Sir Dan Godfrey was a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 music conductor and member of a musical dynasty that included his father Dan(iel) Godfrey (1831–1903). His son, also Dan Godfrey, was also a musician, station manager at BBC Manchester in the 1920s, and the first full-time conductor of the BBC Wireless Orchestra (1924–1926).

He was born in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, a member of a distinguished family of English bandmasters, and son of the bandmaster

Bandmaster

A bandmaster is the leader and conductor of a band, usually a military band, brass band or a marching band.-British Armed Forces:In the British Armed Forces, a Bandmaster is always a Warrant Officer Class 1 . A commissioned officer who leads a band is known as the Director of Music...

 of the Grenadier Guards

Grenadier Guards

The Grenadier Guards is an infantry regiment of the British Army. It is the most senior regiment of the Guards Division and, as such, is the most senior regiment of infantry. It is not, however, the most senior regiment of the Army, this position being attributed to the Life Guards...

 - (to whom the waltz Les Grenadiers, Op. 207, by Émile Waldteufel

Émile Waldteufel

Émile Waldteufel was a French composer of dance music.-Life:Émile Waldteufel was born in Strasbourg to a Jewish Alsatian family of musicians....

 was dedicated.)

He founded the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra

The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra is an English orchestra. Originally based in Bournemouth, the BSO moved its offices to the adjacent town of Poole in 1979....

 in 1893 and remained its leading conductor for 41 years, until 1934. Although he was contracted by the Bournemouth Corporation to conduct a seasonal band of 30 musicians, his ambition was to build a permanent symphony orchestra in the town.

Godfrey gave the first performance of the reconstruction of Vaughan Williams's A London Symphony

A London Symphony

A London Symphony is the second symphony composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The work is sometimes referred to as the Symphony No. 2, though it was not designated as such by the composer...

on 11 February 1915, and made acoustic recordings of excerpts of the work in 1923 and an abridged version in 1925. He also made electric recordings of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, Dvořák's Slavonic Dances

Slavonic Dances

The Slavonic Dances are a series of 16 orchestral pieces composed by Antonín Dvořák in 1878 and 1886 and published in two sets as Opus 46 and Opus 72 respectively. Originally written for piano four hands, the Slavonic Dances were inspired by Johannes Brahms's own Hungarian Dances and were...

, Debussy's Petite Suite and Grieg's Sigurd Jorsalfar March with the London Symphony Orchestra.

Godfrey and the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra made several gramophone records for HMV from 1914 to 1930. He was knighted in 1922 'for valuable services to British music' largely as a result of a vigorous campaign on his behalf from Ethel Smyth

Ethel Smyth

Dame Ethel Mary Smyth, DBE was an English composer and a leader of the women's suffrage movement.- Early career :...

. He died in Bournemouth in 1939.