Introducing Constant Lambert Part II

Aside from being an important composer and conductor, Constant Lambert was also a perceptive critic. His major literary achievement was Music Ho! A Study of Music in Decline (1934). Despite being slightly eccentric, this volume presents his “very independent opinions” of the music of his generation. Ninety years on, it still makes for remarkably refreshing reading.

The first major biographical study was Richard Shead’s highly readable, Constant Lambert (Simon Publications, London, 1973, reissued by Thames Publishing in 1986). This book was originally authored just over 20 years after Lambert’s death. Unfortunately, Shead was hampered by the non-cooperation of some individuals, who could have made the story more accurate, especially concerning his personal relationships. That said, it remains an essential introduction to the man and his achievement.

The former poet laureate, Andrew Motion authored The Lamberts: George, Constant and Kit which is an important study of three members of the Lambert family. It was published in 1986 by Chatto and Windus. This tells of the “remarkable family…in which accomplishment and promise are cut short, again and again, by bohemian life at its most extravagant and self-destructive.” Motion examines the life and times of Constant, preceded by an analysis of his father, George, an artist and followed by Kit, his son, best recalled as the manager of the rock band The Who.

In 2014, The Boydell Press published Stephen Lloyd’s scholarly biography: Constant Lambert – Beyond the Rio Grande. In this volume “every example of the career and life of this extraordinary, multi-talented man is examined.” Important discussions explore his enthusiasm for jazz as well as his “long standing affair” with Margot Fonteyn. This definitive study presents the reader with numerous musical examples, extensive appendices (containing a catalogue of Lambert’s compositions, his journalism, broadcasts, as well as the Sadler’s Wells London Repertoire).

Constant Lambert on Record

It is fair to say that most of Constant Lambert’s published music has been recorded at least once. Although many of these have been deleted from the catalogues, numerous are available second hand, on YouTube and streaming.

An early highlight was a long-playing album featuring the Horoscope ballet, coupled with the suite from Brian Easdale’s Red Shoes. This was released in 1949 and featured The Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Lambert and Muir Mathieson (Easdale). It has been remastered in recent years on CD (ACMEM64CD).

In 1979 the Lyrita Record company issued the ballets Pomona and Romeo and Juliet. (SRCS.110/SRCD.215). The English Chamber Orchestra was conducted by Norman Del Mar. A major Lambert-only CD was released in 1992 on the Hyperion label, which included Summer’s Last Will and Testament, the Aubade Héroique and The Rio Grande. David Lloyd Jones conducted the English Northern Sinfonia with the Leeds Festival Chorus and the Chorus of Opera North (CDA66565). Two years later, the same company issued an important retrospective of Lambert’s less well-known music. This comprised the Concerto for piano and nine players, the remarkable Eight Poems of Li-Po sung by Philip Langridge, the Sonata for piano and the folk-tale Mr Bear Squash-You-All-Flat narrated by Nigel Hawthorne. The piano soloist was Ian Brown, accompanied by the Nash Ensemble (CDA66574).        

The year 1999 was good for Lambert enthusiasts. Hyperion (CDA67049) delivered the ballet scores of Pomona and Tiresias performed by the English Northern Philharmonia under the baton of David Lloyd-Jones. The same year saw ASV (CD WHL 2122) release a concert of Lambert’s music, including the Merchant Seaman Suite, the Piano Concerto (1924) as well as Pomona and the early ballet, the Prize Fight. The soloist was David Owen Norris, and the BBC Concert Orchestra was conducted by Barry Wordsworth. In 2006, Mark Bebbington recorded the piano repertoire on the Somm Label. (SOMMCD 062)

Over the years, several recordings have been published with Constant Lambert conducting concert and ballet music by a variety of composers such as Tchaikovsky, Elgar, Walton, and Waldteufel. Quite a few of Lambert’s ballet arrangements have appear on CD: Meyerbeer’s Les Patineurs, Liszt’s Dante Sonata and William Boyce’s The Prospect Before Us.

