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Percy Scholes

March 17, 2024

Percy Alfred Scholes (pronounced skolz) OBE PhD FSA FRHistS FTSC (24 July 1877 – 31 July 1958) was an English musician, journalist and prolific writer, whose best-known achievement was his compilation of the first edition of the Oxford Companion to Music. His 1948 biography The Great Dr Burney was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

Career edit

He was born in Headingly, Leeds in 1877, the third of six children of Thomas Scholes, a commercial agent and Katharine Elizabeth Pugh.[1] He was educated privately, owing to his poor health as a child. He became an organist, schoolteacher, music journalist, lecturer, an Inspector of Music in Schools to London University and the Organist and Music Master of Kent College, Canterbury (1900), All Saints, Vevey, Switzerland (1902) as well as Kingswood College, Grahamstown, South Africa (1904). He was Registrar at the City of Leeds (Municipal) School of Music (1908–1912).[2] In 1908 he married Dora Wingate, a talented pianist. That year he founded the magazine The Music Student in 1908 (renamed The Music Teacher in 1921), and continued as its editor until 1920. During the First World War he directed the Music section of the YMCA for troops at home and abroad.[3]

At various times Scholes was music critic for the Evening Standard (1913-1920), The Observer (1920–1925) (immediately following Ernest Newman's departure) and the Radio Times (1923–1929). From 1923 up until 1928 (when he departed for Switzerland) he was making regular music appreciation broadcasts on BBC radio.[4][5]

He was made an Officer of the Star of Rumania in 1930 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries in 1938.[1] He was founder and general secretary of the Anglo-American Conference on Musical Education, Lausanne (1929 and 1931). Scholes and his wife came back to the UK in 1940, but with his health in decline they returned to Switzerland at the end of 1956. He ended his days in Cornaux, Chamby sur Montreux.[2][6]

Work edit

Scholes wrote over 30 books, mainly concerning music appreciation. His best-known work is The Oxford Companion to Music, which was first published in 1938. [7] Like Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1878-89) the Companion sought to reach out beyond professional musicians to the amateur as well.[8] This work took him six years to produce and consisted of over a million words (surpassing the length of the Bible). Scholes was assisted by various clerical assistants, but wrote virtually all the text himself. The only exceptions were the article on tonic sol-fa (for which he was dissatisfied with his own article) and the synopses of the plots of operas (which he regarded as too boring). Although the Oxford Companion to Music was (and is) regarded as authoritative, the text of the first edition is enlivened by Scholes' own anecdotal and sometimes quirky style.[9]

He was also the author of Puritans and Music in England and New England: A Contribution to the Cultural History of Two Nations (1934).[10] [11] In 1947 he produced the two volume, 960 page The Mirror of Music, compiling, enlarging and commenting on material published in The Musical Times between 1844 and 1944.[3]

Scholes was deeply concerned with connecting music with a wider audience through musical appreciation in the tradition of Dr Burney, an influence he cited himself and the subject of his biography in 1948. Frank Howes (writing as 'Our Music Critic' in The Times) called The Listener's Guide to Music (1919) "that masterpiece of simplification".[12] He recognised very early the possibilities of the gramophone as an aid to knowledge and understanding of music. His First Book of the Gramophone Record (1924) lists fifty records of music from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, with a commentary on each; a Second Book followed in 1925. From 1930 onwards, Scholes collaborated with the Columbia Graphophone Company in The Columbia History of Music by Ear and Eye; this comprised five volumes, each containing an explanatory booklet and eight 78rpm records specially made for the series, including Renaissance vocal and instrumental items performed by Arnold Dolmetsch and his family. He also worked on the innovative 'AudioGraphic' project for the Aeolian Company creating richly annotated player-piano (pianola) rolls, having joined as Secretary the Honorary Advisory Committee on the Use of Piano-Player Rolls in Education, chaired by Sir Alexander Mackenzie, in 1925.[1] The AudioGraphic rolls were printed with music biographical and analytical commentary material and illustrations including woodcuts, photographs of drama and opera productions, and paintings, which could occupy over two metres of the roll. These rolls were issued in England from around 1926 to 1929 and America from 1927 to 1930.[1]

Style and temperament edit

"Nothing he put out was ever "ghosted"; all bore the individual stamp of the salty P.A.S style." wrote W.R Anderson in 1958.[13] In his writing for this work, and elsewhere, Scholes never believed in holding back his personal views in favour of a neutral point of view. He is credited with the description of harpsichord music as sounding like "a toasting fork on a birdcage"; when describing Handel and Bach, he said that "Handel was the more elegant composer, but Bach was the more thorough".

