William Lovelock

William Lovelock (13 March 1899 – 26 June 1986) was an English classical composer and pedagogue who spent many years in Australia. He was the first Director of the Queensland Conservatorium of Music in Brisbane, and later became the chief music critic for The Courier-Mail newspaper.

He is not to be confused with the Australian-born songwriter Bill Lovelock.

Though William Lovelock was born in London, his family were originally of Berkshire extraction and two of his great-uncles had emigrated to Australia in the 19th century, long before he did. He was educated at Emanuel School, Wandsworth, and started piano lessons at the age of six and organ lessons at twelve. At the age of sixteen, he won an organ scholarship to the Trinity College of Music, where he studied with C. W. Pearce and Henry Geehl. After service as an artilleryman in World War I, he returned to Trinity College and graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree in 1922. He then joined the teaching staff and later obtained a doctorate in composition in 1932. As an organist, he served at St. Clements in Eastcheap from 1919 to 1923, then as Kapellmeister to Countess Cowdray from 1923 to 1926. He was also organist at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Carshalton from 1928 to 1930.

During the 1930s Lovelock wrote the first of his numerous popular textbooks for college music students. Later, as a roving examiner for the College, he spent a six-year stint in Asia, ending up in the Indian Army Ordnance Corps during the Second World War and reaching the rank of major in 1942. While stationed in Varanasi in 1945 he sketched the beginning of a concerto for piano, the first of the many concertos to come.

On his return to London in 1946, Lovelock rejoined the faculty at Trinity College and eventually became Dean of the Faculty of Music at the University of London in 1954. He was appointed as the first Director of the Queensland Conservatorium of Music in Brisbane, Australia, two years later but left in 1959 after disagreement over his teaching methods. However, he chose to stay on since, for the first time, he found that he had the time and freedom to compose seriously. Meanwhile, he supported himself as a free-lance teacher, adjudicator, and as chief music critic for The Courier-Mail in Brisbane.

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