William Henry Hadow
Sir William Henry Hadow (27 December 1859 – 8 April 1937) British educational reformer, musicologist and composer. He edited many volumes of the original Oxford History of Music series.
Also recorded as W. H. Hadow · Sir William Henry Hadow
William Henry Hadow
- Name
- William Henry Hadow
- Born
- 27 December 1859
- Birthplace
- Ebrington, England
- Died
- 8 April 1937
- Occupation
- * Educationalist
- Nationality
- United Kingdom · United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
- Education
- Worcester College · Malvern College
- Honours
- Commander of the Order of the British Empire · Knight Bachelor
- Languages
- English
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Documentary summary
Sir William Henry Hadow (27 December 1859 – 8 April 1937) British educational reformer, musicologist and composer. He edited many volumes of the original Oxford History of Music series.
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William Henry Hadow (1859–1937) was a composer and musicologist, of British and British nationality. The composer was born in Ebrington and died in London.
William Henry Hadow was educated at Malvern College and Worcester College. The composer worked for Durham University and University of Sheffield and held the positions of vice-chancellor of Durham University and vice-chancellor of the University of Sheffield.
Languages used include English. Honours include Commander of the Order of the British Empire and Knight Bachelor.
Composed from admitted, traceable facts · 28 September 2026
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In this article
Biography
Biography
William Henry Hadow studied at Worcester College and Malvern College. The recorded working language is English. Employment is recorded with University of Sheffield and Durham University. Positions recorded include vice-chancellor of the University of Sheffield and vice-chancellor of Durham University. Distinctions recorded are Commander of the Order of the British Empire and Knight Bachelor.
Key facts
Key facts
• Honorific Prefix — Sir • Name — William Henry Hadow • Office — Vice-Chancellor of Durham University • Term Start — 1916 • Term End — 1918 • Predecessor — Henry Gee • Successor — John Stapylton Grey Pemberton • Office2 — Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield • Term Start2 — 1919 • Term End2 — 1930 • Predecessor2 — William Ripper • Successor2 — Arthur Wallace Pickard-Cambridge • Born — 27 December 1859 • Birthplace — Ebrington, England • Died — 8 April 1937 • Alma Mater — Worcester College, Oxford • Occupation — * Educationalist • musicologist
Life
Life
Born at Ebrington in Gloucestershire and baptised there on 29 January 1860 by his father, he was the eldest child of the Reverend William Elliot Hadow (1826–1906) and his wife Mary Lang Cornish (1835–1917). His grandfather, the Reverend William Thomas Hadow, had married Eleanor Ann Bethune, daughter of Colonel John Drinkwater Bethune. He studied at Malvern College, followed by Worcester College, Oxford, where he taught and became Dean (1889). In 1905, Hadow was elected the first Old Malvernian member of the Council of Malvern College. In 1909, he was appointed principal of Armstrong College in the Newcastle Division of Durham University before succeeding, as Warden and vice-chancellor of the University of Durham in 1916. In 1919, he was appointed the Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield University (1919–30). As chairman of several committees, he published a series of reports on education, notably The Education of the Adolescent (1926). This called for the re-organization of elementary education and the abandonment of all-age schools (i.e. separate schools from the age of 11, instead of the existing schools, both state and voluntary (i.e. associated with a particular religious denomination), which often educated children up to the age of 14, the school leaving age under the Education Act 1918), and the creation of secondary modern schools for children over the age of 11. These became known as the Hadow Reports. He was a leading influence in English education at all levels in the 1920s and 1930s. He chaired a committee, established in 1926 jointly by the British Broadcasting Company (later BBC) and the British Institute of Adult Education, to report on the possibilities of using radio broadcasting for education. The results were published as a book, "New Ventures in Broadcasting - A Study in Adult Education". Hadow wrote and edited a number of publications on literature, music and music theory. He took on the general editorship of the original six-volume edition of the Oxford History of Music between 1901 and 1905, writing the fifth volume (covering the period from C.P.E. Bach to Schubert) himself. With his younger sister Grace Hadow he edited The Oxford Treasury of English Literature (1907–8). He was also a composer, mostly of chamber-works between 1892 and 1897. Many of these have now been lost (including the 1889 Violin Sonata in Ab, the Piano Trio in G minor and the Violin Sonata in A minor), but two were published: his Piano Sonata in G-sharp minor by Augener in 1885, and his String Quartet by Novello in 1886. Manuscript copies of the Violin Sonata in F major (1891) and his last chamber work, the Clarinet Sonata of 1897, have survived. Some songs and incidental music followed the Clarinet Sonata, but nothing after 1912. In 1917 he delivered the Master-Mind Lecture, on Beethoven. Hadow was awarded a Knight Bachelor in 1918 and a CBE in 1920. He was also a Member of the Council of the Royal College of Music • Illustration — Hadow's grave in Brookwood Cemetery in 2018 In 1930 in London, when he was 70 years old, he married a long-standing friend, Edith Troutbeck (1863-1937), daughter of the musicologist and translator John Troutbeck. She died a few weeks before his own death in Westminster, London. They are buried in Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey.
