Steuart Wilson
Sir James Steuart Wilson (21 July 1889 – 18 December 1966) was an English singer, known for tenor roles in oratorios and concerts in the first half of the 20th century. After the Second World War he was an administrator for several organisations including the Arts Council of Great Britain, the BBC and the Royal Opera House.
Following service in the First World War, Wilson became known for singing tenor roles in oratorios by composers from
In 1937 Wilson settled for a while in the United States, teaching at the
Life and career
Early years
Wilson was born in
At the outbreak of the First World War Wilson volunteered for service and was commissioned in the army. He served in the King's Royal Rifle Corps in France and was twice severely wounded – at Ypres in 1914 and on the Somme near High Wood in 1916; the first, in the lungs, seriously threatened his potential singing career but he worked hard to overcome the injury. He then worked in the Intelligence Bureau of the General Staff at the War Office and General Headquarters in France.
Singing career
After the war, Wilson developed an interest in early English music and was instrumental in founding the London-based
In 1921, Wilson met
From 1921 to 1923, Wilson taught music at Bedales School, an appointment that left him time to take singing engagements all over the United Kingdom. In 1924 he left the English Singers and furthered his singing studies abroad, first in Nice with Jean de Reszke (1924–25), with whom he learned the roles of Otello, Parsifal and Tristan;[11] he then took lessons with Sir George Henschel (1925–28),[5][6] and studied 17th- and 18th-century music with Wanda Landowska in Paris.[5]
For a while Wilson sang with the Bristol Opera Company, which toured in London to perform at the Royal Court Theatre in 1927 and 1928, conducted by Adrian Boult and Malcolm Sargent. Productions mounted included Ralph Vaughan Williams's The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains, and Charles Villiers Stanford's The Travelling Companion.[11]
Wilson became a leading interpreter of the Evangelist in JS Bach's Passions, and of the title part in Edward Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, which he sang under the baton of the composer and other conductors including Hamilton Harty,[12] Malcolm Sargent,[13] Albert Coates,[14] and Adrian Boult.[15] The Times called him "the best exponent of [Gerontius] at the present time".[16] The tenor Peter Pears said that it was hearing Wilson singing as Evangelist in Bach's St Matthew Passion that "started me off".[17]
Mozart remained part of Wilson's repertoire at the Old Vic (though Howard Ferguson complained "Steuart Wilson would sing out of tune"),[18] and he regularly championed English music, making regular appearances at Rutland Boughton's festival in Glastonbury and on occasion at Napier Miles's festivals in Bristol.[1] He was praised by Holst, who credited him with rescuing the British National Opera Company production which had previously "ruined" his opera At the Boar's Head.[19]
Writing in 1968, The Gramophone critic Roger Fiske recalled that Wilson "stood out above other tenors both for high intelligence and for clarity of words, though his voice was not by nature of especial beauty; also he never sang quite as well in performance as at rehearsal, his tone tightening under stress."[20] Frank Howes made similar observations in an article published in 1951, though noting that "intelligence" was a recognised euphemism for "indifferent vocal equipment".[21] A more recent judgement, based on recordings of Schubert Lieder, describes "Wilson's stentorian and rather stiff delivery—the fast vibrato, his tendency to rush (slower songs sound better) and the impression that he is distinctly overparted in the higher register", all of which "does not make for a satisfactory performance according to today's standards."[22]
For many years, Adrian Boult had been a close friend of Wilson and his first wife Ann, née Bowles. When, in the late 1920s, Wilson began to mistreat his wife, Boult took her side.
