George Augustus Löhr
George Augustus Löhr was an organist and composer based in England.Life
Born in Norwich, he was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford where he was a chorister and then Leipzig University and Munich University. He was then assistant organist at Norwich Cathedral under the organist Zechariah Buck.
He was appointed to St Margaret's Church, Leicester in 1845, a position he held for the next four decades until his death. He pioneered choral services there and was one of the earliest to promote musical harvest festivals. The church "soon became famous for its choir". Lohr also established and conducted the Leicester Harmonic Society in 1856. It survived until 1883. From 1881 he was a music professor. Lohr composed the hynm tune "St Francis", setting the words "Fountain of good, to own Thy love" by Philip Doddridge.. His four part arrangement of Mendelssohn's "But This Lord is Mindful of His Own" remains in print.
He died on 20 August 1897 and is buried in the Welford Road Cemetery in Leicester.
His youngest son, Richard Harvey Löhr, was born in Leicester in 1856 and studied at the Royal Academy of Music under William Henry Holmes, Ebenezer Prout and Sir Arthur Sullivan. He twice won the Charles Lucas medal. He was the organist at St James's Church, Marylebone. Harvey Löhr composed five symphonies, two piano concertos, orchestral suites, marches and preludes, the operas A Border Raid and Kenilworth, choral works, chamber music, piano pieces and many songs. His manuscripts are held at the Royal Academy. He died in Hastings on 16 January 1927.
