Herbert Kinsey

Herbert Kinze was born on 3 September 1885 in Penge, England, to Rudolf and Martha Kinze. His father Rudolf was a colonial produce broker and a naturalised British Subject. Herbert changed his German name from Kinze to Kinsey, some time after World War I. The London Symphony Orchestra, where he was the principal second violin, records both versions of his name.[3]

In 1902 he gained an open scholarship to study at the Royal College of Music in London, and was later a professor of violin, viola and chamber music at the RCM from 1920.[4] [5] In 1950 he was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Music, FRCM.

In 1902, Kinsey, along with Frank Bridge (viola), Thomas F Morris (violin) and Ivor James (cello), founded the English String Quartet. Marjorie Hayward replaced Thomas Morris as first violin from 1911. Ivor James recalls in his memoires how, in 1904, the quartet were sent by Sir Hubert Parry, director of the RCM, to play the Schumann and Brahms piano quintets with Donald Tovey at 10 Downing Street when Arthur Balfour was Prime Minister. And how a fortnight later, Sir Hubert lined the quartet up in the corridor outside his room at the RCM and put ten golden sovereigns into each of their hands, saying that “Arthur had sent them for the boys!” The following year they went to Mr Balfour’s house in Carlton House Terrace where they played the Bach C major Concerto for two pianos (Donald Tovey and James Friskin) with the quartet plus Ernest Tomlinson (violist) and Robert A. Grimson (cellist), together with the Brahms B flat Sextet.

In 1903 he played in the Walenn String Quartet with Gerald Walenn (violin), James Lockyer (viola), and Herbert Walenn (cello). In later years the violist position was held by Lionel Tertis. The quartet was disbanded in 1914 owing to the onset of World War I.[6]

On the 19th of October 1904, Kinsey on violin, with Frank Bridge (viola), Vera Warwick Evans (violin) and Ivor James (cello) gave what was believed to be the first British premiere of Debussy's String Quartet.[7] In November 1904 Kinsey, along with Frank Bridge on viola, William Armstrong on violin and Ivor James on cello, gave the first performance of Bridge's Novelletten at an RCM students' concert.[8]

In 1913 he performed Maurice Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro at the Bechstein Hall (now Wigmore Hall) with the London String Quartet, Gwendolen Mason on Harp and Ravel conducting.[9] He later recorded the work, again with Ravel conducting, in 1923.

Throughout the 1920s he played with his own quartet, the Kinsey Piano Quartet, which consisted of Kinsey on violin, Frank Howard on viola; Anthony Pini on cello and Ethel Hobday on piano. Kinsey's wife, Olive Bloom was often the pianist for the quartet.

He published the following violin compositions, and books on violin teaching:

• My First Violin Book; Four Miniature Sketches; Six Pieces; 24 Elementary Progressive Studies; 12 Preliminary Studies; Four Little Fairy Pictures; Three Contrasted Pieces; Canzonetta; Elegy for Violin and Pianoforte (1910); Barcarole, for Violin & Pianoforte (1912); The Fisherman’s Tale for Violin and Pianoforte (1933); The Foundations of Violin Playing and Musicianship (1954).

He married the pianist Olive Louise Augusta Blume (later Bloom) (1884-1967) in 1912.[10]