John Hamilton Warrack (born 1928, in London) is an English

music critic ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' defines music criticism as "the intellectual activity of formulating judgments on the value and degree of excellence of individual works of music, or whole groups or genres". In this sense, it is a branch of mus ...

, writer on music, and

oboist An oboist (formerly hautboist) is a musician who plays the oboe or any oboe family instrument, including the oboe d'amore, cor anglais or English horn, bass oboe and piccolo oboe or oboe musette. The following is a list of notable past and pres ...

. Warrack is the son of Scottish conductor and composer

Guy Warrack Guy Douglas Hamilton Warrack (6 February 1900 – 12 February 1986) was a Scottish composer, music educator and conductor. He was the son of John Warrack of the Leith steamship company, John Warrack & Co., founded by Guy's grandfather, also c ...

. He was educated at

Winchester College Winchester College is a public school (fee-charging independent day and boarding school) in Winchester, Hampshire, England. It was founded by William of Wykeham in 1382 and has existed in its present location ever since. It is the oldest of the ...

(1941-6) and then at the

Royal College of Music The Royal College of Music is a music school, conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, UK. It offers training from the Undergraduate education, undergraduate to the Doctorate, doctoral level in a ...

(1949–52).Encyclopedia.com
/ref> In the early 1950s he was a freelance oboist, playing mostly with the

Boyd Neel Louis Boyd Neel O.C. (19 July 190530 September 1981) was an English, and later Canadian conductor and academic. He was Dean of the Royal Conservatory of Music at the University of Toronto. Neel founded and conducted chamber orchestras, and cont ...

Orchestra and

Sadler's Wells Sadler's Wells Theatre is a performing arts venue in Clerkenwell, London, England located on Rosebery Avenue next to New River Head. The present-day theatre is the sixth on the site since 1683. It consists of two performance spaces: a 1,500-sea ...

Orchestra. From 1954 until 1961 he was music critic for ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was fo ...

'', and from 1961 until 1972 he was music critic for ''

The Sunday Telegraph ''The Sunday Telegraph'' is a British broadsheet newspaper, founded in February 1961 and published by the Telegraph Media Group, a division of Press Holdings. It is the sister paper of ''The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', kn ...

''. From 1978 until 1983 he served as the Artistic Director of the

Leeds Festival The Reading and Leeds Festivals are a pair of annual music festivals that take place in Reading and Leeds in England. The events take place simultaneously on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday of the August bank holiday weekend. The Reading Festiv ...

. From 1984 until 1993 he taught on the music faculty at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

. He is the author of ''Six Great Composers'' (1955); ''Carl Maria von Weber'' (

Hamish Hamilton Hamish Hamilton Limited was a British book publishing house, founded in 1931 eponymously by the half-Scot half-American Jamie Hamilton (''Hamish'' is the vocative form of the Gaelic Seumas eaning James ''James'' the English form – which was ...

, 1968, 2nd ed. Cambridge UP, 1976), the standard study of Weber in English; ''

German Opera Opera in German is that of the German-speaking countries, which include Germany, Austria, and the historic German states that pre-date those countries. German-language opera appeared remarkably quickly after the birth of opera itself in Italy. T ...

: From the Beginnings to Wagner'' (2001) and the co-author of ''The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera'' (1964, with

Harold Rosenthal Harold David Rosenthal OBE (30 September 1917 – 19 March 1987) was an English music critic, writer, lecturer, and broadcaster about opera. Originally a schoolmaster, he became drawn to music, particularly opera, and began working on musical ...

) and ''The Oxford Dictionary of Opera'' (1992, with Ewan West). Warrack lives in

Helmsley Helmsley is a market town and civil parish in the Ryedale district of North Yorkshire, England. Historically part of the North Riding of Yorkshire, the town is located at the point where Ryedale leaves the moorland and joins the flat Vale of Pi ...

, North Yorkshire. He is the father of the stonemason

Simon Warrack Simon may refer to: People * Simon (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the given name Simon * Simon (surname), including a list of people with the surname Simon * Eugène Simon, French naturalist and the genus ...

.BBC Radio 3 Private Passions, 20 Nov 2022; ''Radio Times'' 19-25 NOV 2022 P. 122

References

1928 births Living people English music critics 20th-century English non-fiction writers English male journalists The Daily Telegraph people Academics of the University of Oxford Journalists from London Tchaikovsky scholars {{UK-journalist-stub