Not to be confused with the Irish Romantic-era composer William Vincent Wallace William Wallace (3 July 1860 - 16 December 1940) was a Scottish classical composer. Born at Greenock, he studied ophthalmology at the University of Glasgow, and in Vienna and Paris becoming a qualified ophthalmic surgeon, before deciding to study music at the Royal Academy in London in 1889. Wallace was greatly influenced by Liszt, and was an early (though not the first) composer of symphonic poems in Britain.