Percy Buck

Sir Percy Carter Buck (25 March 1871 – 3 October 1947) was an English music educator, writer, organist, and composer.

Early life and education Percy Buck was born in West Ham, London, and studied at Merchant Taylors' School, the Guildhall School of Music under Charles Joseph Frost (1848-1918) and Francis Davenport, and then at Royal College of Music, where his teachers were Walter Parratt, C.H. Lloyd, Hubert Parry and John Arthur St. Oswald Dykes.

Career From 1891 until 1894 he was organ scholar at Worcester College, Oxford, where he became friends with William Henry Hadow, Classics Tutor there at the time, who became the first editor of the Oxford History of Music in 1896. Buck was appointed organist at Wells Cathedral (1896–99), then Bristol Cathedral (1899–1901). He became director of music at Harrow School in 1901 and held that post until 1927. While at Harrow, Buck served on the editorial board of the ten-volume anthology Tudor Church Music. In 1919 Sir Hugh Allen invited him to join the staff of the Royal College of Music, where he set up a teacher's training course, contributing his own lectures on psychology. In 1925, Buck became the King Edward Professor of Music in the University of London.

In 1926 he started the RCM Junior Department with Miss Angela Bull, a "feeder system" for students financed by the London County Council. Several successful students have gone through this program and it continues to this day. From 1927 to 1936, he was music adviser to the London County Council, where he developed new facilities for further training of children with special talent, and where he overhauled the music in the curriculum of schools.

Personal life Buck married, on 9th April 1896 at Christ Church, Broadway, Westminster, Lucy Bond, daughter of the surgeon Thomas Bond. She died in 1940, aged 68. There were three sons (one killed in World War I) and two daughters. From 1917 Warner, who was to pursue a career as a poet and novelist after the publication of her first novel, Lolly Willowes in 1926, also worked as one of the editors of Tudor Church Music.

Percy Buck died at the Stoneycrest Nursing Home, Hindhead, Surrey, after a short illness.

Works Musical compositions Buck's compositions include a piano quintet (Op. 17), a string quintet (Op. 19), a violin sonata (Op. 21), and a piano quartet (Op. 22). These were all unpublished, and many of his early manuscripts were later destroyed in World War II during an air raid. There was also an orchestral overture, Coeur de Lion Op. 18. His Songs of the Holy Child, a collection of nine choral pieces, has been recorded by the Sheldon Consort, along with other anthems and the organ chorale prelude In Dulci Jubilo, performed by David Bednall.

Writings He is possibly best remembered today for his writing and editing. He edited The English Psalter (London, 1925) with Charles Macpherson. The Oxford Song Book of English national and folk songs for schools was issued in 1929, followed by The Oxford Nursery Song Book in 1934. His books include The Scope of Music (1924, derived from the Cramb lectures he delivered in Glasgow the previous year), and Psychology for Musicians (1944), written long before the subject became fashionable in the 1960s.

The Organ: a Complete Method for the Study of Technique and Style (London, 1909) Unfigured Harmony (Oxford, 1911) Organ Playing (London, 1912) The First Year at the Organ (London, 1913) Acoustics for Musicians (Oxford, 1918) The Scope of Music (Oxford, 1924) A History of Music (London, 1929) The Oxford Song Book Volume 1 (1929) The Oxford Nursery Song Book (Oxford, 1933) Psychology for Musicians (London, 1944)