William Cole

Who was William Cole?

William Charles Cole FSA LVO, DMus, FSA, FRAM, FRCM, FRCO was an English conductor, composer and organist.

Cole went to Saint Olave's Grammar School, where he in fact almost lost his scholarship there because 'his music was getting in the way of his studies'. He also studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he won the Stewart Macpherson Prize in 1933. 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. 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 there, he directed the People's Palace Choral Society from 1947-63 and succeeded Vaughan Williams as conductor of the Leith Hill Festival in 1954.