Gordon Jacob

Gordon Jacob (1895–1984) was an English composer and teacher. He was a professor at the Royal College of Music in London from 1924 until his retirement in 1966, and published four books and many articles about music. As a composer, he was prolific: the list of his works totals more than 700, mostly compositions of his own, but a substantial minority of orchestrations and arrangements of other composers' works. Those whose music he orchestrated range from William Byrd to Edward Elgar to Noël Coward. Jacob was born in Upper Norwood, London. Jacob was educated at Dulwich College, and enlisted in the Queen's Royal Regiment (West Surrey) at the outbreak of the First World War. He was taken prisoner in 1917, and in the prison camp, he studied a harmony textbook in the camp library and began composing. He wrote for an orchestra of his fellow prisoners, with assorted instruments. After the war, he studied journalism before turning to music. He took a correspondence course, gained an ARCM diploma and was accepted as a full-time student at the Royal College of Music (RCM) in 1920. There, he was a pupil of Charles Villiers Stanford and Ralph Vaughan Williams (composition), Herbert Howells (music theory) and Adrian Boult (conducting). At the end of his student course in 1924, Gordon became a teacher of music, briefly at Birkbeck and Morley Colleges, and then at the RCM, where he remained until his retirement in 1966. He was professor of music theory, composition and orchestration. Among his students at the RCM were Malcolm Arnold, Ruth Gipps, Imogen Holst, Cyril Smith, Philip Cannon, Pamela Harrison, Joseph Horovitz, Bernard Stevens and John Warrack. In addition to his teaching commitments he was a regular examiner for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, and from 1947 to 1957 he was editor of Penguin Musical Scores. He contributed articles to musical journals and to Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians and wrote four books: Orchestral Technique, a Manual for Students (1931); How to Read a Score (1944); The Composer and his Art (1955); and The Elements of Orchestration (1962). During the 1960s, he suffered from the BBC's disinclination to play his music. He was fortunate in having a steady stream of commissions from the US, where his music was popular with university wind bands. He never retired from composing, and went on writing until shortly before his death. Jacob died at his home in Saffron Walden, Essex, in 1984, aged 88. While a student at the RCM Jacob won the Arthur Sullivan composition prize. He was awarded a doctorate (DMus) by the University of London in 1935, and the John Collard Fellowship by the Worshipful Company of Musicians in 1943. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal College of Music in 1946, and was made an honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music the following year. In 1968, he was appointed CBE.