Professor Whittall was a much loved member of the Department of Music, and is remembered throughout the UK for his highly distinguished work as a music theorist and educator. On behalf of all those he worked alongside and taught over his many years at King’s, I wish to offer our sincere condolences to his family and friends.
Professor Katherine Butler Schofield, Head of the Department of Music
04 June 2026
Professor Arnold Whittall (1935-2026)
King’s is sad to learn of the death of Professor Arnold Whittall, Emeritus Professor of Musical Theory and Analysis at King’s, who died on 26 May 2026 at the age of 90.
Professor Arnold Whittall was a full-time staff member at King’s from 1975 to 1996, having taught previously in Cambridge, Nottingham and Cardiff. He has also served as a visiting professor at Yale University and lectured extensively in Europe and America.
Professor Whittall was instrumental in expanding and promoting studies in music theory and analysis at King’s, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate topics concerning music since 1900.
In 1982, he became the first Professor of Music Theory and Analysis at a British university, and collaborated with Jonathan Dunsby on Music Analysis in Theory and Practice (Faber Music, 1988).
Jonathan Dunsby, now Professor of Music Theory at the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, wrote of Professor Whittall's passing:
"In late May 2026 the press was suitably awash with tributes to Arnold Whittall, who had died about halfway through his 91st year, just over half a century after his appointment as Reader at the Department of Music at King's in 1975. He retired in 1996, but as Emeritus Professor kept his association with King's very much alive in the ensuing decades. It is a King's thing, many would report. Having been appointed at King's Department of Music as the then equivalent of assistant professor in 1979, I feel it to this day—that I never really left. Undoubtedly, what mattered to me most working on the Strand, and for which I will be forever grateful, was having Arnold as effectively my “boss,” guide, mentor, and friend, even across the generations as we were.
All the many biographical sources about Arnold rightly highlight his promotion at King's in 1982 to become Professor of Musical Theory and Analysis. It was a visionary appointment, the first such in a newly flourishing discipline. The pioneering Master's degree in Music Analysis had been devised by Ian Bent around 1970 after the official opening of the King's Music Department in 1965. Arnold moulded this programme in his own way for more than two decades, and it was a breeding ground for generations of superb young scholars.
Over the years, he supervised many dozens of doctoral students, most of whom went on to conspicuous careers, be it in music theory or in unanticipated fields. Arnold had that very special capacity to induce deep, enduring respect, loyalty, and affection in his students. This gave him much pleasure in old age, including in his final months of bravely born illness, when he received a continual stream of visitors, some of them only half, even a third of his age.
In fond memory, I quote here from a letter from me in the USA that was kindly read to Arnold during that time, when he knew there was no recovery, and when he pined for release. I hope it indicates, if only a little, how behind his wonderful books, articles, book reviews, music reviews, and other categories in his astonishingly voluminous publications, was a truly great, warm-hearted human being:
"I have so many fun, curious, crazy memories. Seriously, for instance, when I called you up from USC Los Angeles in 1983 and said “can I have my King’s job back please?” and, well, you made it happen. I remember, of fun moments, going on a bus with you up to Senate House from King’s for a meeting, not long after we’d met, and you said “pay the fare (in those heady days of Ken Livingston’s London when it was 10p a ride), I don’t carry money.” I remember, so warmly, when I was emigrating to the US in 2006 and you said “don’t phone me, it’ll just make the distance seem worse.” You’re always full of delicious surprises."
Colleagues from the Department of Music at King’s reflected on their experiences of working with Professor Whittall, sharing personal memories and highlighting his lasting impact on the Department.
A tall, slightly awkward-looking man took the stage in a lecture room during the first week of my first term at King’s, in 1978. He introduced himself as Arnold Whittall, then played a recording of unfamiliar, crystalline music. It lasted less than a minute. In the silence that followed, he wrote a letter in the centre of the whiteboard, and then two more below it. “You’ve just heard a song by Anton Webern,” he said, “and this”—he drew an arrow from one letter to the next—“is how it works.” In that moment I breathed the air from another planet, and was hooked. Over the years he gave generously of his time and insight to me as undergraduate, doctoral student, young colleague and, many decades on, late returner to academic life. This, I know, was his way with hundreds of students and colleagues, many of whom made their regular pilgrimage to his modest house in Harrow long after his “retirement”. I was privileged to support him in his final months. He regarded death steadily; astonished the nursing-home staff with his lucid commentary on his own decline. A remarkable man: kind, dutiful, inspiring, revered by many. Known by few.
Dr Esther Cavett, Senior Research Fellow in Music
Arnold Whittall didn't leave King's altogether when he retired in 1996. When I became Head of the Music Department not so long after my arrival in the same year, I made sure he continued doing some graduate teaching and examining. As second marker I worked several times with him as examiner. He also examined several PhD and MMus theses, as well as attending the weekly music colloquia if the subject interested him. I was very grateful he did all this so willingly – he didn't have to of course! – especially as he was still a highly respected figure the graduate students were glad to study with. How was he as a colleague? Despite our mutual interest in Wagner, we were on entirely different intellectual planets. And we both knew it. He, a stalwart crusader of rigorous music analysis. Me, a probably much too severe critic of that discipline’s sometimes comically arcane habits of mind. We simply agreed to differ. And I hugely respected him for that.
Professor John Deathridge, Emeritus King Edward Professor of Music
Arnold Whittall's influence and importance to music studies, and his contribution to the field of musical analysis and criticism, was unparalleled. A sympathetic teacher, a rigorous theorist and a cogent writer, his work extended far beyond the world of academia. He reviewed for the press and several of his books became, for school students, the first stepping stone in a journey of understanding how music is put together and how it is may be interpreted. He was a passionate writer on contemporary 20th and 21st-century composers as shown in one of his last collections, 'British Music After Britten' (Boydell, 2020). His professorship at King's was one that was essential in making the Department into a centre of excellence in UK HE and beyond.
Dr Thomas Hyde, Lecturer in Music Education (Composition)
Professor Whittall’s list of publications began in the 1960s with two articles on Benjamin Britten, and his first book was a BBC Music Guide, Schoenberg Chamber Music, followed by Music since the First World War, a text that eventually transformed itself into Musical Composition in the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 1999). He has also written extensively on Wagner and other aspects of nineteenth-century music, and authored articles published in Music and Letters, The Musical Times and Tempo academic journals.
In 2000-2001, Professor Arnold Whittall gave a special series of six London University lectures to mark the turn of the millennium, which became Exploring Twentieth-Century Music: Tradition and Innovation (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Professor Whittall's latest book, Schoenberg: 'Night Music' — Verklärte Nacht and Erwartung, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2023.