Sir Malcolm Sargent

Sargent was born in Bath Villas, Ashford in Kent England to a working-class, but musical family. He was brought up in Stamford, Lincolnshire where he won a scholarship to Stamford School. At the age of fourteen, he accompanied rehearsals for an amateur production of The Gondoliers at Stamford. He earned his diploma from the Royal College of Organists at age sixteen. After a brief service in the army, Sargent worked first as an organist at Melton Mowbray Parish Church, Leicestershire. At the same time, he worked on many musical projects in Leicester, where he not only conducted but also produced Gilbert and Sullivan and other operas for the amateur societies. Sargent's break came when Sir Henry Wood visited De Montfort Hall, Leicester, early in 1921 with the Queen's Hall orchestra. He commissioned Sargent (as it was customary to commission a piece from a local composer) to write a piece Impression on a Windy Day. Sargent soon abandoned composition in favor of conducting, on the advice of Wood, among others. He founded the Leicester Symphony Orchestra, an amateur orchestra, in 1922 and became a lecturer at the Royal College of Music, in London, in 1923. He quickly developed a reputation as an excellent conductor of large choral groups, and he was reportedly associated at one time or another with every major British choral society. Sargent's success and flashy style made him very popular with the ladies, and he was soon forced to marry a serving girl. By 1926, he and his wife had two children, a daughter who was to die from polio in 1944, and a son Peter. But the marriage was unhappy. Sargent was continually unfaithful, often drawn to his conquests by social status. Elizabeth Courtauld, wife of the industrialist Samuel Courtauld, promoted a popular series of subscription concerts for Sargent beginning in 1929. Sargent worked primarily with Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes from 1927 to 1930. In 1928, he also became conductor of the Royal Choral Society in their semi-staged performances of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Hiawatha at the Royal Albert Hall. He retained this post until his death. In 1932 the sub-standard London Symphony Orchestra was replaced with the new London Philharmonic Orchestra, its musical direction shared equally between Sargent and Thomas Beecham. In October 1932, Sargent collapsed with tuberculosis. For almost two years he was unable to work, and it was only later in the 1930s that he returned to the concert scene with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Sargent was chief conductor of the Proms from 1948 until his death in 1967, and of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1950 to 1957. He was knighted for his services to music in 1947 and performed in numerous English-speaking countries during the postwar years, becoming a virtual musical ambassador for (and within) the Commonwealth of Nations. Nevertheless, he continued to promote British composers, conducting the premieres of Walton's opera Troilus and Cressida (1954) and Ralph Vaughan Williams' Symphony No. 9 (1958). Sargent and fellow conductor Sir Thomas Beecham were renowned for their public antipathy towards each other. Beecham quipped, in reference to the young conductor Herbert von Karajan, that he was "a kind of musical Malcolm Sargent". But even Beecham conceded that Sargent "is the greatest choirmaster we have ever produced; he makes the buggers sing like the blazes". Sargent underwent surgery in July 1967 for pancreatic cancer, and although he appeared and spoke at the last night of the Proms that year, he died in October at the age of 72. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.