Cyril Scott

Cyril Meir Scott (27 September 1879 – 31 December 1970) was an English composer, writer, poet, and occultist. He created around four hundred musical compositions, including piano, violin, and cello concertos, symphonies, and operas. He also wrote around 20 pamphlets and books on occult topics and natural health. Scott was born in Oxton, Cheshire, to Henry Scott (1843-1918), a shipper and scholar of Greek and Hebrew, and Mary (née Griffiths), an amateur pianist of Welsh origin. 

He showed a talent for music from an early age and was sent to the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, Germany, to study piano in 1892 at age 12. He studied with Iwan Knorr and belonged to the Frankfurt Group, a circle of composers who studied at the Hoch Conservatory in the late 1890s. At 20, the German poet Stefan George helped Scott organize a performance of Scott's first symphony. He played his Piano Quartet with Fritz Kreisler, Emil Kreuz, and Ludwig Lebell in St. James' Hall in 1903.

In 1902 he met the pianist Evelyn Stuart, with whom he had a long artistic association. She championed his music, premiering many of his works and introducing him to his publisher, Elkin, with whom he remained for the rest of his life. Evelyn Stuart was also a Christian Scientist, and it was through her that Scott became interested in metaphysics. Scott dedicated his Scherzo, Op. 25, to Evelyn Stuart.

His experiments in free rhythm, generated by expanding musical motifs, above all in his First Piano Sonata of 1909,[6] appear to have exerted an influence on Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring (see The Cyril Scott Companion, pp. 45–47). He used to be known as 'the English Debussy,' though this reflected little knowledge of Scott and little understanding of Debussy.

Scott had an interest in alternative medicine, health foods, occultism, naturopathy, philosophy, and yoga. In a series of books and pamphlets, he urged the sick, even those with cancer, to trust diet and alternative medicine and avoid trained medics and surgery. Scott was an alternative cancer treatment advocate and authored two works on this subject. He also recommended people consume black molasses and cider vinegar.