If you can only listen to one record…

One CD emerges as presenting a superb overview of Lambert’s achievement. In 1992, a selection of three important pieces was issued on the Argo label (436 118-2) – The Rio Grande, the Concerto for piano and nine players and the ballet suite from Horoscope. Barry Wordsworth conducted the BBC Singers and the BBC Concert Orchestra, with soloists Kathryn Stott, piano, and Della Jones, mezzo-soprano. This CD was subsequently reissued on Decca’s British Music Collection (473 424-2) in 2002. The Gramophone magazine (October 1992) considered that this album presented “essential works for anyone who wishes to gain a comprehensive prospect of Lambert.”

Finally, if you can only hear one work…

This must be Horoscope (1937). Here, Lambert explored “zodiacal theories” to create the book for this ballet score. It tells the story of a man born with the sun in Leo, and the moon in Gemini, and a woman, born with the moon in Gemini, but the sun in Virgo. The progress reflects Leo and Virgo trying to keep the lovers apart, but the Moon and Gemini finally bring them together.

The ballet has not been performed since the wartime tour of Holland when the orchestral parts and the scenery were lost. Luckily, a copy of the full score was retained in London. It is normally heard as an orchestral suite using only five or six of the nine surviving sections. Nevertheless, in 2004, Barry Wordsworth and the BBC Concert Orchestra made a fine recording of the complete ballet (ASV CD DCA 1168). It is coupled with William Walton’s Bach transcriptions, The Wise Virgins (1940).

Contemporary assessment suggests that Horoscope was a success because it is a perfect fusion of Constant Lambert’s music, Frederick Ashton’s choreography and Sophie Fedorovitch’s stage design. The score did not eschew melody and was richly orchestrated. One reviewer, Arnold Haskell, considered that “with Horoscope, ballet, now truly indigenous in England, reaches a splendid maturity.”

Concluded

With thanks to the English Music Festival’s journal, Spirited, where this essay was first published.

Introducing Constant Lambert Part I

On the evening of Monday 27 February 1928, the audience of the BBC wireless service heard the premiere performance of Constant Lambert’s The Rio Grande. The composer conducted the Wireless Chorus and Orchestra with the piano obligato played by Angus Morrison. This was part of ‘A Light Orchestral Concert’ which included works by Ambroise Thomas, Giuseppe Verdi and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

The contemporary Radio Times explained to the readers that this new work is “a setting of a poem by Edith (sic) Sitwell, beginning – ‘On the Rio Grande/They don’t dance no Sarabande.’ What they dance instead is suggested in the music which, we are told, brings in fox-trot and Charleston rhythms.” Apart from a misquote of the poem and naming the wrong poet, it was in fact Sacheverell Sitwell, this is a succinct precis of this remarkable piece.

What was extraordinary about The Rio Grande was that Lambert had managed to synthesise several stylistic parameters: “African American music, including ragtime and blues, Latin American music, and exoticism.”  Biographer Richard Shead notes the “obvious” influences such as “jazz, Spanish military marches and tangos, Stravinsky in the rhythms and Delius in the harmonies.” It is not surprising that a link is made to George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. This had been first heard in Great Britain on 15 June 1925, in a live BBC broadcast from the Savoy Hotel with Gershwin as soloist and accompanied by the Savoy Orpheans and the Savoy Havana Band. It is not known if Constant Lambert heard this transmission, however two years later, he was to take the American’s “attempts to amalgamate elements of jazz and symphonic music” and create a new-minted British work.

Hubert Foss, in the programme note for the London public concert premiere of Rio Grande wrote: “The words are used as a background of atmosphere. They are something for the chorus to sing in the musical part it plays in the work. They are even subjected occasionally to word painting. Their picture is the picture the music gives: that is their whole connection, a very close one, with the music." Elsewhere Foss stated that in The Rio Grande there is “something more than English in this music, a feeling of the South and its blazing sun. He has his feet on English soil, but his mind escapes.”

Constant Lambert, with his The Rio Grande, had written one of two game changing British works of the 1930s. The other was William Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast (1930-31).

