JOHN WILLIAMS was an extremely able musician whose enthusiasm, particularly for choral singing, led to the development of several successful choirs and inspired many young musicians who went on to prominent professional careers.

John Radcliffe Williams was born in Swansea, the son of a furrier. He was a boy chorister at All Saints, Margaret Street, London, before the war, where he won a music scholarship, created especially for him, to King’s School, Canterbury, and from there a choral scholarship to St John’s College, Cambridge. There he read history and proceeded to a Bachelor of Music degree.

He had arrived as an ordinand, but soon realised that his work in the Church would be as musician, not priest. At St John’s he met the composer Herbert Howells and an enduring friendship began. Williams helped him with the choir, taught in the choir school and acted as assistant organist. He was also a member of a small male choral group which performed at the university and nearby RAF stations.

Later in the war, Williams served as a lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in Flower class corvettes, notably HMS Clematis which provided escorts for convoys in the North Atlantic on the Western Approaches. His final days in the Navy took him to Bombay. Soon after his return to Britain he was found to have contracted a brain infection which left him paralysed for six months.

On his recovery he taught chiefly at University College School, Hampstead, before returning to All Saints, Margaret Street, as director of music. He later became organist of St Mark’s, Hamilton Terrace, and the conductor of the Blackfriars Singers (the Unilever choir) and of the Corporation of Lloyd’s Choir.

In 1965 he was asked by Colonel Sir Thomas Butler, Resident Governor, to become the first Master of Music at St Peter ad Vincula, Tower of London (then recently restored to its status as a Chapel Royal), and to form a professional choir there. He was warned that he would have to work without pay for a year until a public appeal had raised sufficient finds to establish the Tower of London Choral Foundation. He had been on the staff of the Royal College of Music for many years (and was a professor there from 1962 to 1990), and his wide range of contacts enabled him to select for the Tower promising singers from music and Oxbridge colleges.

This was the first professional appointment for many of these singers, whose number included Della Jones, Kenneth Woollam and Felicity Palmer. The repertory was eclectic and adventurous, though not all the 20th-century music appealed to the then Constable of the Tower, Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer, who described a particular Jubilate as “beatnik”. The Tower choir became well known through its recordings and contribution to numerous City of London Festivals.

Williams was full of ideas and practical help for reviving choral singing among the young and bringing good live music to other areas of the country. He helped to arrange many concerts and workshops in the schools and churches of Leicestershire and Rutland, including a notable Christmas concert at Kegworth, with Andrew Davis at the organ. He was much in demand as an examiner for the Associated Board and festival adjudicator, both at home and in Africa and Canada, and gave a series of talks on music on BBC Radio.

He led many chamber groups and choirs, and even though his standards were totally professional his amateur choirs loved him and enjoyed his rehearsals as an education and inspiration.

He left the Tower in 1988. He continued his private teaching into the late 1990s. An honorary fellowship of the Royal College of Music was conferred on him and he was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He was a devotee of the gentler pursuits of the countryside and a renowned cook. He was universally well-liked, with a wide circle of friends; these included many in northern Portugal, which he visited frequently.

In 1945 he married Valerie Trimble, who had been encouraged by Howells to create, with her sister Joan, the famous piano duo. She died in 1980 and in 1984 he married Barbara Nias, who survives him, along with the two sons and two daughters of his first marriage.

John Williams, musician, was born on September 24, 1920. He died on October 17, 2002, aged 82.