English organist and composer. He was a chorister of St Paul's Cathedral. Afterwards he was apprenticed to John Stanley. He took the BMus degree at Oxford in 1755 and the DMus there in 1766.
In the course of his work Alcock became impressed by the numberless Mistakes in manuscript copies of older cathedral music, and in 1752 he issued a prospectus of a plan for a quarterly publication of a service engraved in score. Alcock had antiquarian interests, scoring for himself some of Tallis's and Byrd's Latin church music and Morley's canzonets and balletts.
Alcock's own music has a good general level of competence in an idiom adhering to that prevailing in his early manhood. No doubt his instrumental music derived from Stanley, but without the master's freshness and vigour. Alcock's output includes several large-scale anthems with orchestra, including We will rejoice, which he contributed to the Worcester Music Meeting of 1773. He cultivated the art of catch and canon writing.
Source: Watkins Shaw & Peter Marr: John Alcock quoted from Grove Music Online accessed 2 October 2006