Gwyn Arch

Gwyn Arch MBE (4 May 1931 – June 2021) was a British musical arranger, composer, and choir director.^[1]

Gwyn Arch
Born	4 May 1931, 5 April 1931 Southampton
Died	6 June 2021 (aged 90) Sonning Common
Occupation	Composer, choir director
Children	David Arch
Awards	Member of the Order of the British Empire

Early life

Arch was born in Southampton on 4 May 1931, to a Welsh father.^[2] He grew up in Birmingham and then Ipswich, where he attended secondary school.^[2] His mother was a poet, and his father worked as a missionary to deaf and dumb people.^[1][3] After national service he studied English at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge.^[4][5] He played in jazz bands there and at Wadham College, Oxford,^[5] where he took a postgraduate diploma in education.^[1][3][4]

Career

Arch taught English at Rickmansworth Grammar School for nine years, studying musical composition at Trinity College London in his spare time.^[5] He was director of music at Bulmershe College from 1964 to 1985.^[6][7] In the 1960s he arranged music for BBC Home Service radio programmes for schools, and in the 1970s, he made several appearances, as a conductor, on the BBC Television programme Seeing and Believing.^[8]

He was musical director of the South Chiltern Choral Society for almost 50 years, retiring in 2014.^[9] In 1971 he established the Reading Male Voice Choir and served as the choir's musical director until 2015.^[7] He was a Licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music, a Composition Fellow of Trinity College London, and for ten years an Associated Board examiner.^[7] His oeuvre includes many arrangements of choral works and songs, in a wide variety of genres, for mixed (SATB), male (TTBB), and female (SSA) choirs.^[7][10] He marketed many of his arrangements for male voice choirs as sheet music via his company Grove Music.^[a][11]

Honours

Arch was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2006 Birthday Honours, for services to music in Berkshire.^[7][12]

The Gwyn Arch Foundation was launched in his memory on 9 April 2022 at a celebration concert featuring several of the choirs he founded. It aims "to support the development and performance of choral music by and for young people within the Thames Valley".^[13]

Personal life

Arch met Jane, subsequently a head teacher, when he was at Oxford University, where he was musical director of the Experimental Theatre Club and she was in the choir.^[6] They married two years later, and moved to Sonning Common in 1964.^[6] Their elder son David Arch is a conductor, arranger and composer and the musical director on the BBC Television show Strictly Come Dancing.^[6]

Arch died on 6 June 2021.^[1][3]

Notes

1. Not to be confused with the Grove Dictionary of Music.