BBC libel case
Wilson achieved a wider fame for his successful
Wilson sued the BBC. The corporation vigorously defended its action on the grounds that the letter was justified criticism of a performer. Wilson questioned the letter writer's competence to pass judgement on his performance: while Wilson conceded that he used the "intrusive H", as a legitimate ornament which his teacher, Jean de Reszke, inserted into several works, and admitted that he had used it at two points in his broadcast performance, neither of these occurrences had been pointed out in the letter. Furthermore, two of the letter's cited examples, "Pilate's Wife" and "purple robe", did not appear in his part of the work at all.[28] During the three-day court case several expert witnesses were called, including Clive Carey who brought as evidence a score annotated by de Reszke.[31] The judge, Lord Hewart, urged the jury to be "extremely liberal": after 45 minutes deliberation, the jury decided against the BBC and the letter writer, and awarded Wilson £2,000 damages. The BBC chose not to appeal and shouldered the entire cost: in an internal memo the BBC Director General, John Reith, observed that in such cases a British jury would tend to favour the individual, rather than a corporation, and that to appeal might appear an unjustified use of the BBC's monetary power.[32]
Wilson used the money he won in the libel case to support a London production of Boughton's opera The Lily Maid, which he himself conducted at the
United States
In 1937 Wilson settled for a time in the United States with his second wife, Mary (who was a cellist), and joined the faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia; there he taught singing, English diction, vocal repertoire, and vocal ensemble.[5] He continued to give recitals into the early 1940s.[35] In 1941 he resigned from the Curtis Institute in protest against the dismissal of the director Randall Thompson,[36] and the following year the Wilsons returned to England. This was the end of Wilson's career as a singer, he himself observing, "The whole place [America] is jammed full of singers from every country in the world, all rampaging around for jobs."[37]
Musical administrator
Wilson joined the BBC in 1942 "in a minor capacity with hopes of preferment".[38] The following year he was appointed music director for the BBC Overseas Service. After the war he was appointed music director of the Arts Council of Great Britain, newly formed from the wartime Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA), and he helped reorganise the music department for peacetime work.[1] In that post, he gave support to Benjamin Britten's English Opera Group in the first year of its existence, recommending to the Council that the group should "be awarded a grant of not less than £3000 and closer to £5000".[39] He subsequently accepted an invitation to give a lecture at the first Aldeburgh Festival, speaking on 10 June 1948 on "The Future of Music in England".[40]
In April 1948, the year in which he was knighted for his services as director of the Arts Council, he became the BBC's director of music following the sudden death of Victor Hely-Hutchinson.[41] The Times described this appointment as "not a success",[6] and it is chiefly remembered for the controversy Wilson provoked by engineering the forced retirement of Boult as chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. In the 1930s Boult had been promised informally by the Corporation's then director-general, John Reith, that he would be exempt from the BBC's rule that staff retire at age 60.[42] However, Reith left the BBC in 1938 and his promise carried no weight with his successors.[43] Wilson, on being appointed director of music, made clear to the BBC's director-general, William Haley, that he intended to have Boult replaced as chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra,[44] and used his authority to insist on Boult's enforced retirement.[45][n 3] Haley was unaware of Wilson's personal animus against Boult and later acknowledged, in a broadcast tribute to Boult, that he "had listened to ill-judged advice in retiring him."[47]
In 1949 Wilson, aged 60, moved to Covent Garden to take the post of deputy general administrator of the Royal Opera House. While in that position he gave support to the Polish composer Andrzej Panufnik, who had recently defected from communist Poland, by introducing him to the concert agent Harold Holt.[48] Wilson was responsible for securing the premiere of Vaughan Williams's The Pilgrim's Progress at the Royal Opera House in 1951.[49] Wilson resented being subordinate to the general administrator, David Webster, and he resigned from his Royal Opera House post in June 1955.[50] The following month it was announced that he was launching "a campaign against homosexuality in British music" and was quoted as saying: "The influence of perverts in the world of music has grown beyond all measure. If it is not curbed soon, Covent Garden and other precious musical heritages could suffer irreparable harm."[51]
Wilson's last major appointment was as principal of the
Wilson died in 1966 in Petersfield, Hampshire, aged 77.[4]
Recordings
On a recording made in 1927 during a performance at the Royal Albert Hall, London, Wilson sings in extracts from The Dream of Gerontius conducted by the composer. He also recorded Vaughan Williams's On Wenlock Edge, and songs by Denis Browne.[52]
Notes and references
Notes
- ^ Richard Aldous in his biography of Malcolm Sargent (p. 156) alleges that Boult and Ann Wilson were having an affair before her divorce from Wilson, but the source he cites – Kennedy, pp. 81, 111, 161–163 – does not corroborate his statement. Rather, Kennedy relates that Boult was intensely shy with women and that he only "felt 'safe'" with Ann because she was married. He also had a warm relationship with the Wilsons' children, being godfather to one, and known by all of them as "Uncle Adrian". It was at Boult's insistence, when Ann's divorce was in process, that she should "start a new life" and that he would "take them [Ann and the children] all on".[24]
- coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.[26]
- ^ In her biography of Wilson, English Singer, Wilson's third wife Margaret disputes this and claims that "Steuart was not personally involved" in the decision, and that it was others at the BBC who were pressing for Boult's removal.[46]
References
- ^ a b c d Howes, Frank. "Sir Steuart Wilson", The Musical Times, March 1951, p. 110
- ^ Banfield, p. 153
- ^ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, May 2006, accessed 2 July 2007 (subscription required)
- ^ a b c d e Overtones, The Curtis Institute of Music, November 1937
- ^ a b c d The Times, 19 December 1966[full citation needed]
- ^ Stewart, p. 64
- ^ Holst, p. 86
- ^ Tunbridge, p. 60
- ^ Mahler Catalogue (PDF) (Universal ed.). p. 16. Retrieved 16 June 2015.
