoriam Rupert Brooke" (1915-6), one of the few works by Kelly to have been recorded. Kelly returned to Gallipoli and won a Distinguished Service Cross in January 1916 for conspicuous gallantry during the evacuation. He was promoted to Temporary Lieutenant Commander. He was killed at Beaucourt-sur-Ancre on 13 November 1916 while leading an attack on a German machine gun emplacement. Recently the director of the Canberra Festival, Christopher Latham, unearthed a violin sonata that Kelly wrote on the boat home from Gallipoli for Jelly d’Arányi. She played the sonata at his memorial service.
  
  We are grateful to Robert Weedon for allowing us to quote his summary of Kelly’s life and music from War Composers: The music of World War 1 (www.warcomposers.co.uk).

• The community

  Residences: Bisham Grange, Marlow, Buckinghamshire, and 27, Queen Anne St, W1

• Correspondence

  Frederick Kelly's surviving manuscripts are deposited in the National Library of Australia, where many can be viewed.

• Other primary sources

  Therese Radic’s work provides the most thorough coverage of Kelly’s life through his diaries.
  Radic. Therese (2004) Race against Time: The Diaries of F.S.Kelly 1907-1915 National Library of Australia
  
  Cooksey, J & McKechnie,G (2015) Kelly’s War : The Great War Diary of Frederick Kelly 1914-1916 Blink Publishing
  
  Other Royal Naval Division memoirs and correspondence contain useful insights. For example, Jerrold, Douglas (1923) The Royal Naval Division Hutchinson

• Where commemorated

  Lady Kelly, (his sister Maisie who married an unrelated admiral called Kelly), commissioned a war memorial to her brother in the grounds of what is now Bisham Abbey. The sculptor was Eric Gill.

  Listed on the Bisham War Memorial

  Buried Martinsart British Cemetery (FR232)

• Gallantry awards

  Distinguished Service Cross 1916 (London Gazette 6/9/16 p.8768); Mentioned in Dispatches (London Gazette 12/11/16 p.10617)

• Secondary sources

  Carmody, John, Frederick Septimus Kelly, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol 9 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1983), pp 554–555

  Davies, Rhian, Frederick Septimus Kelly in Grove Music Online, accessed February 2014, www.oxfordmusiconline.com

  Hartley, Harold, ‘Frederick Septimus Kelly, (1881–1916)’, rev. Rhian Davies, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)