John Sykes (composer)
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John Austin Sykes (1909 – June 1962) was an English composer and music teacher, born in India.
Sykes spent his early life in India, where his father was working for the Indian Civil Service. He attended Clifton College in Bristol, studying organ under its famous one-armed organist Douglas Fox, gaining his FRCO qualification while still a schoolboy.[1]
From 1928 he studied at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was organ scholar while studying Modern History. At Oxford he was president of the Oxford University Opera Club. A contemporary there was the poet Randall Swingler, with whom Sykes shared left-wing sympathies. (Auden, Spender, and Day Lewis were also contemporaries). In 1932 he joined The Royal College of Music, studying composition under Vaughan Williams and Gordon Jacob, with piano as a second study.[2]
In 1936 Sykes was appointed to the staff of the Methodist Kingswood School, Bath, where he remained for the rest of his life. A pupil of his at Kingswood before the war was the left-wing historian E. P. Thompson. During the war Sykes was a conscientious objector and served in the Pioneer Corps. From 1952 he became Director of Music at Kingswood. The school now holds the John Sykes Archive.[3]
Sykes died from cancer in the school sanatorium in June 1962.