His ancestors included the 18th Century Scottish fiddler Niel Gow and his son Nathaniel (a connection he acknowledged in his Six Diversions on an Ancestral Theme).
[2] He studied at the Royal College of Music with Gordon Jacob and Frank Merrick, where he gained his first recognition as a composer, winning the Clements Prize with his Clarinet Quintet (1945).
[1] After a period teaching further education evening classes in London, Gow was appointed music lecturer at Swindon Technical College in 1962.
[3] Gow described the style of his music as "serialism tempered by tonality", but he was always careful not to make unreasonable demands on performers.
[9][10] Orchestral works include a nine minute long Mini Symphony written for the Hounslow Youth Orchestra in 1968, the Overture One-Two-Five (1978) commissioned by British Rail and used as the soundtrack for a short documentary film produced by British Transport Films,[11] and the Symphony No 3 Wessex Heights, written in 1990 to commemorate 150 years since the birth of Thomas Hardy.