Early life[edit]

John Gardner was born in Manchester, England and grew up in Ilfracombe, North Devon. His father Alfred Linton Gardner (born 1882, Ilfracombe died 10 April 1918, France) was a local physician and amateur composer who was killed in action in the First World War. His grandfather was John Twiname Gardner, also a general practitioner and composer. His mother, Emily Muriel Pullein-Thompson, was the sister of Captain Harold J "Cappy" Pullein-Thompson, who was the father of Josephine, Diana and Christine Pullein-Thompson and their brother, the playwright Denis Cannan.


Gardner was educated at Eagle House School, Sandhurst, Wellington College and Exeter College, Oxford, where he was the Hubert Parry organ scholar.^[1][2] An important figure in his early life was Hubert J. Foss of Oxford University Press, who published the Intermezzo for Organ in 1936 and introduced him to the composer Arthur Benjamin, to whom Gardner dedicated his Rhapsody for Oboe and String Quartet (1935). This work had its first performance at the Wigmore Hall in February 1936. The String Quartet No. 1 (1938) was broadcast from Paris by the Blech Quartet in 1939, and the anthem The Holy Son of God most High (1938) was also published by OUP. At Oxford Gardner was friendly with Theodor Adorno with whom he played piano duets. An article about Gardner's time at Oxford is published in the British Music Society journal(^[3]