Alfred Gaul
British composer and conductor
Alfred Robert Gaul (30 April 1837 — 13 September 1913) was an English composer, conductor, teacher and organist.
Life and career
Gaul was born in Norwich, where he studied under Zechariah Buck. By the age of nine he was a chorister at Norwich Cathedral, and at the age of seventeen he was appointed as the organist of the parish church at Fakenham. In 1859 he moved to Birmingham, where at the age of twenty two he was appointed organist at St. John's Church, Ladywood. In 1863 he took the Bachelor of Music degree at the University of Cambridge. He was Master of Music at St Augustine's Church, Edgbaston from 1868, the first Birmingham church to have a surpliced choir.
In 1877 Gaul started teaching the first classes in the theory of music, harmony and counterpoint at the Birmingham and Midland Institute, marking the first step towards providing a fully rounded musical instruction at the institution that would eventually become the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, later becoming Professor of Orchestration and Composition at the school. In 1887 he succeeded William Cole Stockley as conductor of the Walsall Philharmonic Society. He taught singing and harmony at the King Edward VI High School for Girls and the Blind Asylum.
“Alfred Gaul” enters the record as british composer and conductor. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Alfred, Gaul and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Alfred Gaul” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Alfred, Gaul and British provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4723319. VIAF identifies the subject as 48792317. The Library of Congress control number is no92001991. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1837, 1913, 1859 and 1863.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alfred Gaul” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.