Barnes, Fred. E. Lucy (Frederick Edwin Lucy), 1856-1880

• Lucy-Barnes, Fred E., 1856-1880

Composer and organist Fred E. Lucy Barnes, also known as “Eddy,” was born and baptised in St. Pancras, London, the son of a well-known professor of music, composer Edwin Barnes. In 1872 he began studies at the Royal Academy of Music and also had lessons with Thomas Helmore, master of the choristers at the Chapel Royal. The same year, at age 14, he became organist at All Saints Church in Norfolk Square, London. In 1876 he moved to the same post in St. Margaret’s Church in Prince’s Square in Liverpool. From there, in 1878 he was hired as organist at Christ Church Cathedral in Montreal, Quebec, and worked there till 1879. He had returned briefly to London in 1878 to marry opera singer Leonora Phillippa Braham who had just won the Royal Academy’s Llewelyn Thomas Gold Medal (and who changed her name to Leonora Lucy Barnes). In addition to his job as organist, he served as conductor for the Montreal Philharmonic Society from 1879 to 1880. While in Montreal, he also continued composing and gave several lectures on musical topics, including one for McGill University’s Somerville series entitled, “On the various forms of musical composition as determined by the great masters, their beauties, uses and abuses.” He spent a season in New York City as assistant organist at Trinity Church, commuting between Montreal and New York every week, but resigned from that post and returned to Montreal full-time in 1880. He was 23 when he shot himself fatally with a revolver that same year, just weeks before his son was born. He is buried at St. John the Evangelist Anglican Church in Montreal. His widow returned to London where she had a successful opera career as principal soprano with the Doyly Carte Opera Company and remarried.