Bantock studied at the Royal Academy of Music and showed early promise as a composer. He worked to promote the music of his contemporaries and as an educator at Birmingham University, sought to provide his students with a complete cultural education, including literature, languages, and mathematics. Bantock was influenced by Wagner and Richard Strauss and produced many large-scale orchestral and choral works. His works are neither dissonant nor chromatic, but are based upon common chords and diatonic discords. The compositions are homophonic and the chromaticisms that do appear are semi-Oriental in nature, possibly due to his early training for the Indian civil service. His works were often performed at the beginning of the twentieth century, but much of his work has faded from the repertoire.