Scholes led the public denunciations of Arthur Eaglefield Hull when his book Music: Classical, Romantic and Modern (1927) was found to include material borrowed from other writers. How much of this was plagiarism and how much a mere careless, hasty failure to cite sources is not known, but the scandal left Hull very upset. He took his own life by throwing himself under a train at Huddersfield station on 4 November, 1928.[14][15] Scholes also made enemies amongst The Sackbut group which included Philip Heseltine and Ursula Greville. Scholes' criticism of Hubert Foss' Song-cycle on Poems of Thomas Hardy infuriated Heseltine, who sent Scholes abusive letters, took to telephoning him late at night, and circulated a petition seeking his sacking from the Observer. Scholes sought legal advice on this matter but took no action.[1] Reviews of Christian Darnton's You and Music (1940) were generally positive until Scholes catalogued so many serious and obvious errors (such as “Binary form may be represented by A.B.A.”) that he presented the work as an elaborate joke to trap unwary reviewers.[16]

In The Oxford Companion to Music some composers (Berg, Schönberg and Webern, for example) were described in somewhat unsympathetic and dismissive terms. His article on Jazz states that "jazz is to serious music as daily journalism is to serious writing"; similarly, his article on the composer John Henry Maunder states that Maunder's "seemingly inexhaustible cantatas, Penitence, Pardon and Peace and From Olivet to Calvary, long enjoyed popularity, and still aid the devotions of undemanding congregations in less sophisticated areas."

Death and legacy edit

Scholes died in 1958, aged eighty-one, in Vevey, Switzerland, where he had been living for many years. Shortly before his death, his "professional" library was acquired by the National Library of Canada. This comprised approximately 50 linear metres of research files and correspondence.[17]

His former assistant John Owen Ward revised the Tenth Edition of the Companion in 1970. Ward considered it "inappropriate to change radically the characteristic rich anecdotal quality of Dr. Scholes' style." and left much of Scholes' distinctive work intact.[18] In 1983 Oxford University Press produced The New Oxford Companion to Music, edited by Denis Arnold, which consciously tried to overcome some of the perceived deficiencies of the Scholes' work. This included taking a more eclectic line on music to be included, and resulted in a two-volume work of some 2000 pages. The 2002 edition, edited by Alison Latham, reverted to the original title, and single-volume format.

Publications edit

  • Candidates Self Examiner in Scales, etc. (1907)
  • The Music Student (ed). (1908 – 1921, later renamed The Music Teacher)
  • Introduction to French Music (1917)
  • Everyman and his Music (1917)
  • An Introduction to British Music (1918)
  • Listener’s Guide to Music (1919)
  • Musical Appreciation in Schools (1920)
  • Learning to Listen by Means of the Gramophone (1921)
  • New works by modern British composers, Carnegie UK Trust (Series 1 and 2, 1921, 1924)
  • Beginner’s Guide to Harmony (1922)
  • The Book of the Great Musicians (1923)
  • The First Book of the Gramophone Record (1924)
  • The Appreciation of Music by Means of the Pianola and Duo-Art (1925)
  • Everybody’s Guide to Broadcast Music (1925)
  • Miniature History of Music (1928)
  • Columbia History of Music Through Ear and Eye (1930, in five parts)
  • Miniature History of Opera (1931)
  • Some Aesthetic and Everyday Reflections on the Vegetarian System of Diet (1931)
  • Practical Lesson Plans in Musical Appreciation by Means of the Gramophone (1933)
  • Puritans and Music (1934)
  • Music: the Child and the Masterpiece (1935)
  • Radio Times Music Handbook (1935)
  • Oxford Companion to Music (1938)
  • God Save the King! Its History and Romance (1942)
  • The Mirror of Music (1947)
  • The Great Doctor Burney (1948)
  • Why I am a Vegetarian (1948)
  • The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music (1952)
  • The Life and Adventures of Sir John Hawkins (1953)
  • Oxford Junior Companion to Music (1954)
  • God Save the Queen! The History and Romance of the World's First National Anthem (1954)