Brief Biography of Constant Lambert:

• [Leonard] Constant Lambert was born at the St Clement's Nursing Home, Fulham, London, on 23 August 1905.
• Educated at Christ’s Hospital, Horsham, Sussex, between 1915 and 1922.
• Won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, attending between 1922-25. His teachers were Herbert Fryer, piano, Ralph Vaughan Williams and R.O. Morris, composition, and Malcolm Sargent, conducting.
• Wrote his first major ballet score, Romeo and Juliet for Diaghilev. It was premiered in Monte Carlo on 4 May 1926.
• Best-known work, The Rio Grande for chorus, piano and orchestra was premiered on 27 February 1928.
• Appointed conductor of the Camargo Society in 1930. This lasted until June 1933 when the society was disbanded.
• Married Florence (Flo) Chuter on 5 August 1931. The only child, Christopher (Kit), was born on 11 May 1935.
• His idiosyncratic but lively and provocative study of the then-contemporary scene, Music Ho! A Study of Music in Decline was published during 1934.
• Lambert conducted the Vic-Wells (later the Sadler's Wells) from 1935 to 1947.
• His choral magnum opus, Summer’s Last Will and Testament was premiered on 29 January 1936, at the Queen’s Hall, London.
• Began an affair with the ballet dancer Margot Fonteyn in 1937. It lasted until 1947.
• The ballet Horoscope was premiered on 27 January 1938, at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre.
• Escaped capture in the Netherlands whilst on tour with the Sadler’s Wells ballet in 1940.
• Was associated with E.N.S.A. (Entertainments National Service Association) during the Second World War. In 1942, he was on the C.E.M.A. (Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts, predecessor of the Arts Council of Great Britain) music panel.
• Married his second wife, Isabel Agnes Delmer, née Nicholas, on 7 October 1947.
• Last major composition, the ballet Tiresias, first performed on 9 July 1951.
• Constant Lambert died at the London Clinic, 20 Devonshire Place, London on 21 August 1951. Cause of death was “broncho-pneumonia and undiagnosed diabetes mellitus,” complicated by acute alcoholism.

Constant Lambert was a complex character, who excelled in numerous different fields: composition, art appreciation, literature, and practical musicianship. In all he exhibited exceptional talent. Sadly, his composing was interrupted by his extensive conducting duties and the writing of a considerable amount of journalism.

Lambert’s tastes ranged widely and embraced Liszt, Meyerbeer, Purcell, Sousa, and jazz. As a conductor he interpreted a wide range of scores, in the ballet theatre as well as the concert hall. He was especially fond of encouraging less well-known composers.

His personal life gave him many problems, especially ill health, overindulgence in alcohol and difficulties with personal relationships. Yet, despite this, his legacy is secure as a major-minor composer. Furthermore, Lambert’s impact on English ballet was immense and ought not to be ignored by historians.

Exploring Constant Lambert’s Music

Constant Lambert’s catalogue is quite limited in extent, with around only twenty works published. He destroyed many of his student efforts. His earliest surviving piece is the Two Songs on poems by Sacheverell Sitwell, written in 1923. They remain in manuscript.

Lambert’s first ballet score, Prize Fight: Realistic Ballet in one act is less ‘realistic,’ but nods to the music hall or the “aesthetics” of Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau. Despite being completed, it was never presented as a ballet. Its first performance had to wait until 1969, when it was heard during that year’s Bromsgrove Festival.

Subsequent ballet scores followed. The great impresario Sergei Diaghilev commissioned the 20-year-old Lambert to compose a major score for the Ballets Russes. Romeo and Juliet was penned between 1924-25 and was premiered on 4 May 1926, by the Diaghilev Ballet company at Monte Carlo. There were disagreements between Lambert and Diaghilev over a change of scenario, the sets, and the costumes. He tried to withdraw his score; it had to be placed under police guard until after the premiere.