- ^ a b Rosenthal, Harold (May 1970), "Recent Books (review)", Opera, p. 84
- ^ The Times, 19 February 1926, p. 12
- ^ The Times, 28 March 1930, p. 12
- ^ The Times, 23 March 1933, p. 12
- ^ "Elgar memorial concert", The Times, 15 March 1934, p. 12
- ^ The Times, 13 September 1930, p. 8
- ^ Pears, p. 225
- ^ Letter to Gerald Finzi, 14 June 1928, in Hurd (2001), p. 39
- ^ Short, p. 233
- ^ a b The Gramophone, October 1968, p. 128
- ^ Frank Howes, "Sir Steuart Wilson", The Musical Times 92 (1951): 110–112; quoted in Tunbridge, p. 64
- ^ a b Tunbridge, p. 64
- ^ a b Kennedy, pp. 161–163
- ^ a b Kennedy, p. 162
- ^ Kennedy, p. 215, et seq.
- ^ Kennedy, p. 181
- ^ "Vocal Sins", 14 April, 1933, p. 14, Radio Times
- ^ a b "Law Report, June 19. High Court of Justice, King's Bench Division. Singer's Libel Against the BBC. Wilson vs. British Broadcasting Corporation and Another", The Times (London), 20 June 1934, p. 4
- ^ "Programme Index". .bbc.co.uk.
- ^ Tunbridge, note 65 p. 81
- ^ Tunbridge, note 66 p. 81
- ^ Internal memo to Controller, 22 June 1934: cited in Tunbridge, p. 66
- ^ Hurd (1993), p. 220
- ^ "Winter Garden Theatre", The Times, 13 January 1937, p. 10
- ^ "Recital programs 1940-41". Curtis Institute of Music [Philadelphia,Pa.] 18 February 1940. Retrieved 18 February 2024 – via Internet Archive.
- ^ Cobbe, p. 316
- ^ "Recorded Sound". British Institute of Recorded Sound. 18 February 1969. Retrieved 18 February 2024 – via Google Books.
- ^ Letter to Vaughan Williams, 9 November 1942, reprinted in Cobbe, p. 354
- ^ Mitchell, 2004: p. 284
- ^ Mitchell, 2004: p. 362
- ^ BBC Year Book 1949, pp. 81-82
- ^ Kennedy, p. 214
- ^ Kennedy, p. 185
- ^ Kennedy, p. 215
- ^ ODNB; Kennedy p. 215; and Aldous, pp. 156–157
- ^ Stewart, p. 200
- ^ Kennedy, p. 222
- ^ Jacobson, p. 48
- ^ Vaughan Williams's letter to Wilson, 27 April 1951, reprinted in Cobbe, p. 480
- ^ Haltrecht, pp. 157–158
- The People, 24 July 1955, cited in Mitchell, 2004: p. 7
- ^ a b Kennedy, Michael. "Steuart Wilson", Grove Music Online, accessed 5 May 2011 (subscription required)
Sources
- Aldous, Richard (2001). Tunes of Glory: the Life of Malcolm Sargent. London: Hutchinson. ISBN 0091801311.
- Banfield, Stephen (1988). Sensibility and English Song: Critical Studies of the Early Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 052137944X.
- BBC Year Book 1949: "Radio Personalities of 1948: Music" (PDF). London: BBC. 1949. pp. 81–82.
- Cobbe, Hugh, ed. (2010). Letters of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1895–1958. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199587643.
- Haltrecht, Montague (1975). The Quiet Showman: Sir David Webster and the Royal Opera House. London: Collins. ISBN 0002111632.
- ISBN 0-571-10004-X.
- Hurd, Michael (1993). Rutland Boughton and the Glastonbury Festivals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198163169.
- Hurd, Michael, ed. (2001). Letters of Gerald Finzi and Howard Ferguson. Woodbridge: Boydell Press. ISBN 0851158234.
- Jacobson, Bernard (1996). A Polish Renaissance. London: Phaidon. ISBN 0714832510.
- ISBN 0333487524.
- ISBN 057122282X.
- Pears, Peter (1995). Travel Diaries 1936–1978. Woodbridge: Boydell Press. ISBN 9780851157412.
- Short, Michael (1990). Gustav Holst: The Man and his Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 019314154X.
- Stewart, Margaret (1970). English Singer: The Life of Steuart Wilson. London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. ISBN 07156-0468-6.
- Tunbridge, Laura (Summer 2013). "Singing Translations: The Politics of Listening Between the Wars" (PDF). . Retrieved 2 September 2014.
Further reading
- ISBN 057115221X.
- Reed, Philip, ed. (1995). The Travel Diaries of Peter Pears, 1936–1978. Woodbridge: Boydell Press. ISBN 085115364X.