John Hamilton Warrack (born 9 February 1928) 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 m ...

, 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 ...

Career

Born in London, Warrack is the son of Scottish conductor and composer Guy Warrack and Jacynth Mary Ellerton. He was educated at

Winchester College Winchester College is an English Public school (United Kingdom), public school (a long-established fee-charging boarding school for pupils aged 13–18) with some provision for day school, day attendees, in Winchester, Hampshire, England. It wa ...

(1941–1946) and the

Royal College of Music The Royal College of Music (RCM) is a conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, UK. It offers training from the undergraduate to the doctoral level in all aspects of Western Music including pe ...

(1949–1952).Encyclopedia.com
/ref> In the early 1950s he was a freelance oboist, playing mostly with the Boyd Neel Orchestra and Sadler's Wells 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 British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was found ...

'', and from 1961 until 1972 for ''

The Sunday Telegraph ''The Sunday Telegraph'' is a British broadsheet newspaper, first published on 5 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 Tele ...

''. 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, Berkshire, Reading and Leeds in England. The events take place simultaneously on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday of the August bank holiday weekend ...

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

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

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

Hamish Hamilton Hamish Hamilton Limited is a publishing imprint and originally a British 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 ''Jame ...

, 1968, 2nd ed. Cambridge UP, 1976), the standard study of Weber in English; '' German Opera: From the Beginnings to Wagner'' (2001) and the co-author of ''The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera'' (1964, with Harold Rosenthal) and ''The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera'' (1992, with Ewan West). Warrack lives in

Helmsley Helmsley is a market town and civil parish in 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 Pickering. Helmsley is ...

, North Yorkshire. He is the father of the stonemason Simon Warrack.BBC Radio 3 Private Passions, 20 Nov 2022; ''Radio Times'' 19–25 Nov 2022, p. 122

References

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