Editing Constant Lambert

{{Short description|British composer, conductor, and author (1905–1951)}}
{{EngvarB|date=November 2017}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=November 2017}}
{{Infobox artist
| name          = Constant Lambert
| image         = Constant Lambert by Christopher Wood.jpg
| caption       = Portrait by Christopher Wood (1926)
| birth_name    = Leonard Constant Lambert
| birth_date    = {{Birth date|df=yes|1905|8|23}}
| birth_place   = [[Fulham]], London, England
| death_date    = {{death date and age|df=yes|1951|8|21|1905|8|23}}
| death_place   = London, England
| field         = Composer<br />conductor<br />author
| training      = [[Royal College of Music]]<br />[[Christ's Hospital]]
| movement      =
| works         = [[The Rio Grande (Lambert)|The Rio Grande]]<br />[[Summer's Last Will and Testament (Lambert)|Summer's Last Will and Testament]]<br />''Music Ho!''
| patrons       =
| awards        = 
| father        = [[George Washington Lambert|George Lambert]]
| spouse        = {{marriage|Florence Kaye|5 August 1931|1947|end=divorced}}<br>{{marriage|[[Isabel Nicholas]]|1947}}
| partner       = [[Margot Fonteyn]]
| relatives     = [[Kit Lambert]] (son)<br>[[Maurice Lambert]] (brother)
}}

'''Leonard Constant Lambert''' (23 August 1905{{spaced ndash}}21 August 1951) was a British [[composer]], conductor, and [[author]]. He was the founding music director of the [[Royal Ballet]], and (alongside Dame [[Ninette de Valois]] and Sir [[Frederick Ashton]]) he was a major figure in the establishment of the English ballet as a significant artistic movement.<ref name="ROH bio">{{cite web |title=Constant Lambert biography |url=http://www.roh.org.uk/people/constant-lambert |publisher=Royal Opera House |access-date=20 February 2019}}</ref>

His ballet commitments, including extensive conducting work throughout his life, restricted his compositional activities. However one work, ''[[The Rio Grande (Lambert)|The Rio Grande]]'', for chorus, orchestra and piano soloist, achieved widespread popularity in the 1920s, and is still regularly performed today. His other work includes a jazz influenced Piano Concerto (1931), major ballet scores such as ''[[Horoscope (ballet)|Horoscope]]'' (1937) and a full-scale choral masque ''[[Summer's Last Will and Testament (Lambert)|Summer's Last Will and Testament]]'' (1936) that some consider his masterpiece.

Lambert had wide-ranging interests beyond music, as can be seen from his critical study ''Music Ho!'' (1934), which places music in the context of the other arts. His friends included [[John Maynard Keynes]], [[Anthony Powell]] and the [[The Sitwells|Sitwells]].<ref>Motion Andrew (1996). ''The Lamberts. George, Constant and Kit''.</ref> To Keynes, Lambert was perhaps the most brilliant man he had ever met; to de Valois he was the greatest ballet conductor and advisor his country had ever had; to the composer [[Denis ApIvor]] he was the most entertaining personality of the musical world.<ref>Stephen Lloyd. ''Constant Lambert – Beyond The Rio Grande''. Introduction.</ref>

