1928 in British music

Events

• April – While studying under Frank Bridge, 15-year-old Benjamin Britten composes his String Quartet in F.
• June – Herbert Sumsion leaves the United States for the UK to take up the post of organist at Gloucester Cathedral.
• 9 August – Percy Grainger marries Swedish artist Ella Ström at the Hollywood Bowl.
• September – Benjamin Britten goes as a boarder to Gresham's School, in Holt, Norfolk.
• 10 October – Eric Fenby arrives in Grez to begin work as amanuensis for Frederick Delius.
• date unknown
• *Malcolm Sargent becomes conductor of the Royal Choral Society.
• *Arnold Bax begins taking an annual working holiday in Morar, in the west Scottish Highlands.

Popular music

• Noël Coward – "World Weary"

Classical music: new works

• Kenneth J. Alford – Dunedin
• Granville Bantock – Pagan Symphony
• Arthur Bliss – Pastoral 'Lie strewn the white flocks'
• Hamilton Harty – Suite for Cello and Piano
• Gustav Holst – A Moorside Suite
• John Ireland – Two Songs, 1928
• Cyril Rootham – "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity"
• Ralph Vaughan Williams – Te Deum in G major
• William Walton – ''Sinfonia Concertante''

Opera

• Stanley Bate – The Forest Enchanted
• William Henry Bell – The Mouse Trap; libretto after The Sire de Maletroit's Door by Robert Louis Stevenson

Musical theatre

• The Good Old Days of England, music by Percy Fletcher, libretto by Oscar Asche

Births

• 17 January – Matt McGinn, folk singer
• 8 February – Osian Ellis, harpist
• 5 March – Diana Coupland, singer and actress
• 6 March – Ronald Stevenson, composer and pianist
• 13 March – Ronnie Hazlehurst, conductor and composer
• 2 April – April Cantelo, soprano
• 4 April
• *Jimmy Logan, entertainer
• *Monty Norman, singer and composer of the James Bond signature tune
• 19 April – Alexis Korner, blues musician and historian
• 27 May – Thea Musgrave, composer
• 6 July – Peter Glossop, operatic baritone
• 16 July – Bryden Thomson, orchestral conductor
• 20 July – Peter Ind, jazz double-bassist and record producer
• 26 August – Andrew Porter, music critic
• 6 October – Flora MacNeil, singer in Scottish Gaelic
• 20 December – Donald Adams, operatic bass-baritone

Deaths

• 1 March – Sir Herbert Brewer, organist and composer
• 27 March – Leslie Stuart, musical theatre composer
• 13 May – David Thomas, composer
• 21 June – Marie Novello, pianist
• 12 September – Howard Talbot, conductor and composer
• 30 October – Percy Anderson, D'Oyly Carte stage designer
• 26 November – Herbert Sullivan, nephew and biographer of Sir Arthur Sullivan