Categories
20th Century English

WHITLOCK, Percy

Percy Whitlock
Image courtesy of the British Music Collection

Born in Chatham, June 1, 1903
Died in Bournemouth, May 1, 1946

  • Percy Whitlock was an English organist and composer, best known during his lifetime as a recitalist and broadcaster.
  • As a student at the Royal College of Music, Whitlock studied composition under Ralph Vaughan Williams and organ under Henry Ley.
  • Whitlock was assistant organist at Rochester Cathedral between 1921 and 1930, followed by music director of St. Stephen’s in Bournemouth. In 1932, Whitlock became organist at Bournemouth’s Municipal Pavilion, where he played until his death.1
  • As a composer, Whitlock’s works largely consist of church and organ music, with a handful of orchestral pieces, including a symphony for organ and orchestra.

Characteristically, [Whitlock] has that all too uncommon knack of writing memorable tunes, melodies that are perpetually evolving, undergoing transformation, and are supported by a harmonic and contrapuntal idiom that had infiltrated the national scene at the turn of the century.2

Sources

  1. William McVicker, “Percy Whitlock,” Hyperion (2005), accessed August 22, 2025, https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/c.asp?c=C648.
  2. Peter Hardwick, British Organ Music of the Twentieth Century (Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2003), 145.

Pieces