==Early life and music==
[[File:The artist’s wife, Amy, and their son Constant - George Washington Lambert - ref Lambert-98142.jpg|thumb|left|'The artist’s wife, Amy, and their son Constant' by [[George Washington Lambert]] ]]
The son of Australian painter [[George Washington Lambert|George Lambert]] and his wife Amy, and the younger brother of [[Maurice Lambert]], Constant Lambert was educated at [[Christ's Hospital]] near [[Horsham]] in West Sussex. While still a boy he demonstrated formidable musical gifts, and wrote his first orchestral work at the age of 13. In September 1922 Lambert entered the Royal College of Music, where his teachers were [[Ralph Vaughan Williams]], [[R. O. Morris]] and Sir&nbsp;[[George Dyson (composer)|George Dyson]] (composition), [[Malcolm Sargent]] (conducting) and [[Herbert Fryer]] (piano).<ref name="naxos">{{cite web |title=Constant Lambert- Bio, Albums, Pictures – Naxos Classical Music. |url=https://www.naxos.com/person/Constant_Lambert_39495/39495.htm |website=Naxos|access-date=11 March 2019}}</ref> His contemporaries there included the pianist [[Angus Morrison (pianist)|Angus Morrison]], conductor [[Guy Warrack]], [[Thomas Armstrong (musician)|Thomas Armstrong]] (a future head of the [[Royal Academy of Music]]), and the composers [[Gavin Gordon (composer)|Gavin Gordon]], [[Patrick Hadley]] and [[Gordon Jacob]].<ref>Lloyd, Stephen (2015). [https://books.google.com/books?id=hMzCAwAAQBAJ&q=%22Royal+College+of+Music%22 ''Constant Lambert: Beyond the Rio Grande'']. p. 32.</ref> 
[[File:Constant Lambert as a Blue coat boy.jpg|thumb|Lambert aged about eleven in the uniform of [[Christ's Hospital]], painting by his father [[George Washington Lambert|George Lambert]]]]
In 1925 (at the age of 20) he received a high profile commission to write a ballet for [[Sergei Diaghilev]]'s [[Ballets Russes]] (''Roméo et Juliette'', 1926, choreographed by [[Nijinska]]). For a few years he enjoyed celebrity, through the broader success of his next ballet (the neo-classical ''Pomona'' of 1927, choreographed again by Nijinska), and through his participation as narrator in many public performances (and a recording) of [[William Walton]] and [[Edith Sitwell]]'s controversial ''[[Façade (entertainment)|Façade]]''.<ref>{{cite journal | last=Driver | first=Paul | title=''Façade'' Revisited | journal=Tempo |series=New Series | volume=133/134 | pages=3–9 |date=September 1980| issue=133–134 | doi=10.1017/S0040298200031211 | s2cid=251412618 }}</ref>

==Jazz influence==
Lambert's best-known composition followed. ''[[The Rio Grande (Lambert)|The Rio Grande]]'' (1927), for piano and alto soloists, [[choir|chorus]], and orchestra of brass, strings and percussion, sets a poem by [[Sacheverell Sitwell]]. It achieved considerable success, and Lambert made two recordings of the piece as conductor (1930 and 1949). He had a great interest in [[African-American music]], and once said that he would have ideally liked ''The Rio Grande'' to feature a black choir.<ref>{{cite journal | last=Palmer | first=Christopher | title=Constant Lambert: A Postscript | journal=Music & Letters | volume=52 | issue=2 | pages=173–176 |date=April 1971| doi=10.1093/ml/LII.2.173 }}</ref> He held a very positive view of jazz rhythms and their incorporation in classical music saying once that:
{{Blockquote
|"The chief interest of jazz rhythms lies in their application to the setting of words, and although jazz settings have by no means the flexibility or subtlety of the early seventeenth-century airs, for example, there is no denying their lightness and ingenuity … English words demand for their successful musical treatment an infinitely more varied and syncopated rhythm than is to be found in the nineteenth-century romantics, and the best jazz songs of today are, in fact, nearer in their methods to the late fifteenth-century composers than any music since."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dw.asp?dc=W3000_GBAJY9256501|title = The Rio Grande (Lambert) - from CDH55388 - Hyperion Records - MP3 and Lossless downloads}}</ref>
}}
Lambert was to take his interest in jazz much further in works such as the Piano Sonata (1929) and the ''Concerto for piano and nine Instruments'' (1931), where the style moves away from the "symphonic jazz" of [[Gershwin]] and [[Paul Whiteman]] to something much more tense and urban, with popular and formal elements of composition closely integrated, rhythms jagged and extreme, and harmony sometimes approaching atonalism.<ref>Hardy, Lisa (2012). ''[https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781843837985/the-british-piano-sonata-1870-1945/ The British Piano Sonata, 1870-1945]''. pp. 129–140.</ref> The second movement of the Sonata features a blues in rondo form.<ref>[[Giles Easterbrook|Easterbrook, Giles]] (1995). [https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDH55397 "Notes to Hyperion CDH55937"].</ref> The Concerto's unusual chamber scoring becomes something of a hybrid between a jazz band and the ensemble used in Schoenberg's ''[[Pierrot lunaire]]''.<ref>[https://atuneadayblogdotcom.wordpress.com/2013/07/11/constant-lambert-concerto-for-piano-and-nine-instruments-1931/ 'Lambert, Concerto for Piano and Nine Instruments']. ''A Tune A Day''.</ref>

