Arthur Hutchings

[1] Born in Sunbury-on-Thames, Hutchings had no formal musical education but played piano and violin to a high standard and sang as a chorister.

While training as a teacher in London he made some key musical friendships during the 1930s: with Constant Lambert, Cecil Gray, Sorabji, Cyril Rootham (who offered advice on orchestration in 1938, the last year of his life) and Edmund Rubbra (who dedicated his Third Symphony to Hutchings in 1939).

He wrote extensively on topics as varied as nineteenth-century English liturgical composition, Schubert, Purcell, Edmund Rubbra, and baroque concertos.

Kingsley Amis listed it as one of the "vital book" on the single shelf in his study, and later provided a foreword to Mozart – Man and Musician (1976).

He mostly wrote Anglican church music, including a Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis in B minor (1934), a Communion Service on Russian Themes, and various anthems, as well as organ music (the four Seasonal Preludes of 1984, each based on a popular hymn tune), and a large scale choral work, O quanta qualia, for double chorus, brass band and orchestra.