His father, twice mayor of Northwich, was a clerk at Brunner Mond Chemical works in Winsford; his mother, Annie née Marshall, was a nurse.
Staying a fourth year in Cambridge, taking up the Stuart of Rannoch Scholarship, he was awarded the William Barclay Squire Prize for music paleography.
After that, Young became Director of Music at Wolverhampton College of Technology, a position he would occupy from 1944 to 1966, after which he became an independent scholar, prolific author, music-arranger / -editor and enthusiastic lecturer, broadcaster, adjudicator and examiner.
Also, for younger readers, he wrote a series of ten titles on composers Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Dvořák, Debussy, Stravinsky, and Britten.
After the death of his first wife, Netta Carson, Young married Renée Morris in 1969, who survives him, along with three sons and a daughter of his first marriage.