Vernon Hoyle

Vernon Hoyle was born in Hatfield, South Yorkshire, where he received his first music lessons from John Hubert Piper (a local schoolteacher and organist) and was a chorister at the parish church. At the age of fifteen he became a student at the Huddersfield School of Music, where his teachers included Eugenie Everest, David Ingate, Ruth Ramsden, Winifred Smith, Richard Steinitz and Harold Truscott. After five years at Huddersfield he continued his formal education at the City of Birmingham College of Education and the Open University. From 1969 until his retirement in 1998 he taught music and English in secondary schools in West Yorkshire. In his sundry capacities as chorister, organist, choral director, composer, arranger and editor he has been active in Anglican church music for over fifty years. His compositions and arrangements, many of which are published, comprise educational works and choral music, much of this for the Anglican church. With Dr Jonathan Wainwright he is co-editor of a major collection of psalm chants entitled Cantica Nova, collections of anthems for Holy Communion, Ascensiontide and Pentecost, a book of seven settings of the Preces, Responses and Lord’s Prayer and a collection of fifty Christmas carols for soprano alto and men entitled Nowell! Nowell!, all featuring music by contemporary composers.