Edward Sackville-West, 5th Baron Sackville

Edward Charles Sackville-West, 5th Baron Sackville (born November 13, 1901 in London ; died July 4, 1965 in Clogheen , County Tipperary ) was a British music critic, novelist and, in his later years, a member of the House of Lords .

In addition to his early musical talent, he was drawn to a literary life as a young man and wrote a series of semi-autobiographical novels in the 1920s and 30s, which had little success. His better-known works include a biography of the poet Thomas De Quincey , A Flame in Sunlight: the Life and Work of Thomas De Quincey , which was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1937, and the Record Guide , England's first in depth A guide to classical music recorded on phonograms, first published in 1951.

As a critic and board member of the Royal Opera House , he sought to promote the works of young British composers, including those of Benjamin Britten and Michael Tippett . Britten worked with him on a musical for the radio and dedicated one of his most famous works, the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, to him .

Life

Sackville-West came to Cadogan Gardens in London in 1901 as the eldest child and only son of Major-General Charles John Sackville-West , later fourth Baron Sackville, and his first wife, Maud Cecilia, nee. Bell (1873–1920). Sackville-West's childhood home was Knole Countryhouse in Kent . In 1945 he moved with Desmond Shawe-Taylor to Long Crichel House near Wimborne . Together with the painter Eardley Knollys and later also with the literary critic Raymond Mortimer, they established "what was basically a men's salon that entertained the circle of friends from music and literature on the weekend." In 1962 he bought the Cooleville House in Clogheen, Ireland. After the death of his father on May 8, 1962, he inherited the title of Baron Sackville . He took the place in the House of Lords but never made a speech.

Sackville-West died suddenly in 1965 at his home in Ireland at the age of 63. Shawe-Taylor wrote, “Just a quarter of an hour earlier he played the new recording of Britten's Songs from the Chinese to a friend who was visiting him . When I arrived for the funeral a few days later, the plate was still there next to its cover - something the careful Eddy would never have allowed. ”His cousin Lionel Bertrand Sackville-West continued the baronate.

Early years

He attended Eton College and Christ Church College at the University of Oxford. During his time at Eton College, he learned to play the piano from Irene Scharrer , the wife of his educator, which he quickly mastered and for which he received the Eton Music Prize in 1918. His colleague Shawe-Taylor said of him, “Not many boys can do the Piano Concerto No. at a school concert . 2 by Rachmaninov play. He has even considered a career as a pianist, but was prevented from doing so because of his poor health. ”At Oxford he met many writers, including Maurice Bowra , Roy Harrod and LP Hartley , which made literature more and more closely related to music his main interest was competing. He left Oxford without a degree and focused on his writing career by starting to write autobiographical novels.

Literary work

His first novel, The Ruin: A Gothic Novel , was clearly autobiographical, and his portrayal of turbulent, unconventional, and ultimately catastrophic relationships included characters clearly attributable to Sackville-West's circle of friends. This delayed its publication, and his second novel, Piano Quintet , was published first. Sackville-West's biographer, Michael de-la-Noy, wrote: “ The Ruin , as well as all the other literary efforts on Gothic that Sackville-West grappled with so endlessly and yet pointlessly, were strongly of the mannered style of the Fin de Siècle of the late nineteenth century… whose works Eddy unfortunately fell in love with at seventeen ”.

He published three other novels, Mandrake over the Water-Carrier (1928), Simpson: A Life (1931) and The Sun in Capricorn (1934). These received mild reviews, but caused little stir. In its review of the third novel, The Times said , "The book is extremely cleverly and amusingly written, but it seems completely unrelated to a reader of average intelligence." Simpson: A Life was best received. His viewing of a pediatric nurse was judged to be "impressive and original in its own way, all the more for her cool, detached qualities and subtle allusions to the stereotypical nanny." During this time Sackville-West wrote in addition to the fiction with A Flame in Sunlight: the Life and Work of Thomas De Quincey (1936) another biography, for which he received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography the following year.

Musical work

In 1935, Sackville-West became a music critic for New Statesman Magazine , a post he held for twenty years and for which he published weekly music reviews. The Times wrote that his articles "were popular not only for their excellent language, but also for their diligent publicity among young British composers." He was an early admirer and promoter of Benjamin Britten's music.

During the Second World War , Sackville-West joined the BBC as "arranger and director of programs". In 1943 he wrote The Rescue: a Melodrama for Broadcasting , for which Britten composed the music. It was broadcast for the first time that same year and revived a few more times. The BBC editor Val Gielgud called it a "true radio classic". The theme of The Rescue was the end of the odyssey . Maurice Bowra dubbed it "The Eddyssey." In the same year Britten dedicated his Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings to Sackville-West.

In addition to his column in New Statesman Magazine , Sackville-West published an extensive quarterly article for Gramophone Magazine and wrote the Record Guide with Shawe-Taylor , a comprehensive work that included reviews of all significant classical music recordings available at the time and was first published in 1951 . Soon they were overwhelmed by the flood of new publications and hired two younger critics, Andrew Porter and William Mann. A revised and updated edition of the Record Guide published in 1955 comprised 957 pages. No further editions were issued.

From 1950 to 1955 Sackville-West was a board member of the Royal Opera House, where he continued to work under the banner of modern British music, especially that of Michael Tippett, whose opera The Midsummer Marriage premiered in 1955.

literature

• Michael De-la-Noy: Eddy. Life of Edward Sackville-West. The Bodley Head Ltd., London 1988, ISBN 978-0-370-31164-7

Web links

• Literature by and about Edward Sackville-West, 5th Baron Sackville in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature by and about Edward Sackville-West, 5th Baron Sackville in the WorldCat bibliographic database

Remarks

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} De-la-Noy, Michael. "West, Edward Charles Sackville-, fifth Baron Sackville (1901-1965)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , Oxford University Press. As of December 9, 2009.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} The Times obituary, July 6, 1965, p. 14th
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} Shawe-Taylor, Desmond, The Gramophone , October 1965, p. 24
4. ^ ^{A b} "Edward Charles Sackville-West", Contemporary Authors Online , Gale, 2003. As of December 8, 2009 (subscription required).
5. ↑ The Times , June 22, 1928, p. 10
6. ^ The Times , February 10, 1931, p. 19th
7. ↑ Published in the US as Thomas de Quincey: His Life and Work (Yale University Press, 1936).

predecessor	Office	successor
Charles Sackville-West	Baron Sackville 1962-1965	Lionel Sackville-West