Anthony Lewis (musician)
Sir Anthony Carey Lewis
After working in the music department of the BBC, Lewis became professor of music at the University of Birmingham (1947–68) and was principal of the Royal Academy of Music in London (1968–82).
As a conductor Lewis played a role in the baroque music revival of the mid 20th century by directing performances of several Handel opera revivals, and making commercial premiere recordings of works from the 17th and 18th centuries.
Life and career
Early years
Lewis was born in
BBC, wartime and postwar
In September 1935 Lewis joined the music staff of the
During the Second World War Lewis joined the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, serving in the Middle East. In addition to his official duties he helped to organise, and conducted, concerts for the troops.[1] After the war, Lewis returned to the BBC in 1946. His brief was to plan and take charge of the music in the new Third Programme. The Times commented, "its famously high musical standards were substantially due to Lewis's combination of scholarly curiosity and painstaking efficiency".[2]
Birmingham and Musica Britannica
In 1947, at the age of 32, Lewis joined the faculty of the University of Birmingham as Peyton and Barber Professor of Music, a post he held for 21 years.[4] In The Musical Times his former student and later colleague Nigel Fortune noted that as well as "developing an academically fertile department", Lewis conducted "a wide range of music in professional concerts and with university forces", in demanding modern works such as Les noces and Cantata Profana.[4]
At Birmingham, Lewis continued his efforts to revive Baroque music. In live performance he set high standards for performances of choral and stage works.[5] The Musical Times praised his pioneering recordings of little-known works such as Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine and Purcell's The Fairy-Queen and King Arthur, which the magazine considered set new standards. Lewis was an early proponent of the revival of Handel operas, which for 200 years had been generally regarded as unstageable.[4][6]
During his early years as professor at Birmingham, Lewis approached the Royal Musical Association with a proposal to launch a national edition of British music, making available scholarly editions of otherwise generally unpublished scores. He contended:
in certain fields and at certain periods, England has occupied a central, and not merely a marginal or subsidiary place in European musical history. But we cannot expect English music to be seen in its true perspective or granted its rightful status if we allow the present enormous gaps in modern printed editions to persist.[7]
The proposal was agreed, and resulted in the inception of Musica Britannica in 1951.[5] Lewis was its general editor, assisted by Thurston Dart. In its first 20 years the undertaking produced more than 30 volumes.[5]
In 1954 Lewis was appointed chairman of the music advisory panel of the Arts Council of Great Britain, holding the post until 1965. While at Birmingham, Lewis married Lesley Lisle Smith (b. 1924) on 10 September 1959. There were no children.[1]
Royal Academy of Music
In 1968 Lewis was appointed principal of the RAM on the retirement of
Lewis was president of the Royal Musical Association from 1963 to 1969; a member of the music committee of the British Council, 1967–73; and a director of English National Opera between 1974 and 1978.[10]
Lewis was appointed
In 1982 Lewis retired from the RAM. He died at his home in Haslemere the following year, at the age of 68. In his honour the RAM established the Sir Anthony Lewis memorial prize for student performers using the repertory of Musica Britannica.[1]
Works
Compositions
In his Who's Who entry Lewis selected eight of his works for mention: Psalm 86 (1935), A Choral Overture (1937), City Dances for orchestra (1944), Trumpet Concerto (1947), Three Invocations (1949), A Tribute of Praise (1951), Horn Concerto (1956), and Canzona for Orchestra – Homage to Purcell (1959).[10]
Editions
Working either with collaborators including Dart, Fortune, Charles Mackerras and Watkins Shaw, or, more often, on his own, Lewis was responsible for scholarly editions of 17th- and 18th-century scores including Handel's Apollo e Dafne, Athalia and Semele, John Blow's Venus and Adonis, and many works by Purcell, including The Fairy-Queen and four volumes of sacred music.[5]
Recordings
Lewis was particularly associated with the record label L'Oiseau-Lyre, which specialised in 17th- and 18th-century music. For them and others he conducted recordings of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas and The Fairy-Queen, Blow's Venus and Adonis, Handel's Semele, Sosarme, Monteverdi's Vespers, Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie, and several sets of operatic excerpts and orchestral and choral music of the 17th- and 18th-centuries.[11]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Pope, Michael, "Lewis, Sir Anthony Carey (1915–1983)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved 18 November 2017
- ^ a b c d "Obituary: Sir Anthony Lewis", The Times, 7 June 1938, p. 16
- ^ "The Foundations of Music", BBC Genome. Retrieved 18 November 2017
- ^ a b c d Fortune, Nigel. "Sir Anthony Lewis", The Musical Times, Vol. 124, No. 1686 (August 1983), p. 503
- ^ a b c d Scott, David. "Lewis, Sir Anthony", Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press. Retrieved 19 November 2017 (subscription required)
- ^ Thicknesse, Robert. "A Handel on the heart", The Times, 3 June 2003, p. 17
- ^ Lewis, Anthony. "Musica Britannica", The Musical Times, Vol. 92, No. 1299 (May, 1951), pp. 201–204 (subscription required)
- ^ "Prof Lewis condemns split in music world", The Times, 4 January 1968, p. 6
- ^ Sadie, Stanley. "Academy gets a proper theatre", The Times, 28 October 1977, p. 10
- ^ a b c "Lewis, Sir Anthony Carey", Who Was Who, online edition, Oxford University Press, 2014. Retrieved 18 November 2017 (subscription required)
- ^ "Anthony Lewis", WorldCat. Retrieved 19 November 2017