References edit

  1. ^ a b c d e Prictor, Megan J. (2000). Music and the ordinary listener: music appreciation and the media in England, 1918-1939. PhD thesis, Faculty of Music, The University of Melbourne.
  2. ^ a b John Owen Ward. 'Scholes, Percy A(lfred)' in Grove Music Online (2001)
  3. ^ a b Shenton, Kenneth. Everyman and His Music: Percy Scholes (1877-1958) (2008)
  4. ^ Prictor, Megan. 'To Catch the World: Percy Scholes and the English Musical Association Movement, 1918-1939', in Context 15 and 16 (1998)
  5. ^ Radio Times, Issue 3, 30 September 1923, p. 15
  6. ^ Obituary, New York Times, 3 August 1958
  7. ^ Percy A. Scholes. The Oxford Companion to Music, First Edition (1938) and Seventh Edition (1947), Oxford University Press
  8. ^ Dibble, Jeremy, and Horton, Julian (eds.). British Musical Criticism and Intellectual Thought - 1850-1950 (2018), p, 4
  9. ^ Ward, J.O. Scholes, Percy Alfred (1877-1958) in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004
  10. ^ Scholes, Percy A. (2017-08-24). The Puritans and Music in England and New England. Creative Media Partners, LLC. ISBN 978-1-376-20676-0.
  11. ^ Percy A. Scholes (1962). The Puritans And Music In England And New England. Universal Digital Library. Russell & Russell.
  12. ^ 'Percy Scholes: Pioneer of Musical Appreciation', in The Times, 2 August, 1957, p. 10
  13. ^ Musical Times No 1387, September 1958, p 501
  14. ^ Sibley Music Library: Arthur Eaglefield Hull
  15. ^ Scholes, Percy. "The Ethics of Borrowing", Musical Times, No 1019, 1 January 1928, p 59
  16. ^ Scholes, Percy A. "Our Humourless Reviewers", Musical Times No 1179, May 1941, p 176-177
  17. ^ Library and Archives Canada
  18. ^ John Owen Ward. Preface to the Tenth Edition (1969)

