William G. Whittaker
| William Gillies Whittaker | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
23 July 1876 Newcastle upon Tyne |
| Died | 5 July 1944 (aged 68) Orkney Islands |
William Gillies Whittaker (Newcastle upon Tyne, July 23, 1876 – Orkney Islands, July 5, 1944) was an English composer, pedagogue, conductor, musicologist, Bach scholar, publisher and writer. He spent his life promoting music. The University of Durham, where he once studied and taught, called him one of "Britain's most influential musicians during the first half of the twentieth century". An autodidact, he was a prodigious creator of Gebrauchsmusik.
Whittaker was born into a Methodist family in the Shieldfield district of Newcastle upon Tyne. His father, John Whittaker, the illegitimate son of a farm labourer's daughter, came from Little Corby in Cumberland. His mother, Ellen Gillies, was an orphan from a respected family in Hexham in Northumberland. From an early age Whittaker showed an interest in music: he learnt to play the flute and his father bought him a piccolo; and he played as a schoolboy organist at St George's Presbyterian Church in Jesmond. His father encouraged him to follow a career in science, which led to Whittaker initially studying mathematics—without great success—at Armstrong College, at that time part of the University of Durham (it later formed the nucleus of the present-day University of Newcastle upon Tyne). Subsequently, he resumed organ and singing lessons, obtaining performing and teaching qualifications from the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music; and, from 1898, he commenced studies in musicology at the University of Durham. After graduating he continued at Armstrong College; he had successive appointments as instructor, lecturer and reader in music; and he embarked on a doctorate in 1902, submitting a dissertation in 1909, although he had to wait until 1921 for the degree to be awarded. He also worked as a music master at two of the main girls' schools in Newcastle, teaching singing at the Central Newcastle High School in Jesmond and Rutherford Girls' School at Rye Hill (which opened in 1907 in former buildings of the Royal Grammar School). In 1903 Whittaker married Clara Watkins, an amateur musician from Gateshead and the daughter of a South Shields ship owner. Together they had two daughters, Clarrie and Mary, brought up as strict vegetarians with an equally strict regime of pre-breakfast instrumental practise on the cello and the violin.
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