KENNETH MOBBS was awarded the Licentiate Performing Diploma of the Royal Academy of Music (L.R.A.M.) in 1941 at the age of sixteen, and two years later went up to Clare College, Cambridge on an organ scholarship and state science bursary, subsequently graduating in both Natural Sciences and Music (M.A., Mus.B.). After being awarded the Fellowship diploma of the Royal College of Organists (F.R.C.O.) with the Turpin prize for practical work in 1949, he spent the following year as a post-graduate student at the Royal College of Music, where he studied piano, organ, conducting, viola and orchestration.

He was then appointed to the staff of the Music Department of Bristol University in 1950, finally relinquishing the post of Senior Lecturer in Music in 1986. While at the University he conducted many large-scale choral and orchestral works, including the Berlioz Requiem, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Elgar's Dream of Gerontius and Britten's War Requiem. In addition to his teaching work, he gave numerous organ, piano and harpsichord recitals, as well as accompanying many well-known singers, such as Marjorie Thomas, Janet Price, Sir Peter Pears, Brian Rayner Cook and John Shirley-Quirk.

With the members of the Dartington String Quartet he performed most of the well-known piano quintets, such as those by Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Elgar and Shostakovitch. He was the keyboard player with the Bristol Sinfonia, a professional chamber orchestra, for the whole of its eighteen-year existence.

As Musical Director of Bristol Opera School (now Bristol Opera) for ten years, he was in charge of performances of both mainstream and little-performed works, such as Eugene Onegin (Tschaikovsky), The Bartered Bride (Smetana), Martha (Flotow), The Lily of Killarney (Benedict), The Travelling Companion (Stanford) and Der Wildschütz (Lortzing). He later held a similar position with Bristol Intimate Opera, (Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Mozart's Cosi fan Tutte).

While with Bristol Opera School he collaborated with his University Drama Department colleague, the late George Rowell, in the writing of Engaged!, the comic opera which they adapted and arranged from lesser-known Gilbert and Sullivan sources. This "new" G&S opera, based on W.S.Gilbert's farce Engaged, has now received over 250 performances in English-speaking countries across four continents. The work is published by Warner/Chappell Music Ltd.

Kenneth's special interests are in keyboard performance and history. Over the years he broadcast frequently on BBC national radio as soloist, duettist, accompanist, and ensemble and continuo player, on both modern and antique musical instruments. From 1990 to 2004 he was the accompanist for many of the woodwind courses at Jackdaws, the classical music centre in Great Elm, Somerset. In 2000 he was invited to give a paper and recital at an international conference on the Early Piano in the Shrine to Music Museum, Vermillion, SD, USA, and one of his accompanying engagements was at the European String Teachers' Association's summer school, where he also conducted the string orchestra. In 2002 he was invited to give the opening recital at a conference on the Square Piano in the Stiftung Kloster Michaelstein, Harz, Germany, and in 2003 he was lecturing at a Day Conference on Longman & Broderip and Clementi at the Royal College of Music, London. Although now retired from active professional recital work, he very much enjoys informal music-making with family and friends.

He is an active member of the Galpin Society, the foremost British society for the historical study of musical instruments. He has had three important articles published in their Journal in the last four years (on performers' problems when playing early pianos, and, with Alexander Mackenzie of Ord, on the stop-knob operations of Culliford one-manual English harpsichords, and the temperament most probably used on the Longman & Broderip Monochord of c.1790).

With Alexander Mackenzie he has also contributed a simple solution to the possible interpretation of a tuning "recipe" hidden in the decoration at the top of the title page of Book 1 of Bach's "48 Preludes and Fugues". (See Early Music, Vol XXXIII no.3, August 2005, Correspondence, pages 546 & 547).

Click here for the Letter from Kenneth Mobbs and Alexander Mackenzie to Early Music, August 2005 on the "Bach Temperament".

Click here for Kenneth Mobbs' important amplification and clarification of points made in this same letter.

He is married to the musician and painter MARY MOBBS, née Randall. Mary has a BA degree from the University of Birmingham, and an LRAM diploma in piano teaching. She was an enthusiastic amateur bassoonist, and for fifteen years until recently she also specialized in harpsichord soundboard painting for professional makers, notably Andrea Goble, Milan Misina, William Mitchell, Peter Bavington, Anthony Gale and Alan Gotto.