• Biography

Biography

1899-1973 

Patrick Hadley was a British composer. He was influenced by the music of Frederick Delius and to a certain extent by folk music. Throughout his a career, he maintained a sense of the lyrical. He had an exceptional understanding of how to set words to music. Much of his music is meditative and quite inward looking.

His output was limited. He found the business of composing quite exhausting. Most people think of Hadley as composer of one or two church anthems: I Sing of a Maiden and the mildly exotic My Beloved spake. The catalogue shows a wide variety of musical forms: from a symphonic ballad to incidental music for Twelfth Night. However, there are no cycles of symphonies, concertos, or string quartets.