Subsequently, he resumed organ and singing lessons, obtaining performing and teaching qualifications from the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music; and, from 1898, he commenced studies in musicology at the University of Durham.

After graduating he continued at Armstrong College; he had successive appointments as instructor, lecturer and reader in music; and he embarked on a doctorate in 1902, submitting a dissertation in 1909, although he had to wait until 1921 for the degree to be awarded.

In 1903 Whittaker married Clara Watkins, an amateur musician from Gateshead and the daughter of a South Shields ship owner.

One of the members of the choir, Basil Bunting, recalled that he was "not only learned but also showed [a] great sense of music and art in general".

Tovey, a member of the governing board of the Academy, wrote to Whittaker that he hoped the award might be "of some slight value for strengthening your hand for a task that you cannot execute without overcoming some opposition."

He was frustrated that his attempts to improve matters were constantly opposed by governors during his tenure as Principal: it was "a heart-breaking struggle against impossible odds.

[2][4][1] Whittaker had briefly resigned from the Academy in 1938, when, on returning from a trip to Sweden, he discovered that the governors had reversed some of his decisions during his absence.

Despite ill health, he agreed to join ENSA, under the leadership of Walter Legge and Basil Dean, to help in the running of wartime classical music events.

On a trip to act as judge at a Services Festival in the Orkney Islands in July 1944, he died of heart failure in his sleep.

Whittaker's book on the subject was published posthumously by Oxford University Press in 1959 in two volumes, which Harold Thompson prepared for publication from a typed draft.

[4] Among his works are A Lyke-Wake Dirge for chorus and orchestra (1925), and Among the Northumbrian Hills, free variations on an original theme for piano and string quartet (1922), both of which were published as part of the Carnegie Collection of British Music.