William Charles Cole, L.V.O., D.Mus., F.R.C.O.

`Bill' Cole, the son of an organist, was born on 9 October 1909 in Camberwell and educated at St Olave's Grammar School and the Royal Academy of Music. His appointment in 1930 as organist at St Martin's Church, Dorking and music master at Dorking County School a year later, led to his conducting local choirs at the neighbouring Leith Hill Musical Festival, founded by Ralph Vaughan Williams and still dominated by him. The two became close friends and Vaughan Williams played the organ at Cole’s first marriage in 1933. The war years were spent at the Air Ministry, though he continued his choral conducting in his spare time, and in 1945 he succeeded to the Chair of Harmony and Composition at the Royal Academy of Music where he remained until 1962 while directing the People's Palace Choral Society from 1947-63 and succeeding Vaughan Williams as conductor of the Leith Hill Festival in 1954. By this time, Cole was an authority on the composer's music, having worked with him since pre-war days and been his assistant since 1947 - conducting the works that were not to Vaughan Williams' liking - and for the next twenty-three years the Festival went from strength to strength under Cole's leadership. He will, however, be best remembered in musical circles for his work as Master of the Music at the Queen's Chapel of the Savoy from 1954-94; during forty years of sustained work he trained superb choirs and composed many fine pieces for them, including settings of the Te Deum and the Lord's Prayer. As a teacher and administrator he served as Secretary of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music from 1962-74, supervising the publication of its performing editions; he was chairman of the Central Music Library Council, 1973-93; president of the Royal College of Organists, 1970-2; Surrey County Music Association, 1951-62 and of the London Association of Organists, 1963-6; a member of the governing board of the Royal Choral Society, 1972-92; executive committee of the Musicians' Benevolent Fund 1972-93 and honorary secretary of the Royal Philharmonic Society 1969-80. Perhaps surprisingly for a specialist in choral music, Cole spent forty years between 1948-88 in the service of the Royal Academy of Dancing, ranging from lecturer to member of the Grand Council. Outside music, Cole's great interest was in stained glass, of which he built up a rare and valuable collection, and it was chiefly for his research in this field that he was elected F.S.A. in 1979. He began to publish papers in learned journals in 1975, became an active member of the Worshipful Company of Glaziers and Painters of Glass and thirty years of studying roundels and their related sources came to fruition in 1993 with the publication through the British Academy's Corpus Vitrearum of A Catalogue of Netherlandish and North European Roundels in Britain. It was a formidable undertaking and an original publication, all the more remarkable for being written by a professional musician who quoted stained glass as his `recreation' in Who's Who. Cole died on 9 May 1997 and at his memorial service in Southwark Cathedral the organist was his grandson, Charles Cole, the anthems were sung by the choir of the Queen's Chapel of the Savoy and the lessons read by a chorister and a gentleman of the choir.