Jacob, G :: Trio

Trio

Jacob, G

Gordon Percival Septimus Jacob was born in Upper Norwood, South London, in 1895, a tenth child and a seventh son. He was educated at Dulwich College, which was an unusually musical school, and he wrote his first orchestral pieces there. During the First World War he was captured by the Germans near Arras, and in his prison camp organized a small orchestra whose entire repertoire he arranged or composed. This early practical approach to music was to remain a hallmark, and his music is always eminently 'playable'. After the war, having decided against a career in journalism, he entered the Royal College of Music, where he studied composition with Stanford, Howells, and Vaughn Williams, conducting with Boult, and piano with Thalben Ball. The William Byrd Suite for military band, published in 1923, was the first of his many successful works for almost every conceivable combination of instruments to be published. His output includes concerti written especially for such celebrated performers as Dennis Brain, Leon Goossens, Archie Camden, Frederick Grinke, Florence Hooton, Bernard Shore, Gareth Morris, Frederick Thurston, Evelyn Rothwell, Carl Dolmetsch, Edith Vogel, Iris Loveridge, Denis Wick, and William Waterhouse. Two of his books, Orchestral Technique and How to Read a Score, are still much used and highly valued by students throughout the English-speaking world.