Geoffrey Turton Shaw

Geoffrey Turton Shaw (14 November 1879 – 14 April 1943) was an English composer and musician specialising in Anglican church music. After Cambridge, where he was an organ scholar, he became a schoolmaster, then a schools inspector, while producing a stream of compositions, arrangements, and published collections of music. He was awarded the Lambeth degree of Doctor of Music.

Shaw worked with his brother Martin Shaw, also a composer, while his son Sebastian was a Shakespearean actor who is remembered for the Star Wars role of Anakin Skywalker.

Born at Clapham, South London, in 1879, Shaw was the son of James Fallas Shaw, a composer of church music and organist of Hampstead, and the younger brother of the composer Martin Shaw (1875–1958). Geoffrey Shaw became a chorister at St Paul's Cathedral under Sir George Martin and was then educated at Derby School and Caius College, Cambridge. At Caius, he was an organ scholar, studied with Sir Charles Stanford and Charles Wood, and graduated BA in 1901 and MusB in 1902.

From 1902 to 1910, Shaw was a music master and Director of Music at Gresham's School, Holt, a role in which he was succeeded by his fellow Old Derbeian, Walter Greatorex. Benson's History of Gresham's School notes that —

Shaw was too fine a musician to be held for long, despite his love of Norfolk, and he went on to become an outstanding School Inspector.

Shaw was an inspector of music in London schools from 1911 to 1940, simultaneously holding several posts as an organist, and in 1920 was his brother Martin's successor as organist of St Mary's, Primrose Hill, remaining there until 1930. He was also Inspector of Music to the Board of Education from 1928 until his retirement in 1942. For some years he chaired the BBC's schools music sub-committee.

In his Board of Education work, Shaw worked to raise standards of musical education in schools and also supported popular organisations and training colleges. His unofficial activities included promoting summer schools for teachers, and he was in demand as an adjudicator at music festivals. He was the first adjudicator of the Thanet Competitive Musical Festival, founded in 1921.

As a composer, Shaw's work included choral works, anthems, hymn tunes and arrangements, a ballet called All at Sea, chamber pieces, orchestral works, and other songs, including part-songs and unison songs. Several descants by Shaw, Alan Gray and Ralph Vaughan Williams appear in Songs of Praise, one of the earliest hymnals to include such work. Shaw was an enthusiast for folk music and the work of Henry Purcell, and one of his aims was to restore the dignity of Christian music.

With his brother, Shaw edited song books. He was one of the editors of The Public School Hymn Book of 1919 and also published the Descant Hymn-Tune Book, in two volumes. With Percy Dearmer, Martin and Geoffrey Shaw had a significant influence on 20th-century church music.

Shaw's friend John Ireland composed the melody for My Song Is Love Unknown over lunch one day with Shaw, and at his suggestion.

In 1932, Cosmo Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury, awarded Shaw the honorary Lambeth degree of Doctor of Music. When Shaw died in 1943, he was cremated and his ashes buried at Golders Green Crematorium. In 1947, a Geoffrey Shaw Memorial Fund was established for the benefit of talented instrumentalists under the age of eighteen, and there is now a Martin and Geoffrey Shaw Organ Scholarship at St Mary's, Primrose Hill.

Shaw was married to Mary Grace Shaw, born in 1881, who survived him until 1954. He was the father of six children, including the actor Sebastian Shaw (1905–1994), best known for the role of Anakin Skywalker in Return of the Jedi. His other children were James, Peter, Susan, Margaret and Penelope. James, like his father a chorister of St Paul's Cathedral, read History at Caius, his father's Cambridge college, and was killed during the Second World War. Penelope Shaw became an actress. One of Shaw's great-grandchildren, Emma Bonner-Morgan, is a singer-songwriter and pianist.