Spencer Dyke Quartet


The Spencer Dyke Quartet was a string quartet active in England through the 1920s. It was formed in 1918 and its personnel remained unchanged until August 1927 when Bernard Shore became the violist and Tate Gilder the second violin. It is best remembered now for a series of pioneering chamber music recordings made for the National Gramophonic Society. At the time of the recordings, the Quartet members were Edwin Spencer Dyke, Edwin Quaife, Ernest Tomlinson and Bertie Patterson Parker cello.
Bernard Shore played viola in the last two recordings only.

Origins

Spencer Dyke was a Cornish violinist, having been born at St Austell on 22 July 1880. He won the Dove Scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music in London at the age of 17, and became a professor there in 1907. He was mainly concerned with chamber music, teaching and editing. By 1924 he had written violin pieces and studies, had published editions of the classics and a book of scales. In October 1923, Compton Mackenzie founded the National Gramophonic Society for the recording and publication by subscription of classical music, principally chamber music, which was of limited circulation. The Spencer Dyke Quartet was by then already well-known: Spencer Dyke joined the advisory board for the selection of material for the Society, together with Walter Willson Cobbett, and others. Cobbett had founded the Cobbett Competition in 1905 for a short form of String Quartet composition or 'Phantasy', and for other short chamber works. The Society was intended to develop the taste for modern chamber music. The Spencer Dyke Quartet, together with various other instrumentalists in ensemble, appeared on many of the recordings, and his position on the committee therefore probably signified the original intention of the founders to employ his musicians for the project.

Recordings