John Curwen

John Curwen (14 November 1816 – 26 May 1880) was an English Congregationalist minister and diffuser of the tonic sol-fa system of music education created by Sarah Ann Glover. He was educated at Wymondley College in Hertfordshire, then Coward College as that institution became known when it moved to London, and finally University College London. Background and biography John Curwen was a descendant of the Curwens of Workington Hall in Cumbria, one of the oldest families in England, the male line proper being a direct descent from Eldred, a pre-Norman Englishman, whose son Ketel held lands in the Barony of Kendal. Orm, Ketel's son, inherited the Cumbrian manor of Workington. Curwen was born 14 November 1816, at Heckmondwike, West Riding of Yorkshire, the son of Spedding Curwen and Mary Jubb. His father was a Non-conformist minister, as John was also from 1838 until 1864. Curwen gave up full-time ministry to devote himself to his new method of musical nomenclature. He established the Tonic Sol-Fa Press in Plaistow, where he had been a minister, and in 1879 the Tonic Sol-Fa college (later the Forest Gate School of Music) in Forest Gate.