Place Name
In honour of John Curwen (1816 – 1880) or his son John Spencer Curwen (1847 – 1916). John senior was a congregational minister, musicologist and publisher, who established the Tonic Sol-Fa Press in Plaistow, which taught the method of reading music by words, as popularised in The Sound of Music’s Do-Re-Mi song. In 1879 he set up the Tonic Sol-Fa college which later became the Forest Gate School of Music. John junior was the founder of the East London Music Festival.