Places
Named by the record
Places
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Ebrington.
Birth place
London.
Death place
Publications
• Studies in Modern Music (Berlioz, Schumann and Wagner)(1893) Seeley and Co. Limited, London • Studies in Modern Music Second Series (Chopin, Dvorak and Brahms) (1895) Seeley and Co. Limited, London • Sonata Form (1896) Novello, Ewer & Co • A Croatian Composer. Notes toward the Study of Joseph Haydn (1897) Seeley and Co. Limited, London • The Oxford History of Music, Volume 5: The Viennese Period (1904) • William Byrd 1623-1923 (1920) Humphrey Milford, London • Citizenship (1923) Oxford at the Clarendon Press • Music (1925) Williams and Norgate Ltd, England • A Comparison of Poetry and Music (1926) Cambridge University Press • The Education of the Adolescent (1926) • Beethoven's Opus Eighteen Quartets (1927) • Collected Essays (1928) Oxford University Press (ed. Hubert Foss) • English Music (1931) Longmans Green & Co, London
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Gloucestershire Archives, Gloucester, England, Reference Number:GDR/V1/471 Bishop's Transcript of the baptismal register of Ebrington http://www/ancestry.co.uk/ (subscription required) Retrieved 11 November 2015
- 2.John Burke A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland Enjoying Territorial Possessions Or High Official Rank But Uninvested with Heritable Honours, Colburn, 1836, volume 3, p381 https://books.google.com/ Retrieved 11 November 2015
- 3.The Malvern Register (1865-1904), 1905
- 4.W.H. Hadow's Visit. The New York Times. 15 August 1903.
- 5.The Council, The Malvern Register (1865-1904), 1904
- 6.BBC. BBC Hand Book 1929. 42–45. May 2026.
- 7.The New Oxford History of Music.
- 8.Hadow, G. E. Oxford Treasury of English Literature. Clarendon Press. 3 vols. 1907–1908.
- 9.String Quartet in E♭ major, IMSLP
- 10.Simmons, Jennifer R. So Deft a Builder: an account of the life and work of Sir Henry Hadow, University of Sheffield thesis, 1978
- 11.Hadow, W. H. Beethoven. Proceedings of the British Academy. 8. 135–156. 1917.
- 12.New Year Honours. The Official Lists., New Peers And Baronets., Long Roll of Soldiers. (transcription). The Times. 41675. 8; col B. 1 January 1918.
- 13.Shera, F. H. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. May 2006. 10.1093/ref:odnb/33631.
- 14.Lloyd, Stephen (ed.). Music in Their Time: The Memoirs and Letters of Dora and Hubert Foss (2019), p 51–58
- 15.Sonata Form, at IMSLP
- 16.A Croatian Composer. Notes toward the Study of Joseph Haydn
- 17.The Proprietors. Review of The Oxford History of Music. Volume V. The Viennese Period by W. H. Hadow. The Oxford Magazine. 23. 145–146. January 25, 1905.
- 18.Citizenship
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The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 19 August 2026.
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