Arthur Wills (musician)

Arthur William Wills OBE (19 September 1926 – 30 October 2020) was an English musician, composer and professor, born in Coventry. He was director of music at Ely Cathedral from 1958 to 1990 and also held a professorship at the Royal Academy of Music in London from 1964 until 1992. He toured extensively as a recitalist in Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. He also broadcast, appeared on television and made many recordings, both as a soloist and with Ely Cathedral Choir. Works Wills composed prolifically for the organ and choir. His ensemble works include a concerto with strings and timpani, a concerto for guitar and organ and a symphonic suite, entitled “The Fenlands”, for brass band and organ. His choral concerto, “The Gods of Music”, for organ, chorus and brass with percussion ensemble was commissioned for the biannual keyboard festival of the University of Newcastle in New South Wales, Australia, in 1992. Wills’s secular music includes seven song cycles, and an opera, Winston and Julia, based on the George Orwell novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. His book Organ appeared in the Menuhin Music Guide Series in 1984, with a second edition in 1993 and a third reprin