19 Facts About Gordon Jacob

Gordon Percival Septimus Jacob CBE was an English composer and teacher.

Gordon Jacob 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.

Gordon Jacob was educated at Dulwich College, and enlisted in the Queen's Royal Regiment at the outbreak of the First World War.

Gordon Jacob was taken POW in 1917 after being one of 60 survivors from a battalion of 800.

Gordon Jacob wrote for an orchestra of his fellow prisoners, with assorted instruments.

Gordon Jacob took a correspondence course, gained an ARCM diploma and was accepted as a full-time student at the Royal College of Music in 1920.

Gordon Jacob was professor of music theory, composition and orchestration.

Gordon Jacob contributed articles to musical journals and to Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians and wrote four books: Orchestral Technique, a Manual for Students ; How to Read a Score ; The Composer and his Art ; and The Elements of Orchestration.

In 1959 a BBC television documentary about Gordon Jacob was directed by Ken Russell; in the following years, under its controller of music William Glock, the BBC was seen as increasingly hostile to living composers who wrote tonal music.

Gordon Jacob was fortunate in having a steady stream of commissions from the US, where his music was popular with university wind bands.

Gordon Jacob never retired from composing, and went on writing until shortly before his death.

Gordon Jacob was twice married, first in 1924 to Sydney Gray, elder daughter of the Rev Arthur Gray of Ipswich.

Gordon Jacob died in 1958, and the following year he married Margaret Sidney Hannah Gray, the niece of his first wife.

Gordon Jacob died at his home in Saffron Walden, Essex, in 1984, aged 88.

Gordon Jacob was awarded a doctorate by the University of London in 1935, and the John Collard Fellowship by the Worshipful Company of Musicians in 1943.

Gordon Jacob 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.

The music critic for The Times commented in 1932 that there was "something magical" about the way in which Gordon Jacob's arrangements transformed the original music into scores that might make the listener think that the new version was what the composer really intended.

In 1968, Gordon Jacob re-orchestrated the score of Frederick Ashton's ballet Marguerite and Armand, replacing a previous orchestration by Humphrey Searle of music by Liszt.

Shortly after the war, on Boult's recommendation, Gordon Jacob was commissioned by a music publishing firm to orchestrate Elgar's Organ Sonata.