Hubert J Foss

Hubert James Foss (Croydon, 2 May 1899 – London, 27 May 1953) was an English editor and writer on music whose work was centred above all on publishing. His importance lies in the fact that, from a professional position little visible to the public, he helped to promote the British music of his time and to make works from other English-speaking countries known.

He joined the Oxford University Press in 1921. After brief periods in the army and as assistant editor of the magazine Land and Water, he founded the London department of the publisher in 1925. Trained as a musician in a varied way, he combined composition, piano playing and the promotion of concerts, and over some twenty years he championed collections of sacred music, of English songs and of commentaries gathered in the Musical Pilgrim pamphlets. He was also the exclusive editor of Vaughan Williams, Walton and Rawsthorne, and a champion of Warlock, Moeran and Van Dieren.

In 1926 he founded the Bach Cantata Club, devoted to the systematic performance of Bach's cantatas, and occasionally conducted its concerts. Interested in typography, he created the Double Crown Club and collaborated in the production of the Oxford Lectern Bible. He retired from the OUP in 1941 and devoted the last decade of his life to independent journalism, writing programme notes, judging and broadcasting. His writings include the first extensive monograph on Vaughan Williams, published in 1950, and the edition of The Heritage of Music, as well as new editions of Tovey's essays. He composed some songs, among them seven settings of Hardy, and translated into English Leon Vallas's biography of César Franck.

His legacy rests above all on his role as editor and promoter: without being a composer of the first rank, he helped to bring contemporary British music and the Bach repertoire to wider circulation in the United Kingdom during the first half of the twentieth century.