John Veale was an English composer.

His great-uncle was the composer Cyril Rootham. He read modern history at Oxford University (1939–41) and studied music with Wellesz (1940–42, 1947–8) and with Sir Thomas Armstrong. A USA Commonwealth Fellowship (1949–51) enabled him to study with Sessions and Roy Harris.

His Panorama was conducted by Boult at the Malvern Festival of 1951 and Barbirolli conducted the première of the Symphony no.1 at the 1952 Cheltenham Festival.

He was a junior research fellow at Oxford (1951–3).

For 15 years he was film correspondent for the Oxford Mail and himself wrote many film scores.

His music is tonal and may show an indebtedness to the mystic and modal styles of Vaughan Williams. He had a gift for colour and orchestral texture, seen in Kubla Khan, a work that marries the indigenous atmosphere of the East with the English choral tradition. Song of Radha is an erotic love-poem of Indian origin.

[Biography from Chester Music]