This is a summary of 1928 in music in the United Kingdom.

Events

January – Edward German is knighted for services to music.^[1]

• April – While studying under Frank Bridge, 15-year-old Benjamin Britten composes his String Quartet in F.^[2]
• June – Herbert Sumsion leaves the United States for the UK to take up the post of organist at Gloucester Cathedral.
• 9 August – Percy Grainger marries Swedish artist Ella Ström at the Hollywood Bowl.^[3]
• September – Benjamin Britten goes as a boarder to Gresham's School, in Holt, Norfolk.^[4]
• 10 October – Eric Fenby arrives in Grez to begin work as amanuensis for Frederick Delius.^[5]
• date unknown
  • Malcolm Sargent becomes conductor of the Royal Choral Society.^[6]
  • Arnold Bax begins taking an annual working holiday in Morar, in the west Scottish Highlands.

Popular music

• Noël Coward – "World Weary"^[7]

Classical music: new works

• Kenneth J. Alford – Dunedin (march)
• Granville Bantock – Pagan Symphony
• Arthur Bliss – Pastoral 'Lie strewn the white flocks'
• Hamilton Harty – Suite for Cello and Piano
• Gustav Holst – A Moorside Suite^[8]
• John Ireland – Two Songs, 1928
• Cyril Rootham – "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity"
• Ralph Vaughan Williams – Te Deum in G major
• William Walton – Sinfonia Concertante

Opera

• Stanley Bate – The Forest Enchanted^[9]
• William Henry Bell – The Mouse Trap; libretto after The Sire de Maletroit's Door by Robert Louis Stevenson

Musical theatre

• The Good Old Days of England, music by Percy Fletcher, libretto by Oscar Asche^[10]

Births

• 17 January – Matt McGinn, folk singer (died 1977)
• 8 February – Osian Ellis, harpist
• 5 March – Diana Coupland, singer and actress (died 2006)
• 6 March – Ronald Stevenson, composer and pianist (died 2015)
• 13 March – Ronnie Hazlehurst, conductor and composer (died 2007)
• 2 April – April Cantelo, soprano
• 4 April
  • Jimmy Logan, entertainer (died 2001)
  • Monty Norman, singer and composer of the James Bond signature tune
• 19 April – Alexis Korner, blues musician and historian (died 1984)
• 27 May – Thea Musgrave, composer
• 6 July – Peter Glossop, operatic baritone (died 2008)
• 16 July – Bryden Thomson, orchestral conductor (died 1991)
• 20 July – Peter Ind, jazz double-bassist and record producer
• 26 August – Andrew Porter, music critic (died 2015)
• 6 October – Flora MacNeil, singer in Scottish Gaelic (died 2015)
• 20 December – Donald Adams, operatic bass-baritone (died 1996)

Deaths

• 1 March – Sir Herbert Brewer, organist and composer (born 1865)
• 27 March – Leslie Stuart, musical theatre composer (born 1863)
• 13 May – David Thomas, composer (born 1881)
• 21 June – Marie Novello, pianist (born 1898)
• 12 September – Howard Talbot, conductor and composer (born 1865)
• 30 October – Percy Anderson, D'Oyly Carte stage designer (born 1851)
• 26 November – Herbert Sullivan, nephew and biographer of Sir Arthur Sullivan (born 1868)