Gordon Jacob

Gordon Percival Septimus Jacob CBE (5 July 18958 June 1984) was an English composer and teacher. He was a professor at the Royal College of Music in London from 1924 until his retirement in 1966, and published four books and many articles about music. As a composer he was prolific: the list of his works totals more than 700, mostly compositions of his own, but a substantial minority of orchestrations and arrangements of other composers’ works. Those music he orchestrated range from William Byrd to Edward Elgar to Noël Coward. Life and career Jacob was born in Upper Norwood, London, the seventh son and youngest of ten children of Stephen Jacob, and his wife, Clara Laura, née Forlong. Stephen Jacob, an official of the Indian Civil Service based in Calcutta, died when Gordon was three. One of his older brothers was Archibald Jacob, choral composer, arranger and author of Musical Handwriting (OUP, 1937). Jacob was educated at Dulwich College, and enlisted in the Queen’s Royal Regiment (West Surrey) at the outbreak of the First World War. He was taken POW in 1917 after being one of 60 survivors from a battalion of 800. In the prison camp he studied a harmony textbook in the camp library