work, possibly, was his promotion of the music of contemporary British and colonial composers, particularly through a series of concerts he personally financed at Queen's Hall London in 1912 to 1913. The composers represented included Arnold Bax, Frederic Austin, Gustav Holst, Percy Grainger, Roger Quilter, Cyril Scott and Norman O'Neill. (The last four had also studied with him at Frankfurt.) Gardiner was very generous with his personal fortune, paying for a private benefit performance of The Planets for Holst in 1918 and purchasing Frederick Delius's house at Grez-sur-Loing to enable him to continue living in it at the end of his life. In the early 1920s he also became a patron of Charles Kennedy Scott, conductor and founder of the Philharmonic Choir which was the predecessor of the present London Philharmonic Choir. Gardiner gave up composing in 1925 largely because he was intensely self-critical: much of his lost music was probably destroyed by him. Thereafter, he devoted himself to a pioneering afforestation programme on his Dorset pig farm. He died in hospital in Salisbury after suffering a stroke. He was the great-uncle of the conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner. See also Sir Alan Henderson Gardiner (Egyptologist), his brother References 1877 births 1950 deaths English composers English conductors (music) British male conductors (music) Alumni of New College, Oxford English folk-song collectors Hoch Conservatory alumni People educated at Charterhouse School Pupils of Iwan Knorr