Howard Ferguson for most of the 20th century enjoyed a formidable reputation as both a pianist and musicologist, studying piano with Harold Samuel and conducting with Sir Malcolm Sargent at London’s Royal College of Music.

As a composer, he was first brought to public attention in 1932 by a performance in the Wigmore Hall of his first Violin Sonata. He went on to consolidate his compositional fortunes with a series of commissions from the Three Choirs Festival including, the Dream of the Rood for Chorus and Orchestra, a work of great inspiration and beauty, sadly neglected today. He withdrew from serious composition in the 1940s to concentrate on scholarship and musicology, the fruits of which are a considerable number of Anthologies of Early Keyboard Music, produced at a time when most of this music had lain dormant for centuries. He taught at the Royal Academy of Music from 1948–1963.