Sir Thomas Beecham

by Neville Cardus

A memoir of the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham.

Genres: Music

126 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1961

About the author

Sir John Frederick Neville Cardus CBE (3 April 1888 – 28 February 1975) was an English writer and critic, best known for his writing on music and cricket. For many years, he wrote for The Manchester Guardian. He was untrained in music, and his style of criticism was subjective, romantic and personal, in contrast with his critical contemporary Ernest Newman. Before becoming a cricket writer, he had been a cricket coach at a boys' school. His writing about the game was innovative, turning what had previously been in general a purely factual form into vivid description and criticism.

Reviews

[Patrick Johns · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this was a real pleasure - I was intrigued, and charmed from the first page. It is not often when you finish a book you feel like going back to the first page and starting over again.

This book worked for me on many levels:
- A study of the development of the  provincial  classical music scene in the North of England (mostly Manchester) in the first half of the 20th century.
- Contemporary musical tastes of the time - something that has always fascinated me, why some composers go in and out of favour.  For example, Mahler, Bruckner and Sibelius hardly get a mention but Delius, Richard Strauss and Elgar get plenty.
- A portrait of an eccentric, charming, larger than life, sometimes scathing, and very wealthy Englishman - Sir Thomas was a scion of the family that invented Beecham's powders.
- A discussion of conducting technique, and there are many very funny anecdotes of Sir Thomas's exchanges with orchestra members and operatic stars of the day.  One of my favourites (although not actually in this book) is when he allegedly said to a cellist orchestra member: "Madam, you have between your legs an instrument capable of giving pleasure to thousands, and all you do is scratch it". 
- Neville Cardus's inimitable, erudite and entertaining prose style, and he also drops in a few cricket analogies.
- Opinions of, and anecdotes relating to notable figures in the music world at that time, notably Delius, Elgar, Von Karajan, Furtwangler, Toscanini and Barbirolli.

Sadly this is out of print, but there are a few copies around: try AbeBooks; I found my copy browsing Archives Fine Books second hand books in Brisbane.