Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Hurlstone, William Yeates
HURLSTONE, WILLIAM YEATES (1876–1906), musical composer and pianist, born at 12 Richmond Gardens, Fulham, on 7 Jan. 1876, was grandson of Frederick Yeates Hurlstone [q. v.], president of the Royal Society of British Artists, and only son of the four children of Martin de Galway Hurlstone, a surgeon, by his wife Maria Bessy Styche.
Without receiving any regular training, he at the age of nine was allowed to publish a set of five waltzes for piano, and in 1894 he gained a scholarship at the Royal College of Music. There he studied composition under (Sir) Villiers Stanford and piano under Algernon Ashton and Edward Dannreuther, leaving the college in December 1898 an excellent pianist and performer of chamber-music and a composer of decided promise. He thereupon published some trifling songs and pieces, but public attention was soon drawn to the fine series of orchestral variations on a Swedish air which he produced at the first concert of the Patrons' Fund on 20 May 1904. At the second (chamber) concert his pianoforte quartet was played and warmly received. In 1906 he won a prize of 50l, offered by the Worshipful Company of Musicians for the best 'Fantasy-Quartet' for strings. Always of a delicate constitution, he died of consumption on 30 May 1906, and was buried at Mitcham, Croydon. He was unmarried. After his death many of his MS. compositions were published at the expense partly of private friends and partly of the Society of British Composers, of which he was a valued member.
Besides the works mentioned his chief pieces were his pianoforte concerto in D, his suite 'The Magic Mirror,' and a cantata 'Alfred the Great.' There is an engaging sincerity and simple charm in his music that seemed to promise a brilliant future.
[Grove's Dict. of Music; Mus. Times, July 1906; Society of British Composers' Year-book for 1907, giving full list of works.]