Clement Hugh Gilbert Harris (1871–1897) was a British composer who came from a family of privilege. Born in Wimbledon, London, his father Frederick was a shipowner, a one-time Master of the Drapers’ Company, and a Justice of the Peace for Glamorgan. Among his siblings were Sir Austin Harris, a banker, Frederick Harris, a member of Parliament during World War I, and Walter Harris, who was a journalist and explorer known for his writing on Morocco. As such, Clement was able to pursue his artistic ambitions without much economic interference from his family. His formal education began at Harrow School where he discovered the works of George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron. This would, ironically, lead directly to Harris’s early demise.

Harris left the Harrow School during the winter of 1887–1888 and entered the Conservatorium at Frankfurt am Main where he became a piano student of Clara Schumann and came into contact, perhaps unsurprisingly, with Johannes Brahms. It was also there that he met his long-time friend—perhaps more than friend—Siegfried Wagner, Richard Wagner’s son, who would also introduce Harris to Oscar Wilde. The two would become extremely close to the point that they would embark on a six-month trip to the Far East as the only passengers on the ship Wakefield. Wagner would keep a picture of Harris on his desk for the rest of his life and devoted more than half his memoir to the trip he took with Harris.

Harris would travel to Greece and find himself there when the Greco-Turkish War of 1897 broke out. Like his inspiration Lord Byron before him, he would abandon his life of relative ease to enter combat on the side of the Greeks, himself leading a battalion of mercenaries. He would be wounded in battle at Pente Pigadia and later die of these injuries.