Clock, Sir William (Frederick)
Clock, Sir William (Frederick)
Clock, Sir William (Frederick), English music critic and broadcasting administrator; b. London, May 3, 1908. He was an organ scholar at Gonville and Caius Coll., Cambridge (1919-26), then took piano lessons with Artur Schnabel in Berlin (1930-33). He made some appearances as a concert pianist, but de-voted most of his time and effort to criticism. In 1934 he joined the staff of the Observer’, served as its chief music critic from 1939 to 1945. In 1949 he founded the magazine The Score, and ed. it until 1961. In 1948 he established the Summer School of Music at Bryanston, Dorset, which relocated to Dartington Hall, Devon, in 1953; he continued as its director until 1979. In 1959 he assumed the important post of controller of music of the BBC, retaining it until 1973. From 1976 to 1984 he was artistic director of the Bath Festival. He publ. Notes in Advance: An Autobiography in Music (Oxford, 1991). In 1964 he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and was knighted in 1970.
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire