John Whitworth

John Anthony Whitworth (27 December 192111 July 2013) was an English countertenor, organist, and teacher of music. He was a lay vicar at Westminster Abbey and a professor at the Guildhall School of Music. Early life Whitworth was born on 27 December 1921 in Ely, Cambridgeshire, the son of Horace Whitworth, a potato merchant, and his wife Mary Anne, and educated at Kimbolton School. While still at school, Whitworth became organist at the Sutton-in-the-Isle parish church. With the outbreak of the Second World War, he deferred his education and joined the Royal Air Force. Becoming a flight mechanic, in 1941 he was posted to Canada, but returned to Europe and was in Paris for VE Day. Whitworth was demobilized in 1946 and took up a place at King's College, Cambridge, as a choral scholar of King's College Chapel, under the direction of Boris Ord.