Dr Christopher Kent
Christopher Kent BEM (1949-2024) founded the unique and influential postgraduate School of Organ Historiography at the University of Reading and edited the organ works of Elgar for the Complete Edition (Novello). He studied music / musicology at the University of Manchester and at King’s College, London, wrote his Ph.D on Elgar’s musical sketches and studied organ and harpsichord in Amsterdam with Gustav Leonhardt, before joining the music department at Reading University. He worked as an examiner for the Associated Board (often in the Far East) and was for twelve years one of the organ advisers to the Diocese of Oxford, followed by four years in a similar role for the Salisbury DAC. He published, lectured and performed widely and was awarded the British Empire Medal in the 2024 New Year Honours for Services to Music and Musicology.
Christopher acted for a period as a project monitor and assessor for the Arts Council, English Heritage and the National Heritage Memorial Fund (as it was then named). As an organ consultant he was most interested in historic conservation or restoration projects, undertaking several significant surveys for the British Institute of Organ Studies, on whose council he served and for whom he edited two editions of the BIOS Journal. As an accredited member of the AIOA, his projects included St Peter’s College Oxford, Reading School, St Monica’s Home of Rest, Bristol, H.M. Chapel Royal, Hampton Court Palace, Bowood House (one of his favourite and most interesting projects, where he later recorded the new organ), St Thomas’ church, Salisbury, Powderham Castle and Hartham Park Estate Church, Wiltshire, the county in which Christopher lived in retirement from his university post.
