Sir Thomas Beecham – jeden z najbardziej wpływowych i znaczących brytyjskich dyrygentów epoki, biznesmen.
Pochodził z zamożnej rodziny, syn milionera Josepha Beechama i wnuk Thomasa Beechama. Studiował na University of Oxford, ale w dziedzinie muzyki był samoukiem. Twórca kilku brytyjskich orkiestr, w tym Beecham Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra i Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Odpowiadał za brytyjską premierę Śpiewaków norymberskich Richarda Wagnera, Elektry i Salome Richarda Straussa. W 1916 roku otrzymał rycerstwo, a po śmierci ojca odziedziczył tytuł baroneta. Od początku lat 20. XX wieku był w brytyjskim środowisku muzycznym dominującą postacią. W 1959 roku napisał biografię Fredericka Deliusa, a w 1944 autobiografię A Mingled Chime.
Żonaty z Uticą Celestią Wells , Betty Humby i Shirley Hudson .
Wikipedia
“I found it as alluring as a wayward woman and determined to tame it.”
Of the music of Frederick Delius
Conductors by John L. Holmes (1988) pp 31-37 ISBN 0-575-04088-2
“What can you do with it? It's like a lot of yaks jumping about.”
On Beethoven's Seventh Symphony
Quoted in Atkins and Newman, Beecham Stories, 1978
“The grand tune is the only thing in music that the great public really understands.”
Conductors by John L. Holmes (1988) pp 31-37 ISBN 0-575-04088-2
“The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought.”
Quoted in Atkins and Newman, Beecham Stories, 1978
“Too much counterpoint; what is worse, Protestant counterpoint.”
Of J. S. Bach; quoted by Neville Cardus, Guardian, 8 March 1971
“The musical equivalent of the towers of St Pancras Station”
Of Edward Elgar's 1st symphony
Neville Cardus: Sir Thomas Beecham, A Memoir, (1961)
“Asked if he had ever conducted any Stockhausen, he said, "No, but I once trod in some."”
http://www.paulcarey.net/Quotes.htm http://www.stockhausen.org/licht_by_malcolm_ball.html
“A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it.”
Quoted by H. Proctor-Gregg, Beecham Remembered (1976), p. 154
[Beecham admitted to Neville Cardus that he had made this up on the spur of the moment to satisfy an importunate journalist; he acknowledged that it was an oversimplification. (Neville Cardus: 'Sir Thomas Beecham, A Memoir', 1961)]
“If I cannot sing a work, I cannot conduct it.”
Conductors by John L. Holmes (1988) pp 31-37 ISBN 0-575-04088-2
“No composer has written as much as 100 bars of worthwhile music since 1925.”
Conductors by John L. Holmes (1988) pp 31-37 ISBN 0-575-04088-2
Of Ralph Vaughan Williams' Pastoral Symphony
Conductors by John L. Holmes (1988) pp 31-37 ISBN 0-575-04088-2