23/03/2026
We have to report the sad news of the passing of Peter Ward Jones, a distinguished Oxford musician and scholar and member of St Giles’. Peter was a long-serving Music Librarian of the Bodleian Library (40 years), whose life was devoted to the study and practice of music. He died peacefully yesterday.
His musical legacy fused scholarship with musicianship. As an organist, conductor, and scholar, Peter showed a lifelong commitment to sustaining, understanding, and articulating Britain’s choral heritage. His recent monograph, British Choral Singing, sits on the shelf in the St Giles’ vestry.
At St Giles' Church, he served as organist and choirmaster for 30 years, where his dedicated leadership and musicianship shaped and sustained the church’s musical life. Many choristers benefited from his dedication and musicianship. His St Giles’ performances of the complete organ works of JS Bach’s are still remembered. It was wonderful to work with Peter on numerous occasions, including in 2019 when Peter gave a performance of the Goldberg Variations in aid of music at St Giles’. One of his final acts of generosity was to give St Giles’ a new set of hymn books. Copies of the Revised English Hymnal will arrive in due course.
https://boydellandbrewer.com/book/british-choral-singing-9781837653195/?v=7885444af42e
Requiescat in pace
Charts choral traditions in Britain, evolution, sociological composition, engagement with and place within cathedrals and secular spaces.
