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English composer and organist, John Reading was probably son of John Reading, organist of Winchester College in the 1680s and ‘90s. John Reading the younger was educated at the Chapel Royal under John Blow until his voice broke in 1699. He served as organist of Dulwich College before moving to Lincoln, working first as a poor clerk and later as Master of the Choristers until 1707. He returned to London in 1708 taking up the position of organist at St John’s, Hackney. Despite remaining for nearly 20 years, Reading found himself at odds with the church authorities: parish records of 1719 refer to ‘irregularities relating to the execution of his Office as Organist’, and, in particular, ‘playing the Voluntary too long, and using persistently too light, Airy and Jyggy Tunes, no ways proper to raise the Devotion Suitable for a Religeous Assembly’. In 1727 he was dismissed and later that year he was appointed organist of the combined parishes of St Mary Woolnoth and St Mary Woolchurch Haw in the City of London, and in 1731 organist of St Dunstan-in-the-West, holding both posts until his death.
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