Sheet music by Lionel Sawkins

After education at North Sydney Boys’ High School, and training at the NSW Conservatorium, Lionel Sawkins sang as a Bass Lay Clerk at St. Andrew’s Cathedral, Sydney before his appointment as Director of Music of the Church of England Grammar School, Brisbane. After coming to England in 1958 he was appointed Organist of Holy Trinity, Beckenham and Head of Music at Upton House School in East London. During these years he initiated the Beckenham Summer Choral Festival to enable local choirs to join together to perform major works. He also prepared boys’ choirs for the Philharmonia under Leopold Stokowski and for productions at the Royal Opera House including Tosca with Maria Callas. Lionel Sawkins worked in Paris in 1982-83 to help establish the Centre d’Information et de Documentation (Recherche Musicale) of the CNRS, and at the same time contributed more than 400 citations (mostly of the motets of Lully and Lalande) to the Catalogue thématique du grand motet français. In 1999, 21 scholars from Europe and the USA came together to offer a "Hommage a Lionel Sawkins" in the form of a festschrift of essays on a variety of subjects relating to French music and in particular that of Jean-Baptiste Lully whose compositions had long been one of Lionel Sawkins’s primary objects of research and editing. In 2011, Lionel Sawkins was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and is travelling to Canberra in 2012 to sign the Charter Book of the Academy and to give a lecture organised by the French Embassy there.