Constant Lambert: Donald Brook’s Pen-Portrait from 'Conductors’ Gallery' Part I

Donald Brook wrote a series of books presenting attractive short studies or pen-portraits of a wide variety of instrumentalists, conductors, composers, and authors. He had met many of these people and had a chance to speak to them about their achievements and interests.

Brook’s essay is self-explanatory. I have added a few foot notes as appropriate. Additionally at the conclusion I have brought Lambert’s biography up to date as Brook’s book was published in 1945, some six years before the composer’s death. 

Brook’s essay is self-explanatory. I have added a few foot notes as appropriate. Additionally at the conclusion I have brought Lambert’s biography up to date as Brook’s book was published in 1945, some six years before the composer’s death. 

Brook’s essay is self-explanatory. I have added a few foot notes as appropriate. Additionally at the conclusion I have brought Lambert’s biography up to date as Brook’s book was published in 1945, some six years before the composer’s death.       

"THAT CONSTANT LAMBERT SHOULD HAVE DISTINGUISHED himself in the world of Ballet is not surprising when one considers that he was brought up in an environment dominated more by art than music. His father was G. W. Lambert, A.R.A., the painter, and his brother Maurice has now risen to eminence as a sculptor. [1]

Born in London in 1905 and educated at Christ's Hospital, Constant Lambert did not fully appreciate what music meant to him until a prolonged illness cut him off from all the other and more usual schoolboy pursuits. He tells me that this illness affected the entire course of his life, because while he was indisposed, he had little else but music and books to occupy his attention. His piano was such a joy and consolation to him that he resolved to become a professional pianist, and at the age of seventeen he entered the Royal College of Music.

He had begun to compose when he was about sixteen, and the encouragement he received at the College - not only from the staff, but from the other enthusiastic students around him - stimulated him to write a considerable amount in his youth. He has now withdrawn most of his early works because he regards them as immature, but they must certainly have shown outstanding merit, for he was only twenty when Serge Diaghilev commissioned him to write a ballet for his famous Russian Ballet. Incidentally, he was the first English composer to be honoured in this manner. The result was Romeo and Juliet, [2] which was first produced at Monte Carlo in 1926 and put on in London soon after. He followed this with another ballet, Pomona, [3] which was given its first performance in Buenos Aires in 1927.

This promising start to his musical career did not pave an easy way to prosperity however, and he had to do a variety of odd musical jobs to pay his way in those days. Free-lance journalism in musical subjects was one of the methods he chose to augment his income, and in time he became a regular contributor to Figaro, [4] The New Statesman and Nation, and the Sunday Referee. His book, Music Ho! A Study of Music in Decline was published in 1934. [5]

One of his most notable successes was his setting for chorus, pianoforte, and orchestra, of Sacheverell Sitwell's poem, The Rio Grande. It was first performed in Manchester on December 12th, 1929, and was heard in the Queen's Hall, London, on the following day, when an excellent performance was given by Sir Hamilton Harty and the Hallé Orchestra.

His Music for Orchestra was first played at Oxford in 1931, and then nearly five years elapsed before he produced Summer's Last Will and Testament, with words from Thomas Nashe's comedy. The latter made its debut when it was played in the Queen's Hall by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under his own direction in January 1936 One of his latest works is the ballet Horoscope. [6]

Brook, Donald, Conductors’ Gallery, The Lewes Press, 1945, pp.85-87

Notes:

[1] George Washington Thomas Lambert (1873-1930) was a well-regarded portrait painter as well as being a war artist during the Great War. In 1921, he returned to Australia where he had been brought up, living his remaining years in New South Wales. Maurice Prosper Lambert RA (1901-64) was a British sculptor. Many of his works were public monuments. Between 1950 and 1958, Lambert was Professor of Sculpture at the Royal Academy of Arts.

[2] Lambert’s score was originally a suite dansée Adam and Eve, which was never performed in its original form. The composer made several changes and added an Alla Marcia. The ballet depicts a rehearsal of a ballet about Romeo and Juliet, rather than telling Shakespeare’s tale. Dancers practice at the barre and fall in love with each other. Constant Lambert was unhappy with decisions made by Diaghilev, especially the use of sets and costumes designed by Max Ernst and Joan Miró, rather than the composer’s friend Christopher Wood.

[3] Pomona tells the Ovidian story of the love between Vertumnus who was the god of seasons, change and plant growth, as well as gardens and fruit trees, and the nymph Pomona.

[4] In fact, Lambert only contributed two articles to Le Figaro. He was much more prolific with his submissions to the Sunday Referee.

[5] The publisher described Constant Lambert’s Music Ho! as “A brilliant analysis of the music of the twenties and thirties, also discusses the music of composers like Stravinsky, Satie, Gershwin, and considers the contributions of jazz and other pop music of the time with classical music.” Where he got things wrong was his suggestion that the future of the symphony in the 20^th century should follow Sibelius “leading the way out of an exhausted tradition while avoiding the sterility of Arnold Schoenberg’s dodecaphony.”

[6] Horoscope was created in 1937 by Frederick Ashton with scenery by Sophie Fedorovitch and music by Constant Lambert. “It is based on astrological themes and is reminiscent of Gustav Holst's The Planets in its musical exploration of the mystical.”