John S. Beckett

John Stewart Beckett (5 February 1927 – 5 February 2007) was an Irish musician, composer and conductor; cousin of the famous writer and playwright Samuel Beckett.

John and his twin sister Ann were born in Sandymount, Dublin to Gerald and Peggy Beckett. Gerald, brother of Bill Beckett (Samuel Beckett's father), studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin and became County Medical Officer for Wicklow.

Gerald Beckett played rugby for Ireland, and captained a golf club. A quiet man with wide interests, he was quite irreligious, with a dry sense of humour, describing life as "a disease of matter". He was very musical and enjoyed playing piano duets with a friend, David Owen Williams, who later became a director in the Guinness Brewery, and his son, John, and his nephew, Samuel Beckett. John's twin Ann later pioneered the profession of occupational therapy in Ireland becoming the country's first professionally qualified practitioner. and his older brother Peter became the first Professor of Psychiatry in Trinity College Dublin and later the Dean of Medicine at Trinity.

John Beckett attended St. Columba's College, Dublin, where he was taught music by Joe Groocock, whom he admired little short of idolatry, and who furthered his lifelong devotion to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.[11] (John shared the same initials, J. S. B., with the famous composer.) John wrote his first fugue at around the age of fourteen in the Groocock family home while visiting one weekend.

John Beckett's father's friend, David Owen Williams, who had served in Germany during World War II, brought home a complete set of vocal scores of Bach's Cantatas, which made a huge impression on John.

In 1933 the family moved to the Burnaby Estate, Greystones, County Wicklow. Gerald Beckett worked in Rathdrum, also in County Wicklow.

John received scholarships to study at the Royal Irish Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music in London. John went to London in 1945 and studied composition for three years — one of his teachers was Edmund Rubbra. He won a travelling scholarship and went to Paris in 1949, where he studied composition with Nadia Boulanger. He returned to Dublin in 1950 and his father died in September of that year.

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