External links edit

 
Wikisource has original works by or about:
Percy Scholes

March 17, 2024
percy, scholes, percy, alfred, scholes, pronounced, skolz, frhists, ftsc, july, 1877, july, 1958, english, musician, journalist, prolific, writer, whose, best, known, achievement, compilation, first, edition, oxford, companion, music, 1948, biography, great, b. Percy Alfred Scholes pronounced skolz OBE PhD FSA FRHistS FTSC 24 July 1877 31 July 1958 was an English musician journalist and prolific writer whose best known achievement was his compilation of the first edition of the Oxford Companion to Music His 1948 biography The Great Dr Burney was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize Contents 1 Career 2 Work 3 Style and temperament 4 Death and legacy 5 Publications 6 References 7 External linksCareer editHe was born in Headingly Leeds in 1877 the third of six children of Thomas Scholes a commercial agent and Katharine Elizabeth Pugh 1 He was educated privately owing to his poor health as a child He became an organist schoolteacher music journalist lecturer an Inspector of Music in Schools to London University and the Organist and Music Master of Kent College Canterbury 1900 All Saints Vevey Switzerland 1902 as well as Kingswood College Grahamstown South Africa 1904 He was Registrar at the City of Leeds Municipal School of Music 1908 1912 2 In 1908 he married Dora Wingate a talented pianist That year he founded the magazine The Music Student in 1908 renamed The Music Teacher in 1921 and continued as its editor until 1920 During the First World War he directed the Music section of the YMCA for troops at home and abroad 3 At various times Scholes was music critic for the Evening Standard 1913 1920 The Observer 1920 1925 immediately following Ernest Newman s departure and the Radio Times 1923 1929 From 1923 up until 1928 when he departed for Switzerland he was making regular music appreciation broadcasts on BBC radio 4 5 He was made an Officer of the Star of Rumania in 1930 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries in 1938 1 He was founder and general secretary of the Anglo American Conference on Musical Education Lausanne 1929 and 1931 Scholes and his wife came back to the UK in 1940 but with his health in decline they returned to Switzerland at the end of 1956 He ended his days in Cornaux Chamby sur Montreux 2 6 Work editScholes wrote over 30 books mainly concerning music appreciation His best known work is The Oxford Companion to Music which was first published in 1938 7 Like Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians 1878 89 the Companion sought to reach out beyond professional musicians to the amateur as well 8 This work took him six years to produce and consisted of over a million words surpassing the length of the Bible Scholes was assisted by various clerical assistants but wrote virtually all the text himself The only exceptions were the article on tonic sol fa for which he was dissatisfied with his own article and the synopses of the plots of operas which he regarded as too boring Although the Oxford Companion to Music was and is regarded as authoritative the text of the first edition is enlivened by Scholes own anecdotal and sometimes quirky style 9 He was also the author of Puritans and Music in England and New England A Contribution to the Cultural History of Two Nations 1934 10 11 In 1947 he produced the two volume 960 page The Mirror of Music compiling enlarging and commenting on material published in The Musical Times between 1844 and 1944 3 Scholes was deeply concerned with connecting music with a wider audience through musical appreciation in the tradition of Dr Burney an influence he cited himself and the subject of his biography in 1948 Frank Howes writing as Our Music Critic in The Times called The Listener s Guide to Music 1919 that masterpiece of simplification 12 He recognised very early the possibilities of the gramophone as an aid to knowledge and understanding of music His First Book of the Gramophone Record 1924 lists fifty records of music from the sixteenth to the twentieth century with a commentary on each a Second Book followed in 1925 From 1930 onwards Scholes collaborated with the Columbia Graphophone Company in The Columbia History of Music by Ear and Eye this comprised five volumes each containing an explanatory booklet and eight 78rpm records specially made for the series including Renaissance vocal and instrumental items performed by Arnold Dolmetsch and his family He also worked on the innovative AudioGraphic project for the Aeolian Company creating richly annotated player piano pianola rolls having joined as Secretary the Honorary Advisory Committee on the Use of Piano Player Rolls in Education chaired by Sir Alexander Mackenzie in 1925 1 The AudioGraphic rolls were printed with music biographical and analytical commentary material and illustrations including woodcuts photographs of drama and opera productions and paintings which could occupy over two metres of the roll These rolls were issued in England from around 1926 to 1929 and America from 1927 to 1930 1 Style and temperament edit Nothing he put out was ever ghosted all bore the individual stamp of the salty P A S style wrote W R Anderson in 1958 13 In his writing for this work and elsewhere Scholes never believed in holding back his personal views in favour of a neutral point of view He is credited with the description of harpsichord music as sounding like a toasting fork on a birdcage when describing Handel and Bach he said that Handel was the more elegant composer but Bach was the more thorough Scholes led the public denunciations of Arthur Eaglefield Hull when his book Music Classical