There was less controversy over Pomona: a ballet in one act (1926) which was first heard as a Divertimento at the Chelsea Music Club on 16 November 1926. The premiere of the ballet was given in Buenos Aires, Argentine on 9 September 1927. The book was based on the classical Ovidian story of Pomona and Vertumnus. Ten years later, Lambert finished his ballet, Horoscope (1937) (see below). His final original ballet score was Tiresias (1950-51), commissioned for the Festival of Britain. This was an exploration of various classical themes of sexual ambiguity, shape shifting and an argument about which of the sexes enjoys the “physical act” the more. It is scored for an orchestra without strings, which enhances its acerbic sound. It was premiered at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden on 9 July 1951 by the Sadler’s Wells Ballet.

Other contributions to the ballet repertoire were arrangements of many other composers’ music. These include Harlequin in the Street (Couperin), Apparitions (Liszt), Les Patineurs (Meyerbeer) and Ballabile (Chabrier).

Lambert wrote little for the piano. Best known is the jazz infused, lugubrious, Elegiac Blues (1927) dedicated to the American cabaret singer Florence Mills. Jazz does pervade the Piano Sonata (1928-29) but reflects the “outbursts of violence” and the “melancholy” side of that genre. It is powerful and displays considerable invention and formal subtlety.

In 1924, Lambert was busy on his Concerto for piano, two trumpets, timpani, and strings. It remained incomplete at the time of his death. The sketches were edited by Giles Easterbrook, and Edward Shipley. It was premiered at St John’s Smith Square, London on 2 March 1988. Ian Lace (MusicWeb International) discerned the influence of Prokofiev, Ravel, Poulenc, Stravinsky, and Delius. This is a remarkable effort for a nineteen-year-old “college boy.”  It is a vibrant work that deserves its place in the repertoire. Seven years later, Lambert would finish his Concerto for piano and nine instruments (1931). This was a tribute to Peter Warlock who had died the previous year. Listeners looking for a reprise of his more popular jazzier inspirations may be disappointed. To be sure, the Manchester Guardian reported that it “[comes] recognisably from the pen that wrote The Rio Grande, but with added maturity and astringency which will probably prevent it from becoming popular.”  The Concerto, which is in three movements, is unusual in that the finale is, in fact, the slow movement. The overall sweep of the work is from high spirits to gloom.

Summer’s Last Will and Testament: A Masque for orchestra, chorus, and baritone solo (1932-35), is one of Lambert’s most important works. It sets texts by the Elizabethan author Thomas Nashe. Richard Shead has explained that Nashe’s text is “ostensibly concerned with the seasons, but their underlying theme is the precariousness of life in Elizabethan London and the ever-present danger of the Plague.”  Historically, Summer’s Last Will got off to a bad start. It was premiered on 29 January 1936, only nine days after the death of King George V. The public and the critics were in no mood for what appeared a long morbid take on “mortality.” It has languished ever since: it was given its one and only recording in 1991.

Other important orchestral pieces were a Aubade Héroïque for orchestra (1942) which was inspired by Lambert’s experience of waiting to be evacuated from Holland in 1940. Its mood owes much to Ralph Vaughan Williams. Richard Shead explains that the Music for Orchestra (1927) is one of the few examples of Lambert’s genuinely abstract works. Despite its dull title, this two-movement symphonic study is full of romance, imaginative scoring, and supressed intensity.

Towards the end of his life, Lambert composed music for the film industry: the documentary Merchant Seamen (1940) and the feature Anna Karenina (1947).

To be continued…

With thanks to the English Music Festival’s journal, Spirited, where this essay was first published.

Constant Lambert on Atonalism in Music

“Atonal music” can be described as music without a key. It is a term that can be used for music in which the twelve semitones of the scale are “of equal value, as there is no fundamental note or tonic thus: at the outset no note is established being more important than another.” (Erwin Stein). Going further, as no note is more significant than another, melodies must be formed in such a manner so that no note predominates. It is essential that dissonances rather than consonances are the harmonic norm. Key centres are abolished, and the common chord is abandoned. This “school” has been prominent since about 1907 when the term was coined by Joseph Marx. Some critics used the word “atonal” as a derogatory term for music that they deemed as “non-musical.” 

