John Sykes (composer)

A CD of songs and piano music, including many of the Blake settings, was issued by Albion Records in 2020. Mark Padmore included his setting of Blake's 'On Another's Sorrow' in his BBC Radio 3 survey of English art song in 2022.

Sykes died from cancer in the school sanatorium in June 1962.

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 Kingsmill 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 Kingsmill. The school now holds the John Sykes Archive.

Orchestral works include a symphony, a piano concerto, a suite ("in old style") for strings and Eight Pieces for small orchestra. There is a choral Te Deum, some chamber music, over 20 scores for school theatre productions, and much piano music, choral music and song. Sykes made 36 settings of poems from William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience during the 1930s and also set poems by his friend Randall Swingler. There were occasional performances beyond the school: for instance his Litanie for double chorus was performed at the Macnaghten-Lemare concert in London on 11 December 1933.

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.

John Austin Sykes (1909 – June 1962) was an English composer and music teacher, born in India.