1944 in British music

Events

• 4 January – Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears begin a long association with Decca Records, recording four of Britten's folk song arrangements. Britten spends most of this year at the Old Mill in Snape, Suffolk, working on the opera Peter Grimes.
• March – Vera Lynn goes to Shamsheernugger airfield in British India to entertain the troops before the Battle of Kohima.
• 19 March – Michael Tippett's oratorio A Child of Our Time receives its first performances at London's Adelphi Theatre.
• 25 May – Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears record Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings for Decca, with Dennis Brain and the Boyd Neel Orchestra.
• 19 June – American bandleader Glenn Miller flies to London to set up his U.S. Army Air Forces orchestra for the European Theater of Operations.
• 28 July – Sir Henry Wood, aged 75, conducts his last Promenade Concert, evacuated to the Corn Exchange, Bedford. He dies three weeks later.
• 20 September – Yehudi Menuhin gives the first British performance of Béla Bartók's Violin Concerto in Bedford, in the opening concert of a tour with the B.B.C. Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult.
• 23 September – English-born composer and violist Rebecca Clarke, stranded in the United States by the war, marries James Friskin, composer, concert pianist and founding member of the Juilliard School faculty.
• 3 October – Glenn Miller plays his last airfield concert in a hangar for the U.S.A.A.F. at RAF Kings Cliffe in Northamptonshire.
• 15 December – Glenn Miller takes off from RAF Twinwood Farm in Bedfordshire; his plane is lost over the English Channel.
• Contralto Kathleen Ferrier makes the first of her recordings of the aria "What is Life?" from Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice which will rival sales by more popular singers over the next few years.

Popular music

• "One Love", music and words Jack Popplewell.

Classical music: new works

• Arnold Bax – To Russia for baritone solo and chorus
• Gerald Finzi – Farewell to Arms
• Ernest John Moeran – Sinfonietta
• Grace Williams – Sea Sketches
• William Wordsworth – Symphony No. 1 in F minor

Film and Incidental music

• William Alwyn – The Way Ahead
• Jack Beaver, Roy Douglas & James Turner – Candlelight in Algeria
• Allan Gray – A Canterbury Tale
• Gordon Jacob – For Those in Peril
• William Walton – Henry V, directed by and starring Laurence Olivier

Musical theatre

• 25 May – A Night In Venice London production opens at the Cambridge Theatre

Musical films

• One Exciting Night directed by Walter Forde and starring Vera Lynn, Donald Stewart and Mary Clare.

Births

• 3 January – David Atherton, conductor
• 5 January – Jo Ann Kelly, singer and guitarist
• 9 January – Jimmy Page, rock musician and producer
• 19 January – Laurie London, English singer
• 27 January – Nick Mason, percussionist and composer
• 28 January – John Tavener, composer
• 2 February – Andrew Davis, conductor
• 15 February – Mick Avory, drummer
• 1 March – Roger Daltrey, vocalist
• 17 March – John Lill, pianist
• 23 March
• *Tony McPhee, blues rock guitarist and singer
• *Michael Nyman, composer
• 6 April – Felicity Palmer, operatic mezzo-soprano
• 26 April – Richard Bradshaw, opera conductor
• 8 May
• *Gary Glitter, singer-songwriter
• *Bill Legend, drummer
• 10 May – Jackie Lomax, singer-songwriter and guitarist
• 12 May – Brian Kay, singer, conductor, and radio host
• 20 May – Joe Cocker, singer
• 17 June – Chris Spedding, singer-songwriter and guitarist
• 21 June – Ray Davies, singer-songwriter
• 22 June – Peter Asher, singer and record producer
• 24 June
• *Jeff Beck, singer-songwriter and guitarist
• *John "Charlie" Whitney, English guitarist
• *Chris Wood, English saxophonist
• 22 July – Rick Davies, keyboardist
• 2 August – Jim Capaldi, musician and songwriter
• 5 August – Christopher Gunning, composer
• 16 August – Kevin Ayers, singer-songwriter
• 10 September – Thomas Allen, operatic baritone
• 9 October – John Entwistle, bassist
• 2 November – Keith Emerson, keyboardist and composer
• 10 November – Tim Rice, lyricist

Deaths

• 19 January – Harold Fraser-Simson, songwriter and composer of light music
• 6 February – Philip Michael Faraday, organist, composer and theatrical producer
• 12 February – Annie Fortescue Harrison, songwriter and composer of piano music
• 29 February – Durward Lely, operatic tenor
• 9 May – Dame Ethel Smyth, composer
• 24 June – Chick Henderson, dance band singer
• 4 July – Alice Burville, singer and actress
• 11 July – Frank Bury, composer
• 13 July – Eda Kersey, violinist
• 19 August – Sir Henry Wood, conductor
• 21 September – Louis N. Parker, dramatist, composer and translator