Examples of “atonal music” would include Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire (1912), the final movement of his String Quartet No.2 (1908) and Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck (1925). Atonalism would soon shade off into twelve-tone, integral serialism and indeterminacy.

It should be noted that Schoenberg and Alban Berg did not approve of the term “atonal.” The former preferred the term “pantonal,” “denoting [a] synthesis of all keys.”

In 1934, composer and conductor Constant Lambert (1905-51) published his idiosyncratic but lively and provocative study of the then-contemporary music scene, Music Ho! A Study of Music in Decline. His comments on Atonalism are both witty and pertinent. He did get wrong the ongoing impact on subsequent classical music. Nowadays, however, many listeners can enjoy atonal music as well as works constructed on traditional key-centred structures.

Lambert wrote: “There is one objection to atonalism so simple and childish that no one seems to have had the courage to make it. Although atonalism has produced complicated and objective fugal structures that can with justice be compared with the Kunst der Fugue of Bach, subjective and neurasthenic operas that can be compared with Tristan and Isolde or Parsifal, it has produced nothing that we can set beside Chabrier and Offenbach, let alone the comic operas of Mozart. The dance movements in the Serenade and the op. 25 Piano Suite, which are Schönberg's nearest approach to this genre, are sufficient proof of the essential solemnity of atonalism. An atonal comic opera is a chimerical thought, and though it is unlikely that either Schönberg or Berg would in any case wish to attempt such a genre, the mere fact that the task would be impossible is a proof of the narrow emotional range offered by their idiom.

Atonalism, though plastic in minor details of texture, is in fact the least flexible and most monotonous of media, and for that reason alone it is unlikely to play much part in the music of the future. It will always remain a thing apart, having something of the hieratical solemnity and exclusiveness of a hereditary religious order; and the more we free ourselves from tonal prejudice and from the tyranny of textbook harmony the less appeal atonalism will have, because it is based on a direct reversal of academic method. Like blasphemy, it requires a background of belief for its full effect. Composers like Bartók or Vaughan Williams could no more become atonalists than a freethinker could take part in a Black Mass.”

Constant Lambert, Music Ho! (Faber and Faber, London, 1934, p.246)

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

IT WAS NOT UNTIL HE WAS APPOINTED MUSICAL DIRECTOR OF THE VIC-WELLS BALLET that he finally established his reputation as an authority on ballet. He took the Company to Paris for the 1937 Exhibition, and in 1939 appeared with them before the King and Queen at a special gala performance. The Ballet was reaching a high standard of perfection when war broke out and imposed great difficulties upon the Company. Nevertheless, it was not long before they were touring the provinces again - without an orchestra, and relying entirely upon two pianos, one of which Lambert had to play himself! They were in Holland on a propaganda tour when the Germans overran the country in 1940, and they had to fly for their lives.

In his association with the BBC, he has always specialized in programmes of contemporary and ballet music, and it is only in the last two or three years that he has done symphonic work. Recently, too, he has toured with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and worked with E.N.S.A. [1] in the provision of symphony concerts for factory workers.

Constant Lambert considers that the present routine of concert-giving is stultifying the art of music, for although he appreciates that the more popular works of Tchaikovsky and Beethoven have often to be used to draw the public, he can see no reason why the vast number of lesser-known compositions should not be mixed in with the popular music. The leading symphony orchestras should have a much larger and more varied repertoire.

It is interesting to note that far more modern and unusual work can be played in concerts given to factory workers than in the programmes played to the more sophisticated audiences in London Constant Lambert - finds that the "new" audiences appreciate anything that possesses vitality and colour.

He insists that we should do far more of the earlier works, because most people's knowledge of music starts with Beethoven, and the bulk of the music written before his time is unknown to them. There is also a tremendous amount of fine Russian and French music that has never been performed in this country. The neglect of this - as of the works of many of our contemporary composers - is probably due to the lack of time for adequate rehearsal in the arrangements of most of our orchestras to-day. The programmes we get now are becoming far too stereotyped: must we always have one symphony and one piano concerto? Lambert would like to see far more programmes made up of attractive smaller works.