==Later career==
[[File:Christopher-Wood-Portrait-of-Constant-Lambert-1927.jpg|thumb|Portrait of Constant Lambert, painting by [[Christopher Wood (painter)|Christopher Wood]], 1927.]]
Lambert was appointed in 1931 as conductor and music director of the Vic-Wells ballet (later [[The Royal Ballet]]),<ref name="ROH bio"/> but his career as a composer stagnated.  His major choral work ''[[Summer's Last Will and Testament (Lambert)|Summer's Last Will and Testament]]'' (1935, after [[Summer's Last Will and Testament|the play of the same name]] by [[Thomas Nashe]]), one of his most emotionally dark works, proved unfashionable in the mood following the death of [[George V|King George V]], but [[Alan Frank]] hailed it at the time as Lambert's "finest work".<ref>{{cite journal | last=Frank | first=Alan | title=The Music of Constant Lambert | journal=The Musical Times | volume=78 | issue=1137 | pages=941–945 |date=November 1937 | doi=10.2307/923287 | jstor=923287 }}</ref>

The Second World War took its toll on his vitality and creativity. He was ruled unfit for active service in the armed forces; decades of hard drinking had impaired his health, which declined further with the development of [[Diabetes mellitus|diabetes]] that remained undiagnosed and untreated until very late in his life. Lambert's childhood experiences (which included a near-fatal bout of septicaemia) had given him a lifelong detestation and fear of the medical profession.

Lambert himself considered he had failed as a composer, and completed only two major works after the disappointment of ''Summer's Last Will and Testament'' - they were the ballet scores ''Horoscope'' (1938) and ''[[Tiresias (ballet)|Tiresias]]'' (1951) - though there were also several smaller works, such as the white-note piano four hands suite ''Trois pièces nègres pour les touches blanches'', written for the identical twin piano duo [[Mary and Geraldine Peppin]].<ref>Motion Andrew (1996). [https://books.google.com/books?id=I9U7C_Ej9LkC&q=Peppin&pg=PR2-IA102 ''The Lamberts. George, Constant and Kit''].</ref> Instead he concentrated mostly on conducting, working closely with the Royal Ballet until his resignation in 1947. He continued to be featured as a guest conductor until shortly before his death in 1951.<ref name="ROH bio"/>

==Broader cultural interests==
An expert on painting, sculpture, and literature as well as music,<ref>{{cite journal | last=Palmer| first=Christopher| title=Review of ''Constant Lambert'' by Richard Shead | journal=Music & Letters | volume=55 | issue=2 | pages=241–242 |date=April 1974| doi=10.1093/ml/LV.2.241}}</ref> Lambert differed from most of his fellow English composers of the time in his perception of the importance of jazz. He responded positively to the music of [[Duke Ellington]]. His embrace of music outside the 'serious' repertoire is illustrated by his book ''Music Ho!'' (1934),<ref>{{cite book | last1 = Lambert | title = Music Ho! | url = https://fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20090115 | access-date = 26 June 2011}}</ref> subtitled "a study of music in decline", which remains one of the wittiest, if most highly opinionated, volumes of music criticism in the English language.

Lambert's father, while born in Russia and of American heritage, viewed himself as first and foremost an Australian. Constant was always conscious of his Australian connections, although he never visited that country.  For the first performance of his Piano Concerto (1931), rather than select a British-born pianist, Lambert chose the Sydney-born, [[Brisbane]]-trained [[Arthur Benjamin]] to play the solo part. Despite his disapproval of homosexuality he formed a good working relationship with Benjamin's fellow Australian [[Robert Helpmann]]. Afterwards he entrusted yet another Australian musician, [[Gordon Watson (pianist)|Gordon Watson]], with the task of playing the virtuoso piano part at the première of his last ballet, ''[[Tiresias (ballet)|Tiresias]]''.<ref>[http://www.graemeskinner.id.au/LAMBERTpianoconcerto.html Graeme Skinner, musicologist] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130409140647/http://graemeskinner.id.au/LAMBERTpianoconcerto.html |date=9 April 2013 }}</ref>

