 He lost his sight when he was a baby.He attended the Royal Normal School for the Blind in London (1880–1892) where, under his teacher Frederick Corder (a professor from the Royal Academy of Music), he showed a marked aptitude for music.In 1893, at the age of twenty-four, he moved to Belfast, where he opened a music store, but the venture failed, and he became the organist of a small parish in the city, the Holy Family Church, Wellington Place.