Introduction

Biography

Tozer was the hus­band of Ma­rie So­phie Gi­ran­dine Ray­monde Mas­son.

He en­tered the Ci­ty of Lon­don School in 1870 and, hav­ing shown a tal­ent for mu­sic, went on to stu­dy at the Roy­al Aca­de­my of Mu­sic (RAM).

His par­ti­cu­lar skill was with the pipe or­gan and, ha­ving ap­plied for mem­ber­ship of the Roy­al Col­lege of Or­gan­ists, was ap­point­ed a Fel­low at the age of 19.

He sub­se­quent­ly be­came a Li­cen­ti­ate with the RAM for his or­gan ab­il­ity in 1882, and an As­so­ci­ate of the Roy­al Col­lege of Mu­sic for his mu­sic the­ory and com­po­si­tion work in 1887.

After com­plet­ing a de­gree in mu­sic at Dur­ham Uni­ver­si­ty, he un­der­took fur­ther stu­dies at Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, earn­ing his Doc­tor­ate in No­vem­ber 1895.

His first for­mal ap­point­ment was as or­gan­ist and choir­mas­ter at St. Ma­ry Mag­da­lene, St. Le­on­ards-on-Sea, then an An­gli­can church. For a pe­ri­od, he was al­so choir­mas­ter at the new­ly built Ho­ly Tri­ni­ty, Hast­ings.

In 1890 he was ad­mit­ted to the Sy­lves­trine Or­der by Pope Leo XIII for his ser­vic­es to Ro­man Ca­tho­lic church mu­sic, hav­ing com­posed at least six full mass­es and ed­it­ed or com­piled sev­er­al Ca­tho­lic hym­nals.

He al­so worked with El­gar, whose mo­ther was Ca­tho­lic, on sev­er­al of his Ca­tho­lic com­po­si­tions.

He in­clud­ed them in his Col­lect­ion The Com­plete Bene­dic­tion Man­ual, but El­gar lat­er re­counted to Hu­bert Lei­ces­ter that Toz­er had changed the har­mo­nies so the pub­lished ver­sion was ab­so­lute­ly dif­fer­ent from, and in­fer­ior to, El­gar’s orig­in­al.

Tozer took posts at sev­er­al Ca­tho­lic church­es be­fore set­tling on the south coast and be­com­ing mu­sic di­rect­or for the Church of the Sac­red Heart, Hove, in 1888.