Wilson , John Whitridge , 1905-1992 , Director of Music at Charterhouse

John Whitridge Wilson was born 21 Jan 1905; educated at Manchester Grammar School and Dulwich College; read Natural Science at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge; joined staff of Repton School; left to study piano and organ at Royal College of Music; appointed Assistant Director of Music, Tonbridge School, 1929; appointed Assistant Director of Music, Charterhouse, 1932, and Director, 1947-1965; taught keyboard and score reading, RCM, 1962-1980; resumed Sixth Form teaching, Charterhouse, 1980; died 16 Jul 1992. Hymns for Church and School was published by Novello & Co in 1964. It was the retitled fourth edition of the Public School Hymn Book (PSHB), first published by Novello in 1903. Each edition was edited by a committee of the Headmasters' Conference, established in 1869, and including heads of all the major public schools and others eligible for representation. The 1903 publication comprised some 349 hymns and included hymns by contemporary schoolmaster-composers. A Companion to the Public School Hymn Book by Dr W M Furneaux, Dean of Winchester, was published in 1904, giving biographical details of the authors and indicating the sources of the hymns. A second edition of PSHB appeared in 1919. The volume had increased to 426 hymns and many of those which had appeared in 1903 were excised. Work on a third edition started in 1937 but was interrupted by the war, and it was not published until 1949. Craig Sellar Lang and Ralph Vaughan Williams had collaborated on editing this edition, and which had a supplementary revision in 1958. Some 100 hymns of the 1919 edition were rejected, and 250 new hymns added in their place, to give some 554 hymns and 484 tunes grouped according to seasons and purposes. In 1960, following publication of an article by John Wilson on the 1949 edition in The Hymn Society Bulletin, it was decided to appoint Wilson as Organising Secretary of a Committee of the Headmasters' Conference responsible for publishing a new edition. This contained 346 hymns (with 20 new additions) and 389 tunes, including 23 newly written by among others Sir William Harris, Herbert Howells and John Gardner. The Methodist Hymns and Songs was edited by Wilson and published by the Methodist Publishing House in 1969, as a popular supplement to the 1933 Methodist Hymn Book.