Sir Thomas Beecham, conductor and impresario, was one of Britain’s first truly international celebrity musicians. He earned this fame due in part to his flamboyant personality, but more so to his tireless energy promoting composers, running orchestras, and entertaining audiences around the globe.
Beecham was born in St. Helens, Lancashire, not far from Liverpool, on April 29, 1879. His father, a baronet, was an astute businessman who had made a fortune manufacturing and selling (Beecham’s) patent medicines. He was also an avid music lover. It was this family fortune that enabled the young Beecham to study composition privately in London and Paris and to launch his own career as a conductor–although his conducting was largely self-taught–and musical impresario.
Prior to World War I, Beecham had already become well known in Britain. He had formed the Beecham Symphony Orchestra and the Beecham Opera Company (later the British National Opera, which primarily aimed to promote British singers), and introduced two sensational new works by Richard STRAUSS–Salome (1905) and Elektra (1909)–to British audiences. He also brought all the brilliance and excitement of the Russian Ballets Russes to London for the first time. During this period, he met the composer Frederick DELIUS, and subsequently became a close friend and one of the greatest champions of his music–in 1929 Beecham staged a Delius Festival held in London.
After World War I, Beecham became artistic director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and he filled the productions (many of which he conducted himselQ with the world’s top operatic stars. In 1932, he also founded the London Philharmonic Orchestra, which he took on a triumphant tour throughout Germany. But his most important work during the 1930s was with the Royal Opera House, where he conducted Wagner’s The Ring several times before 1939, when the house was closed due to the start of World War II. For much of the war, Beecham lived in the U.S., conducting orchestras from coast to coast, including the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and the Metropolitan Opera in New York, as well as making recordings with various orchestras. Upon his return to England in 1946, he founded the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, which he later took to America for a much-publicised and successful concert tour.
As a conductor, Beecham was in a class of his own. While other conductors, such as Arturo TOSCANINI, drilled orchestras as if they were soldiers on parade, Beecham relied on flair and instinct, and on winning the affection of his players–to whom he was always known as “Tommy.” This relaxed, good-humoured approach to music also endeared Beecham to the public. His encores, or “lollipops” as he called them, became a famous feature of his concerts.
Beecham was one of the most widely recorded conductors of his generation, and when he died, in March 1961, he left behind a rich legacy of performances ranging from the music of Haydn and Mozart to that of his friends Delius and Jean SIBELIUS. A colourful character, he was knighted in 1916 and made a Companion of Honour in 1957. He was probably one of the last great impresarios. The world of concert music today is a tightly controlled, highly organised business in which there is little room for such a free spirit as was Sir Thomas Beecham.
Alan Blackwood
SEE ALSO:
OPERA; ORCHESTRAL MUSIC; RECORD PRODUCTION.
FURTHER READING
Beecham, Sir Thomas. A Mingled Chime (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976);
Beecham Society. Sir Thomas Beecham Discography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Delius: Brigg Fair, Paris: The Song of the Great City, Song before Sunrise-, Summer Evening-, Symphony in C;
Mozart: Symphony No. 39; Symphony No. 41; The Magic Flute;
Puccini: La bohème;
Sibelius: Symphony No. 7.