A correspondent writes:
GARRY HUMPHREYS, a music and arts reviewer for the Church Times since 2006, has died, aged 79.
Garry was born in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, and was adopted at birth. In the 1990s, he sought out his birth mother, a Welsh nursing WAAF in the Second World War. She had died, but he met his half-sister, with whom he remained in contact. In 2022, DNA testing unexpectedly uncovered the identity of his birth father, a Scotsman who was serving in the RAF as ground crew in the Second World War. This enabled Garry to discover three more half-siblings, all living in Australia.
In the mid-1960s, he toyed with the idea of ordination, but, on reflection that he was unsuitable, he attended library school at the North Western Polytechnic. He was a librarian for 39 years — 34 of these a business librarian — but his main passion was music, and he had a second career as a professional baritone which his library career helped him to sustain.
He started singing in a church choir at the age of eight. This gave him a taste for church music and the accompanying ceremonial, partly thanks to his friendship with Norman Silcock, a blind organist and composer. As an adult, he sang at, among others, St George’s, Hanover Square, the Temple Church, St Vedast’s, Foster Lane, and Southwark Cathedral; he was also a deputy lay clerk at St Paul’s Cathedral. He later sang at Christ Church, Southgate, in north London. He attended Royal School of Church Music courses at Addington Palace from the 1960s, and was a member of the Church Music Society.
Garry studied singing with Norman Platt, Nigel Rogers, and, principally, John Carol Case, who became a lifelong friend. He appeared as a soloist and member of professional and semi-professional ensembles, including the Tilford Bach Festival Choir, the Hampstead Choral Society, the Exultate Singers, the Thomas Tallis Society, and the Bath Bach Choir. Not limited to music, he also performed words-and-music anthology entertainments with the Hardwick Players, alongside Richard Pasco, Barbara Leigh Hunt, Nicholas Parsons, and others, and also with Voice and Verse.
He had a fine speaking voice, and was a narrator and presenter, frequently giving presentations on behalf of the London branch of the Elgar Society, of which he was a founder-member. In 1986, on the centenary of the birth of Eric Coates, he gave a presentation, “The Man who writes Tunes”, in Hucknall, for which the actor Robin Bailey voiced Coates. Hucknall was the home town of the three of them.
Garry’s dedication to the promotion and revival of English song remained a constant in his life. He was chairman of the English Song Award, secretary of the Association of English Singers and Speakers (1988-95), and joint editor, with Michael Pilkington, of A Century of English Song, a series aiming to make available in practical performing editions distinctive British songs of the last hundred years. His song recitals with the pianist Patricia Williams also revived much unjustifiably forgotten English song. He continued to give lectures and lecture recitals to music societies, and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and of the Guild of Musicians and Singers, as well as an Emeritus Member of the Incorporated Society of Musicians.
Garry studied conducting with Bryan Fairfax in 1980, and this led to, among other things, his becoming a guest conductor (2002-03) for the Broadheath Singers, which specialised in neglected English music. He was greatly influenced by the economical conducting style of Sir Adrian Boult, with whom he had corresponded since he was a schoolboy and met on several occasions, and of Vernon “Tod” Handley, who was a pupil of Boult. Garry had his batons, which were long and weighted at the bulb, especially made in the same style as Boult’s.
Later in life, he concentrated on writing concert-programme and CD-liner notes, alongside regular arts and music reviews for the Church Times and elsewhere. For 12 years, until it became wholly digital, he wrote obituaries, mostly musical, for the Independent. His knowledge of classical music and composers was prodigious, and he was constantly researching, often sharing his knowledge generously with others. In particular, he had a long-term dedication to researching, writing about, and promoting interest in the life and music of the English composer Arthur Somervell, and considered this research his life’s work.
As a librarian, he began at Nottingham Commercial and Technical Library, but soon moved to the Guildhall Library and then the City Business Library, which gained both national and international reputation. He was valued for his “wisdom” by fellow professionals, and his dry, quiet sense of humour and fun “enlivened” meetings. In 1998, he was presented by the Princess Royal with the Library Association Royal Charter Centenary Medal, awarded for “outstanding contribution to and achievement in library work”. He took early retirement at the end of 2003.
His interests were wide ranging. In the 1980s, he took a radio-production course at Morley College, and became a DJ for University College Hospital Radio. Other interests included printing, heritage, architecture, academic dress, campaigning, current affairs, and walking.
Garry Paul Humphreys died on 7 May. He leaves his wife, Linda Fullick, and daughter, Rhiannon.
