Arthur James Bramwell Hutchings (14 July 1906 – 13 November 1989) was an English musicologist, composer and professor of music.^[1]

Born inSunbury-on-Thames, Hutchings had no formal musical education but played piano and violin to a high standard and sang as a chorister.^[2] He taught, performed and composed, and was appointed organist at All Saints Church,East Sheen in 1929. While training as a teacher in London he made some key musical friendships during the 1930s: withConstant Lambert,Cecil Gray,Sorabji,Cyril Rootham (who offered advice on orchestration in 1938, the last year of his life) andEdmund Rubbra (who dedicated his Third Symphony to Hutchings in 1939).^[3]

In 1938 Hutchings became music master atSouthend High School for Boys, where one of his pupils wasBernard Stevens. He wrote the school song in 1939, and in 1941 married the school secretary, Marie Constance Haverson. During this period he conducted the Southend String Orchestra.^[3] When war was declared he acted as an entertainment officer in the UK, before a period serving with theRoyal Air Force in India.^[4] While in India he took a keen interest in the local music.^[5]

After completing his war service in 1947 Hutchings was appointed as the first resident professor of music atDurham University^[6] where in 1953 he completed a thesis on Mozart's piano concertos for his doctorate. The musicologistsPeter Evans,Donald Mitchell and Eric Roseberry were among his students at Durham.^[7][8][9] Mitchell recalled that he gained a reputation for his eccentricity and unconventional approach while at Durham. "He was exuberantly pro-music and opposed, perhaps not so much to the properly academic as to the paralytic academicism. His appointment...knocked a few holes in windows that had been overlaid by blinkered, unthinking tradition".^[10]

In 1968 he was appointed as the first professor of music at theUniversity of Exeter, retiring three years later, where he lived at 20d Larkshayes,Dalwood, nearAxminster.^[2] He became a widower in 1975, and soon afterwards his only daughter Josephine (born 1944) was killed in a traffic accident.^[4] Towards the end of his life he moved to the village ofColyton. He died in Devon, aged 83.

Under the mentorship ofHarvey Grace, Hutchings began writing articles on musical topics for theMusical Times and other journals from 1935. He wrote extensively on topics as varied as nineteenth-century English liturgical composition,Schubert,Purcell,Edmund Rubbra, and baroque concertos. His most famous book was theCompanion toMozart's Piano Concertos, published in 1948 and often reissued since.Kingsley Amis listed it as one of the "vital book" on the single shelf in his study, and later provided a foreword toMozart – Man and Musician (1976).^[11] Among his other books areThe Invention and Composition of Music andChurch Music in the Nineteenth Century. During the late 1970s his articles on music regularly appeared in the monthly magazineRecords and Recording, as well asMusic & Letters andThe Listener.^[3]

His compositional activities largely ceased once writing and teaching became his major concerns. He mostly wrote Anglican church music, including a Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis in B minor (1934), a Communion Service on Russian Themes, and various anthems, as well as organ music (the fourSeasonal Preludes of 1984, each based on a popular hymn tune), and a large scale choral work,O quanta qualia, for double chorus, brass band and orchestra. Hutchings served for many years as a director of theEnglish Hymnal Company and three of his tunes were included in the 1986New English Hymnal. There were also two comic operas (The Royal Arms in 1949, andMarriage à la Mode, afterDryden) in 1956, a secular cantataHeart's Desire, and a few orchestral works, including a Suite for Strings, an overtureOriana Triumphans andThe Shocking Affair: variations in pastiche style for strings.^[1][12]

• Schubert (Master Musicians series 1945)
• ‘Edmund Rubbra’, inBritish Music of Our Time (Pelican, 1946)
• Delius – a Critical Biography (1948)
• Companion to the Mozart Piano Concertos (1948)
• The Invention and Composition of Music (1958)
• The Baroque Concerto (1961)
• Church Music in the Nineteenth Century (1967)
• 'The Nineteenth Century', inPelican History of Music, Vol. 3 (1968)
• Introduction to Constant Lambert'sMusic Ho! (3rd edition, 1968)
• 'Music in Britain: 1918–1960', inNew Oxford History of Music Vol. 10 (1974), pp. 503–68
• Mozart – Man and Musician (1976, foreword by Kingsley Amis)
• Purcell (BBC Music Guides, 1982)

• Hutchings life and work with audio, documents, photos etc