Gordon Jacob

At 88 years old, Gordon Jacob physical status not available right now. We will update Gordon Jacob's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Morne Perez Cornwell, a British composer and teacher, died on July 5th, 1895 to 8 June 1984.

He served as a professor at the Royal College of Music in London from 1924 to 1966, and he wrote four books and several articles on music.

He was prolific as a composer: the list of his works includes more than 700 compositions, mainly original compositions, but a substantial number of orchestrations and arrangements of other composers' works.

William Byrd to Edward Elgar to Nol Coward, among those whose music he orchestrated.

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Life and career

Jacob was born in Upper Norwood, London, as Stephen Jacob's seventh son and youngest of ten children, as well as his mother, Clara Laura Forlong. Stephen Jacob, a Calcutta Civil Service official, died when Gordon was three. 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 arrested in 1917 and started writing in the prison camp, studying a harmony textbook in the camp library. He wrote for a band of his fellow prisoners, with assorted instruments. He first studied journalism before turning to music after the war. In 1920, he began a correspondence course, gained an ARCM diploma, and was accepted as a full-time student at the Royal College of Music (RCM). He was a pupil of Charles Villiers Stanford and Ralph Vaughan Williams (composition), Herbert Howells (music theory), and Adrian Boult (conducting), from whom he learned the "economy and decision" of his podium technique.

Gordon became a teacher of music at Birkbeck and Morley Colleges briefly, then at the RCM, where he remained until his retirement in 1966. He was an instructor of music theory, composition, and orchestration. Malcolm Arnold, Ruth Gipps, Imogen Holst, Cyril Smith, Philip Cannon, Philip Cannon, Pamela Harrison, Bernard Stevens, and John Warrack were among his RCM students.

He served as an examiner for the Royal Schools of Music from 1947 to 1957, and he was editor of Penguin Musical Scores from 1947 to 1957. He wrote several articles and contributed to musical journals as well as Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1931); how to Read a Score (1941); and The Elements of Orchestration (1962).

Ken Russell produced a BBC television documentary about Jacob in 1959; in the years after the BBC's music director, William Glock, the BBC was increasingly hostile to living composers who wrote tonal music. It was always believed that Glock had a blacklist, but non-garde composers, such as Edmund Rubbra, Arnold Bax, John Ireland, and even William Walton, were clearly out of favour with the BBC in the 1960s, especially when it was displayed. A substantial share of a composer's income came from royalties for broadcasting, and Jacob, as many of his generation, suffered from the BBC's inability to perform his music. He was fortunate to receive a steady stream of commissions from the United States, where his music was particularly popular with university wind bands. He never stopped writing and went on writing shortly before his death.

Jacob married twice, first in 1924 to Sydney Gray, the elder daughter of the Rev Arthur Gray of Ipswich, who died in 1924. She died in 1958 and married Margaret Sidney Hannah Gray, his niece. The son and daughter of the second marriage were still married.

Jacob died at his home in Saffron Walden, Essex, in 1984, at the age of 88.

The Arthur Sullivan composition award was won by a RCM Jacob student, who was a student at the RCM Jacobs. He received a doctorate (DMus) by the University of London in 1935 and the Worshipful Company of Musicians in 1943. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal College of Music in 1946 and then made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music the following year. He was appointed CBE in 1968.

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