Sir David Willcocks

Died September 17, 2015

Sir David Willcocks, who has died aged 95, was the doyen of British chorusmasters, whose career with the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, the London Bach Choir and the Royal College of Music formed an exemplary musical trajectory, preceded by a distinguished war record when he entertained the troops during the invasion of Normandy by playing music and setting up jovial singalongs wherever he could find an undamaged piano. His favourite stunt, he said later, was to turn his back to the keyboard and play jazz with his arms behind him.

As a captain in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, he was also involved in sterner matters, such as an attempt to capture a strategically important hill, heavily defended by German panzers. When his commanding officer and many other men were killed in the conflict, Willcocks found himself in temporary charge of his battalion.

As an intelligence officer he was also responsible for the transmitting of vital information about enemy counter-attacks. For all this he received the Military Cross, presented to him by Field Marshal Montgomery.

After the war, his 17 years with the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, were just as meticulously carried out, and presided over by him with thoroughly military discipline (he had actually contemplated remaining in the army).

The exquisite purity of tone he drew from his choirboys was rightly admired, but rigorously achieved. If a boy was caught yawning more than once during a rehearsal, he was ordered to place his head beneath a cold tap. Fluffs and moments of forgetfulness had to be apologised for afterwards.

But the experience humiliated nobody, or so it is said. Sir David was renowned for his sense of humour, and he invented distorted musical scales with which to captivate his choristers.

Taking part in the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, poignantly and jubilantly broadcast annually on Christmas Eve with a wondrous array of decorative treble descants, became a major achievement in every choirboy's life, and some of these boys (including, famously, the future tenor Robert Tear, who would appear frequently as a soloist at the Edinburgh Festival) would go on to have outstanding musical careers in adulthood.

To attend a performance at King's College as a member of the audience was an event and a privilege. As a critic, I did so only once, in 1964, when Britten's War Requiem was receiving its first big spread of performances after its Coventry premiere. Alexander Gibson conducted it in Scotland, John Pritchard in Leeds, Bernard Haitink in Holland. And Sir David did it in Cambridge.

The dark, rich atmosphere of the performance, though the sightlines and acoustics of King's College Chapel had their shortcomings, remains vividly in the memory.

For those without the luck to experience a live Willcocks performance in Cambridge, he produced a pair of treasurable books of Carols for Choirs and made widespread appearances outside Cambridge itself. With Aldeburgh not far away he developed his association with Britten's music. As director of the Three Choirs Festival in the West of England (where as a boy he had met Elgar) he conducted major works by Vaughan Williams in the composer's presence.

Eventually, when he was invited to become director of the Royal College of Music in London, he characteristically set about a root and branch reorganisation of its aims and syllabus.

With the big Bach Choir, he broke new ground by recording Bach's St Matthew Passion for the first time in English and, more controversially, joining Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones in a recording of You Can't Always Get What You Want. Under his aegis, the choir also appeared at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana at St Paul's Cathedral in 1981.

Born at Newquay in Cornwall, Sir David was the third and youngest son of Theophilius Willcocks, a singing bank manager. As a child he played the cello and piano and was a chorister at Westminster Abbey for four years. In 1934 he won a musical scholarship to Clifton College, Bristol, and by 1939 had become organ scholar at King's College, Cambridge.

In 1947 he married Rachel Gordon Blyth, a clergyman's daughter whom he met while conducting a Cambridge performance of the St Matthew Passion. She survives him, along with three of their four children.

CONRAD WILSON