Romantic and Modern 1927 was found to include material borrowed from other writers How much of this was plagiarism and how much a mere careless hasty failure to cite sources is not known but the scandal left Hull very upset He took his own life by throwing himself under a train at Huddersfield station on 4 November 1928 14 15 Scholes also made enemies amongst The Sackbut group which included Philip Heseltine and Ursula Greville Scholes criticism of Hubert Foss Song cycle on Poems of Thomas Hardy infuriated Heseltine who sent Scholes abusive letters took to telephoning him late at night and circulated a petition seeking his sacking from the Observer Scholes sought legal advice on this matter but took no action 1 Reviews of Christian Darnton s You and Music 1940 were generally positive until Scholes catalogued so many serious and obvious errors such as Binary form may be represented by A B A that he presented the work as an elaborate joke to trap unwary reviewers 16 In The Oxford Companion to Music some composers Berg Schonberg and Webern for example were described in somewhat unsympathetic and dismissive terms His article on Jazz states that jazz is to serious music as daily journalism is to serious writing similarly his article on the composer John Henry Maunder states that Maunder s seemingly inexhaustible cantatas Penitence Pardon and Peace and From Olivet to Calvary long enjoyed popularity and still aid the devotions of undemanding congregations in less sophisticated areas Death and legacy editScholes died in 1958 aged eighty one in Vevey Switzerland where he had been living for many years Shortly before his death his professional library was acquired by the National Library of Canada This comprised approximately 50 linear metres of research files and correspondence 17 His former assistant John Owen Ward revised the Tenth Edition of the Companion in 1970 Ward considered it inappropriate to change radically the characteristic rich anecdotal quality of Dr Scholes style and left much of Scholes distinctive work intact 18 In 1983 Oxford University Press produced The New Oxford Companion to Music edited by Denis Arnold which consciously tried to overcome some of the perceived deficiencies of the Scholes work This included taking a more eclectic line on music to be included and resulted in a two volume work of some 2000 pages The 2002 edition edited by Alison Latham reverted to the original title and single volume format Publications editCandidates Self Examiner in Scales etc 1907 The Music Student ed 1908 1921 later renamed The Music Teacher Introduction to French Music 1917 Everyman and his Music 1917 An Introduction to British Music 1918 Listener s Guide to Music 1919 Musical Appreciation in Schools 1920 Learning to Listen by Means of the Gramophone 1921 New works by modern British composers Carnegie UK Trust Series 1 and 2 1921 1924 Beginner s Guide to Harmony 1922 The Book of the Great Musicians 1923 The First Book of the Gramophone Record 1924 The Appreciation of Music by Means of the Pianola and Duo Art 1925 Everybody s Guide to Broadcast Music 1925 Miniature History of Music 1928 Columbia History of Music Through Ear and Eye 1930 in five parts Miniature History of Opera 1931 Some Aesthetic and Everyday Reflections on the Vegetarian System of Diet 1931 Practical Lesson Plans in Musical Appreciation by Means of the Gramophone 1933 Puritans and Music 1934 Music the Child and the Masterpiece 1935 Radio Times Music Handbook 1935 Oxford Companion to Music 1938 God Save the King Its History and Romance 1942 The Mirror of Music 1947 The Great Doctor Burney 1948 Why I am a Vegetarian 1948 The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music 1952 The Life and Adventures of Sir John Hawkins 1953 Oxford Junior Companion to Music 1954 God Save the Queen The History and Romance of the World s First National Anthem 1954 References edit a b c d e Prictor Megan J 2000 Music and the ordinary listener music appreciation and the media in England 1918 1939 PhD thesis Faculty of Music The University of Melbourne a b John Owen Ward Scholes Percy A lfred in Grove Music Online 2001 a b Shenton Kenneth Everyman and His Music Percy Scholes 1877 1958 2008 Prictor Megan To Catch the World Percy Scholes and the English Musical Association Movement 1918 1939 in Context 15 and 16 1998 Radio Times Issue 3 30 September 1923 p 15 Obituary New York Times 3 August 1958 Percy A Scholes The Oxford Companion to Music First Edition 1938 and Seventh Edition 1947 Oxford University Press Dibble Jeremy and Horton Julian eds British Musical Criticism and Intellectual Thought 1850 1950 2018 p 4 Ward J O Scholes Percy Alfred 1877 1958 in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004 Scholes Percy A 2017 08 24 The Puritans and Music in England and New England Creative Media Partners LLC ISBN 978 1 376 20676 0 Percy A Scholes 1962 The Puritans And Music In England And New England Universal Digital Library Russell amp Russell Percy Scholes Pioneer of Musical Appreciation in The Times 2 August 1957 p 10 Musical Times No 1387 September 1958 p 501 Sibley Music Library Arthur Eaglefield Hull Scholes Percy The Ethics of Borrowing Musical Times No 1019 1 January 1928 p 59 Scholes Percy A Our Humourless Reviewers Musical Times No 1179 May 1941 p 176 177 Library and Archives Canada John Owen Ward Preface to the Tenth Edition 1969 External links edit nbsp Wikisource has original works by or about Percy Scholes Portals nbsp Classical music nbsp Biography nbsp Music Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Percy Scholes amp oldid 1202360310, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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