The present boom in music will subside, he thinks, and therefore after the war we must be far more enterprising, choosing our programmes with greater care and thought for the audiences. People tolerate inferior work now because the war has restricted their other forms of entertainment and-recreation; but as soon as conditions revert to normal, as soon as people get the use of their cars again for weekends in the country, only first-class concerts will attract them.

The tremendous interest now being shown in ballet is more likely to continue because the English Ballet is now as firmly established as the Russian (which evolved from the Italian, by the way). Moreover, it now has a much more general following, whereas before the war it was patronized chiefly by an exclusive "highbrow" audience. But even in this sphere, untiring efforts must be made to improve the standard continually, since there is always the danger that the novelty will wear off and that the ' new " audiences will look elsewhere.

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

Donald Brook’s pen portrait takes the reader up to about 1944. Lambert was unfit for active service during the war years. However, he toured with E.N.S.A.at both home and abroad. Until his death he continued with conducting engagements with the Proms, Covent Garden and Sadler’s Wells. 

The 1940s and 1950s saw few new compositions. Lambert contributed two film scores – Merchant Seamen and Anna Karenina. There was also incidental music for a stage performance of Hamlet. In 1950, his Trois Pièces Nègres Pour Les Touches Blanches for piano duet was published by Oxford University Press. Lambert’s final score was the long ballet, Tiresias, which was based on the story of a Greek seer who changes sex. The premiere performance received typically negative reviews.

On 21 August 1951, Constant Lambert died. Overwork, an excess of alcohol and ill-health had taken their toll.

Notes:

[1] E.N.S.A (Entertainments National Service Association) was set up in 1939 by Basil Dean and Leslie Henson. It provided a wide range of entertainment to members of the armed forces- both low and high brow. The initials were affectionately renamed as Every Night Something Awful!

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.”

Constant Lambert; Horoscope Suite

One of my Desert Island Discs is Contant Lambert's ballet score Horoscope. I recently found this review on the New York Times and it is worth quoting as it gives a good account of a piece of music that was orginally written for the stage but is equslly succesful int he concert hall.

Constant Lambert’s ‘Horoscope’ suite for orchestra is an arrangement of some ballet music bearing the same title. It bears the stamp of serious and resourceful musicianship on every page. Among British composers Lambert enjoys an enviable and well-deserved reputation based on talents which have been put to the test in many fields. He began to make his name as a composer; he has since conducted important concerts with distinction; his essays in criticism (Music Ho!) have revealed a keen, logical temper and individual outlook. He has thus shown all the qualifications of the modern composer who is expected not only to write music but ot write about music and, if the occasion should demand it, superintend its performance.

This prevailing fashion has historical precedent; but while in the past the majority of composers confined themselves to composition, at present the majority prefers a wider field of action. If it is too early as yet to discover whether the additional tasks of the creative artist have been generally beneficial or otherwise, in the case of Lambert no doubt is possible.
Familiarity with every aspect of concert performances was necessary to make his suite the well-balanced, slick thing it is , as well to resist the temptation to exceed a profitable length and to choose between that which is effective only when heard in conjunction with stage action and music needs no other aid that that of responsible presentation. This is a merit ‘Horoscope' shares with few other suites from ballets.

It is not by any means its only commendation. The musical interest is independent of the story it illustrates; indeed, the story may be ignored altogether, since every movement responds admirably to the aesthetic if not to the academic requirements of a sympathetic compositions.
It is, of course, impossible to foretell how Lambert’s music will stand the test of time and whether it in its composition a just proportion of the only elixir which can prolong life indefinitely – character. But it is most adroitly pieced together and cleverly scored; it runs smoothly from beginning to end; it keeps its interest alive without having to recourse to acrobatics or extravagance.

F. Bonavia New York Times October 16 1938