Newman, Ernest(real name, William Roberts)
Newman, Ernest(real name, William Roberts)
Newman, Ernest (real name, William Roberts), renowned English music critic and writer on music; b. E verton, Lancashire, Nov. 30, 1868; d. Tad-worth, Surrey, July 7, 1959. He was educated at Liverpool Coll. and the Univ. of Liverpool. While employed as a bank clerk (1889–1904), he pursued various studies on his own and began to publ. books on music; assumed his nom de plume to symbolize an “earnest new man”. In 1904 he accepted an instructorship in Birmingham’s Midland Inst., and took up music as a profession; in 1905–06 he was in Manchester as critic of the Guardian; from 1906 to 1918 he was in Birmingham as critic for the Daily Post; in 1919–20 he was in London as critic for the Observer; from 1920 to 1958 he was on the staff of the London Sunday Times; from 1923 he was also a contributor to the Glasgow Herald; in 1924–25, was guest critic of the N.Y. Evening Post. One of the best equipped and most influential of English music critics, Newman continued to write his regular column in the Sunday Times in his 90th year.
Writings
(all publ. in London unless otherwise given): Gluck and the Opera (1895); A Study of Wagner (1899); Wagner (1904); Musical Studies (1905; 3rd ed., 1914); Elgar (1906); Hugo Wolf (1907); Richard Strauss (1908); Wagner as Man and Artist (1914; 2nd ed., 1924); A Musical Motley (1919); The Piano-Player and Its Music (1920); Confessions of a Musical Critic (1923); Solo Singing (1923); A Musical Critic’s Holiday (1925); The Unconscious Beethoven (1927); What to Read on the Evolution of Music (1928); Stories of the Great Operas (3 vols., 1929–31); Fact and Fiction about Wagner (1931); The Man Liszt (1934); The Life of Richard Wagner (4 vols., 1933, 1937, 1941, 1946); Opera Nights (1943; U.S. ed. as More Stories of Famous Operas); Wagner Nights (1949; U.S. ed. as The Wagner Operas); More Opera Nights (1954; U.S. ed. as 27 Famous Operas); From the World of Music: Essays from “The Sunday Times” (selected by E Aprahamian; London, 1956); More Musical Essays (second selection from the Sunday Times, London, 1958); Testament of Music (selected essays; 1962); Berlioz, Romantic Classic (ed. by P. Heyworth; 1972).
Bibliography
H. van Thal, ed., Fanfare for E. N.(London, 1955); V. Newman, E. N.: A Memoir by His Wife (London, 1963).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire