Roland Bocquet
British composer (1878-1945)
Roland Bocquet (3 June 1878 – 16 October 1956) was a British composer, pianist and teacher who for most of his career was based in the city of Dresden, and is chiefly associated with the composition of German Lieder. For the most part his work was rarely heard in Britain and he is now relatively unknown. In Germany, however, he had a limited but devoted following during his lifetime, and his music is still performed.
Early life
Roland Bocquet was born Hugh Rowland Bocquet in Saharanpur, India on 3 June 1878. His father was William Sutton Bocquet, a prominent railway engineer, and his mother Jessie van Zuylen of Nyvelt Gasbeke was a Flemish baroness. He was educated in England at Bedford Modern School and after entering the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich seemed destined for an Army career. However, a year after gaining a commission in the Royal Engineers he resigned from the Army and entered the Royal Academy of Music.
Career
Bocquet moved to Dresden in 1900 and whilst earning his living as a teacher of Music and Mathematics entered the city's bohemian artistic circle. His compositions date from 1902, writing virtuoso piano pieces and Lieder drawn from the poetry of Baudelaire, Hermann Hesse, Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Dauthendey and others. The British composer Arnold Bax who had known Bocquet at the Royal Academy, spent some time with him during a visit to Dresden in 1906 and described him thus: Roland Bocquet was the writer of many very skilful but clearly Strauss-derived lieder.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Roland Bocquet” as british composer (1878-1945). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17591532. VIAF identifies the subject as 59001883. The Library of Congress control number is nr99013444. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1878, 1956, 1900 and 1902.
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This entry incorporates text from “Roland Bocquet” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.