Frederick (Fred) Fifield Hall wrote under numerous psuedonymns, including Gabriel Morel, Georges Brand, Anthony Dare, C. Stanbridge and Charles Surrey. For works by this composer under psuedonyms see: Gabriel Morel, Georges Brand, Anthony Dare, C. Stanbridge and Charles Surrey. For works by this composer under real name see: Frederick Hall.
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Fred Hall was a highly prolific composer of popular and an active professional musician. He studied piano with his father, and in his teens gained theatrical and vaudeville engagements, and toured Australia and New Zealand with musical comedy. He was the musical director at the Melbourne Tivoli Theatre for twelve years, resigning when Hugh McIntosh acquired the circuit in 1912. He continued his conducting activities in silent film cinemas, including the Empire Theatre, Brunswick during the 1920s. In 1928-1929 he led the 3LO radio orchestra, using some of his air time as an opportunity to promote his own compositions.
Hall was a music editor and composer with Allan and Co. music publishers from 1914 until 1938, and again during the Second World War. He wrote over six hundred works, more than half of which Allans published under his name or one of his many noms de plume. His compositions spanned a wide range of styles, and included popular songs, tone poems and studies for the piano, violin solos, children's music, and ragtime arrangements. Some had Australian titles, such as his highly popular Goodbye Melbourne Town, and By the Big Blue Billabong (Australian Rag). Others were based on more exotic themes, such as his collection of tone poems on Omar Kayyam (1921). He adopted a more sophisticated persona in taking the pseudonym Gabriel Morel, publishing piano works with colourful titles such as Danse Americaine Morceau Caracterestique and Norwegian Cradle Song. His position at Allans also required him to arrange many works of other composers, including Jack O'Hagan.
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