Gordon Jacob Gordon Percival Septimus Jacob CBE ( 5 July 18958 June 1984 ) was an English composer . He is known for his wind instrument composition and his instructional writings . Life . Born in London , the third youngest of ten siblings , Jacob was educated at Dulwich College in South London , England . His career almost ended before it began . He enlisted in the Field Artillery to serve in World War I when he was 19 . The vagaries of war pushed him into the infantry , in the trenches in the front line . He was taken prisoner of war in 1917 , and was one of only 60 men in his battalion of 800 to survive . He amused himself and his fellow POWs by forming a small prison camp " orchestra " of any instruments they could muster , and arranging music for it . At this period he received the news that his brother Anstey , who had enlisted with him , had died on the Somme , and this he commemorated some years later in his first Symphony . After being released he spent a year studying journalism , but left to study composition , theory , and conducting at the Royal College of Music . Because of his cleft palate and a childhood hand injury , his instrumental abilities were limited ; he studied piano but never had a performing career . Jacob ' s first major successful piece was composed during his student years : the " William Byrd Suite " for orchestra , after a collection of pieces for the virginals . It is better - known in a later arrangement for symphonic band . While a student Jacob was asked by Ralph Vaughan Williams to arrange the latter ' s " English Folk Song Suite " for full orchestra . He taught at the Royal College of Music from 1924 until his retirement in 1966 . Malcolm Arnold , Frank Bury , Ruth Gipps , Imogen Holst , Cyril Smith , Philip Cannon , Pamela Harrison and Robert Turner were among his students . Jacob became a Fellow of the Royal College in 1946 , and throughout his career often wrote pieces for particular students and faculties . In the 1930s Jacob , along with several other young composers , wrote for the Sadlers Wells Ballet Company . His one original ballet , " Uncle Remus " , was written for them , but most of his contributions were arrangements of established works , such as " Les Sylphides " , for which his version remains in use , though the rival orchestration by Roy Douglas has been more often recorded for disc . Later ballet scores arranged by Jacob include " Mam ' zelle Angot " , ( based on Charles Lecocq ' s music , which remains in the repertoire of the Royal Ballet ) and , in 1958 , " London Morning " , composed for the London Festival Ballet by Noël Coward and orchestrated by Jacob . Jacob also contributed light music to a morale - boosting comedy radio show during World War II , which earned him the disdain of the musical elitists and the appreciation of the public . He also wrote music for several propaganda films . In the 1940s he was commissioned , on the recommendation of Sir Adrian Boult to orchestrate Elgar ' s Organ Sonata . A recording of this version was made in 1988 by EMI . The height of his renown was in the 1950s , during which his " Music for a Festival " was used for the 1951 Festival of Britain , and his trumpet - heavy fanfare arrangement of the National Anthem was used for the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II . After his retirement from the Royal College in 1966 , he continued to support himself by composing , often on commission . He describes many of the works as " unpretentious little pieces " , though some of his most important works were published during this time , including his " Concerto for Timpani and Wind Band " in 1984 . Jacob married twice , once in 1924 to Sydney Gray , who died in 1958 , and again a year after her death , to her niece Margaret Gray , in 1959 . He had two children by Margaret , who was 42 years his junior . He died in Saffron Walden in 1984 . There is a 1959 BBC documentary about his life , " Gordon Jacob " , directed by Ken Russell , as well as a 1995 book by Eric Wetherell entitled " Gordon Jacob : a Centenary Biography " . Music . Jacob was one of the most musically conservative of his generation of composers . Though he studied with Vaughan Williams and Stanford at the Royal College , Jacob preferred the more austere Baroque and Classical models to the Romanticism of his peers , and stuck to this aesthetic even in the face of the trends toward atonality and serialism . This conservatism later caused his works to fall out of fashion when the 1960s establishment favoured the avant - garde . Jacob held the movement in little regard , saying " I personally feel repelled by the intellectual snobbery of some progressive artists . . . the day that melody is discarded altogether , you may as well pack up music . . . " . He was a skilful writer for winds , and a good deal of his present - day reputation is because he embraced the wind band , which had begun coming into its own as a concert ensemble . Additionally , he published solo and chamber literature at various levels of difficulty for nearly all the wind instruments , many of which are now standard items in the pedagogical and performing repertoires . Jacob was prolific , publishing over 400 pieces of music in addition to his four books and numerous essays on music . Gordon Jacob was " Composer of the Week " on BBC Radio 3 , 15 to 20 April 2013 .