Eugene Aynsley Goossens
Sir Eugene Aynsley Goossens (; 26 May 189313 June 1962) was an English conductor and composer. Biography He was born in Camden Town, London, the son of the Belgian conductor and violinist Eugène Goossens (fils, 1867–1958) and Annie Cook, a Carl Rosa Opera Company singer. He was the grandson of the conductor Eugène Goossens (père, 1845–1906; his father and grandfather spelled Eugène with a grave accent; he himself did not). His younger sisters and brothers, all musicians, were Marie, Adolphe, Leon and Sidonie. Eugene studied music at the age of ten in Bruges, three years later at Liverpool College of Music, and in 1907 in London on a scholarship at the Royal College of Music under composer Charles Villiers Stanford and the violinist Achille Rivarde among others. He won the silver medal of the Worshipful Company of Musicians and was made associate of the Royal College of Music. He was a first violin in Henry Wood's Queen's Hall Orchestra from 1911 to 1915 and as second violinist a founding member of the Philharmonic Quartet before coming to attention as Thomas Beecham's assistant conductor with a performance of Stanford's opera The Critic (1916). In 1921 he decided to make conducting his