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David Patrick Gedge

British organist and music teacher (1939–2016)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 7, 2026
Entity authorityQ15972433
Source-derived summary

David Patrick Gedge MBE FRAM FRSCM HonFGCM GRSM FRCO LRAM (12 March 1939 – 2 July 2016) was an organist based in England and Wales.

Life

David Gedge was the son of Arthur (Paul) Johnson Gedge 1903–1968 and Gwendoline (Wendy) Middleton 1908–1955. Paul Gedge was a parish priest, lastly in Southwark / Lambeth and an author; a friend of Eric Crozier and the influence to the character Mr. Gedge in Benjamin Britten's opera Albert Herring. On David's mother's side, he was a great-nephew to the organist Hubert Stanley Middleton.

He was a chorister in Southwark Cathedral from 1947 to 1962, and educated in St Olave's Grammar School in London, the Royal Academy of Music, and the University of London. He was awarded the Turpin Prize in 1962 when he achieved his FRCO. He was made a MBE in 1993, and received the Archbishop of Wales award for church music in 1997.

From 1966 to 2007, David Gedge was the organist and choirmaster at Brecon Cathedral.

Gedge wrote two volumes of memoirs, A Country Cathedral Organist Looks Back (2005) and More From a Country Cathedral Organist (2008). Both autobiographies were self-published and received mixed reviews.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “David Patrick Gedge” is british organist and music teacher (1939–2016). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through David, Patrick and Gedge, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1939, 2016, 1903, 1968—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1939-03-12. For this dossier, David, Patrick and Gedge is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “british organist and music teacher (1939–2016)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15972433. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1939, 2016, 1903 and 1968.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from David Patrick Gedge” 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.