Wilfrid Holland

Who was Wilfrid Holland?

Wilfrid Holland was a British born composer, choral and orchestral conductor, pianist and teacher who spent the last 45 years of his life based In Canberra, Australia.

Born in Hull, England, his serious musical education started at the Royal School of Church Music in 1938. In 1946 he was appointed organist at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he studied composition and musicology. From 1950 he taught at Dover College in Kent and for ten years was a leading musician in that town, directing the Dover Choral and Orchestral Societies and the Dover Singers.

In 1960 he settled in Canberra as Director of Music at the Canberra Grammar School. The following year he was appointed musical director of the Canberra Choral Society, conducting over forty choral and orchestral concerts during the ensuing ten years. As a conductor, Holland was also responsible for helping develop the Canberra Orchestral Society, which would later become the Canberra Symphony Orchestra. In 1971 he retired from this field to concentrate on the interpretation and composing of chamber music suitable for The Winter Singers, a mixed choir which he had founded in 1963 with his wife Carol.