Arthur William Wills OBE was born in Coventry on 19 September 1926. He was an English musician, composer and professor who served as director of music at Ely Cathedral from 1958 to 1990 and taught at the Royal Academy of Music from 1964 to 1992. A prolific organ and choral composer, Wills wrote concert works including "The Fenlands", "The Gods of Music", and an organ and guitar concerto, as well as seven song cycles and the opera Winston and Julia, based on George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. His recordings included Full Stops, released in 1978 and reissued in 1995, featuring variations on “Amazing Grace,” and a transcription of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. He also published his memoir Full with Wills in 2006. Wills received an OBE in 1990 and died on 30 October 2020, aged 94.
