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.
Early life and education in Newcastle
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 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 practice on the cello and the violin.
Choir work on Tyneside
Whittaker conducted several choirs on Tyneside, working with the Newcastle Choral Union, Newcastle Bach Choir, the Whitley Bay Choral Society, the Tynemouth Choral Society and the Gateshead Choral Union. With these ensembles, he achieved excellent results. He also knew many composers of the period, with Gustav Holst amongst his friends; and he met Maurice Ravel on a visit to Newcastle, during which Ravel accompanied his newly composed song cycle Histoires Naturelles and attended a rehearsal of his own string quartet. He was friendly with Edgar Bainton (who arrived in Newcastle in 1901) and Alfred Wall. Whittaker's mentor Charles Sanford Terry, who was at the University of Durham before taking up a post at the University of Aberdeen, encouraged Whittaker's enthusiasm for J.S. Bach, particularly his choral music. Whittaker performed all of Bach's cantatas during his career.
He founded the Newcastle Bach Choir in 1915, based in Newcastle Cathedral. One of the members of the choir, Basil Bunting, recalled that he was "not only learned but also showed [a] great sense of music and art in general". With the Newcastle Bach Choir, he made a concert tour to London and participated in a three-day festival in 1922. He performed the first complete version of the Great English Service of William Byrd in Newcastle upon Tyne, and performed it again at St. Margaret's Church in Westminster in 1924. From 1925 onwards he served on three musical advisory committees of the BBC.
Appointment in Glasgow
In 1929, finding musical opportunities in the North East of England too restrictive, Whittaker moved to Glasgow, where he took up a newly endowed joint position as Principal of the Scottish National Academy of Music (RSAMD) (1929–1941) and Gardiner Professor of Music at the University of Glasgow (1929–1941). In making the move, Whittaker left his wife Clara, who subsequently moved to London to join their daughter Mary. Whittaker himself was accompanied North of the border by his former student Annie Lawton, with whom he set up house. Once installed in Scotland, he received an honorary degree from the University of Glasgow and an honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh, where his friend Donald Tovey was professor of music.