1871–1947 · English organist, teacher and Professor of Music, University of London
Sir Percy Carter Buck (25 March 1871 – 3 October 1947) was an English organist and teacher who ran the music at Harrow School for more than a quarter-century, held chairs at Trinity College Dublin and the University of London, and was knighted in 1937. His late book Psychology for Musicians (1944) is the earliest place Quote Investigator finds the saying in its familiar amateur-versus-professional shape. Buck does not claim it, and the page shows why: he introduces it as one of “two definitions [that] have been made” — a passive that credits nobody, a piece of received teaching-room wisdom he is passing on rather than coining. Quote Investigator puts it no more strongly either: “Buck did not take credit for the saying which was presented as an anonymous definition.”