William Waterhouse (bassoonist)

William Waterhouse ( born February 18, 1931 in London, † November 5, 2007 in Florence) was a British bassoonist, musicologist, professor and author.

Waterhouse studied from 1948 at the Royal College of Music bassoon with Archie Camden, Viola studied with Cecil Aronowitz and studied composition with Gordon Jacob. From 1953 to 1955 he was the second bassoonist at Covent Garden, 1955-1958 bassoonist with the Orchestra della Svizzera italiana in Lugano, 1958-1965 principal bassoonist of the London Symphony Orchestra and from 1965 to 1975 in the same position with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, while he has worked with artists such as Arturo Toscanini, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Pierre Monteux, Sviatoslav Richter and Maria Callas. Since 1959 he was a member of the Melos Ensemble. Waterhouse had from 1966 to 1996 a professor at the Royal Northern College of Music. Composers such as Jean Françaix, Victor Bruns, Gordon Jacob and his son Graham Waterhouse have dedicated works to him.

William Waterhouse joined as an author of articles for the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and as the author of the UE Bassoon Edition forth. His standard work Bassoon out of line Yehudi Menuhin Music Guides appeared in German under the title bassoon. He wrote The New Long Will Index: A dictionary of musical wind- instrument makers and inventors (published in 1993) and received the 1995 CB Oldman Prize. In 2008 he Award of the American Musical Instrument Society was posthumously awarded the Curt Sachs.

Writings

• Bassoon. Kahn & Averill, London 2003, ISBN 1-871082-68-4. ( Yehudi Menuhin Music Guides series. ) German -language edition: bassoon. German translation by Klaus Gillessen. Barenreiter, Kassel et al 2006, ISBN 3-7618-1871-8. ( Details of the book, review )