Hubert James Foss (2 May 1899 – 27 May 1953) was an English pianist, composer, and first Musical Editor (1923–1941) for Oxford University Press (OUP) at Amen House in London. His work at the Press was a major factor in promoting music and musicians in England between the world wars, most notably Ralph Vaughan Williams, through publishing and encouraging performance of their works. In doing this work, he made the Music Department of OUP a major publisher of music in the early- and mid-twentieth century.
Life and career
Foss was born at Croydon, to the south of London, the youngest of the thirteen children of Frederick Foss (1850–1968), a solicitor, and Anne Penny Bartrum (1853–1924). His father's father, Edward Foss (1787–1870), had also been a solicitor as well as a historian and biographer of English law and judiciary. Foss's elder sister, Josephine (1877–1983), served as a missionary and teacher of English in Asia and Africa.
Foss's childhood aptitude for both music and language led to his undergraduate education at Bradfield College in these areas as well as in drama. After brief military service towards the end of the First World War, he took a variety of jobs in various teaching and journalistic positions, during which time he married (1921) his first wife, Kate Frances Carter Page (1900–1952), but the marriage only lasted about two years. It was also in 1921 that he was hired by Humphrey S. Milford of OUP's London branch (first at Amen Corner, from 1924 at Amen House) as a sales representative in education. Discussing the antecedents of the Music Department in his history of the Press, Sutcliffe says that Foss "was not particularly interested in education: he was passionately interested in music ... Milford had personal and business relations with cathedral organists and hymnologists. And he also had Hubert Foss."
Foss's experience in education and his musical talents and interest fused with Milford's when Foss brought to Milford a proposal in 1922 for a series or collection of essays on famous composers to be written by well-known contemporary musicians and musicologists. Originally conceived purely as an educational book for the broadcast, recording, and concert-going audience, it may have been the catalyst (Milford's motivation is not clear) for Milford to initiate the creation of a new music publishing department within the London offices. The proposed collection eventually became the first volume of the three-volume Heritage of Music; but upon the new department's undertaking publication of the Oxford Choral Songs series (1923, and still in publication today), Milford made Foss the in-house editor for the series. His work there apparently so impressed Milford that later that year, Foss was appointed the department's head with the title of Musical Editor. Foss also brought his mind to bear on the typographical design of the OUP's music publications at this period.
Foss, working with characteristic energy and enterprise, soon expanded the musical work of the London branch from its original concern with hymnals and music education to every branch of music publication and promotion. He quickly established sales agreements with publishers in other countries, and even in the United States (with Carl Fischer Music) where OUP had its own New York publishing office. He also travelled in Europe and to the United States as a member of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) whose international festival OUP hosted in 1931. In addition, he was maintaining his own work of composition and piano performance, often accompanying the baritone John Goss, and also his second wife, the soprano Dora Maria Stevens (1893–1978), whom he married in 1927.
As Foss worked at expanding the scope of the Music Department's work (adding "some 200 titles a year"), he also spent much time and energy turning his earliest speculative and underfunded productions into a solid foundation of remunerative publications which would—eventually—both reimburse the Press for the music it had already produced and in turn allow it to introduce new music and composers to the public. In this he had Milford's support, though Milford said that he came nearer than any other single man to ruining the Press. One notable and risky project was the publication by OUP in 1928 of Mussorgsky's original version of Boris Godunov. According to Foss this resulted in "a crop of lawsuits opening up as from a sowing of dragons teeth". It led to the first complete performance outside Russia of the opera, at Sadler's Wells on 30 September, 1935.