John Greenwood (composer)
British composer (1889-1975)
John Danforth Herman Greenwood (26 June 1889 – 15 April 1975), was an English composer best known for his film scores.
Education and early career
Greenwood was the son of New Zealander Alfred Greenwood (1842–1912) and his English-born wife Ottilie Rose Minna (1855–1932) née Schweitzer. He was named after his grandfathers: Herman Schweitzer, a Prussian born analytical chemist; and Dr. John Danforth Greenwood (1803–1890) from Sussex, England, a pioneering New Zealand physician and educationist, who had emigrated to New Zealand in 1842 after retiring from medicine due to ill health. Greenwood was born in London. He learned piano and viola from his parents and at 18 entered the Royal College of Music to study viola and horn, as well as composition with Charles Villiers Stanford. While there he won the Grove scholarship and Arthur Sullivan composition awards. For a short period he taught at Brighton and Hove Grammar School, and then made his living as a pianist, horn and viola player in various orchestras as well as conducting at the Queen's Hall and in the provinces.
During the First World War Greenwood was a conscientious objector. At that time he was living at 39, Hillcrest Road, Acton Hill.
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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 May 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3181640. VIAF identifies the subject as 30788780. The Library of Congress control number is no2011165622. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1889, 1975, 1842 and 1912.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Greenwood (composer)” 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.