Granville Bantock was an English choral and orchestral composer best known for his large-scale compositions. Bantock studied music at Trinity College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music in London after training for the Indian civil service. He was a conductor, the editor of the New Quarterly Music Review (1893–96), and the successor to Sir Edward Elgar as professor of music at the University of Birmingham (1907–34). His orchestral compositions are mostly program music with Asian and Celtic themes. Atalanta in Calydon (1911) and Vanity of Vanities (1913) for unaccompanied voices; the Hebridean Symphony (1916); the significant tone poems Dante and Beatrice (1910) and Fifine at the Fair (1912); and the massive Omar Khayyam for solo voices, chorus, and orchestra (1906–09) are among his most important compositions.

His concertos include poems for cello, including Elegiac, Sapphic, Celtic, and Dramatic. Bantock’s cello compositions for chamber music include Pibroch, Hamabdil, Fantastic, Cello Sonata No. 1 in B minor, and Cello Sonata No. 2 in F-sharp minor.