==Personal life==
[[File:ConstantLambertBrompton.jpg|thumb|Funerary monument, Brompton Cemetery, London]]
Lambert's first marriage was to Florence Kaye, on 5 August 1931;<ref>{{cite journal | last=Foss | first=Hubert | title=Constant Lambert, 23 August 1905–21 August 1951 | journal=The Musical Times | volume=92 | issue=1304 | pages=449–451 |date=October 1951}}</ref> their son was [[Kit Lambert]], one of the managers of [[The Who]], named after his friend the painter [[Christopher Wood (painter)|Christopher "Kit" Wood]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Faulks |first=Sebastian |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jHcnzR4jR8kC&pg=PA253 |title=The Fatal Englishman: Three Short Lives |date=2010-01-26 |publisher=Random House |isbn=978-1-4070-5264-9 |language=en}}</ref> But he was soon engaged in an on-and-off affair with the ballet dancer [[Margot Fonteyn]]. According to friends of Fonteyn, Lambert was the great love of her life and she despaired when she finally realised he would never marry her.  Some aspects of this relationship were symbolised in his ballet ''[[Horoscope (ballet)|Horoscope]]'' (1938), in which Fonteyn was a principal dancer. After divorcing Kaye, in 1947 Lambert married the artist [[Isabel Rawsthorne|Isabel Delmer]], who designed the stage sets and costumes for his ballet ''Tiresias''; after his death, she married [[Alan Rawsthorne]].<ref>Jacobi, Carol (February 2021). ''[https://www.francis-bacon.com/outofthecage Out of the Cage: The Art of Isabel Rawsthorne]'', London: The Estate of Francis Bacon Publishing.</ref> In 1945 Florence married Charles Edward Peter Hole; their daughter Anne later took the stage name [[Annie Lambert]]. During the 1930s Lambert also had a long affair and friendship with Laureen Goodare (mother of actress [[Cleo Sylvestre]], Constant's goddaughter). Laureen was a dancer and cigarette girl at the [[Shim Sham Club]] in Wardour Street, Soho. Their affair lasted until his untimely death in 1951. 

Close friends of his included [[Michael Ayrton]], [[Sacheverell Sitwell]] and [[Anthony Powell]]. He was the prototype of the character [[List of composers in literature|Hugh Moreland]] in Powell's ''[[A Dance to the Music of Time]]'', particularly in the fifth volume, ''[[Casanova's Chinese Restaurant]]'', in which Moreland is a central character.<ref>Powell, Anthony (1976). ''Memoirs'', Vol 4, ''To Keep The Ball Rolling''.</ref>

Lambert died on 21 August 1951, two days short of his forty-sixth birthday, of [[pneumonia]] and undiagnosed [[Diabetes mellitus|diabetes]] complicated by acute alcoholism, and was buried in [[Brompton Cemetery]], London.<ref name="sol">{{cite web |title=Brompton Cemetery Survey of London: Volume 41, Brompton. |url=https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol41/pp246-252 |website=British History Online |publisher=LCC 1983 |access-date=20 May 2025}}</ref> His son Kit was buried in the same grave in 1981.

==Major works==
{{main|List of compositions by Constant Lambert}}

'''Ballets'''
*''[[Romeo and Juliet (Lambert ballet)|Romeo and Juliet]]'' (1925)
*''[[Pomona (ballet)|Pomona]]'' (1927)
*''[[Horoscope (ballet)|Horoscope]]'' (1938)
*''[[Tiresias (ballet)|Tiresias]]'' (1950)

'''Choral and vocal'''
*''Eight poems of [[Li Bai|Li Po]]'' (1928)
*''[[The Rio Grande (Lambert)|The Rio Grande]]'' (1927) (a setting of a poem by [[Sacheverell Sitwell]])
*''[[Summer's Last Will and Testament (Lambert)|Summer's Last Will and Testament]]'' (1936; to [[Summer's Last Will and Testament|words]] by [[Thomas Nashe]])
*''Dirge from [[Cymbeline]]'' (1947)

'''Orchestral'''
*''The Bird Actors'' [[Overture]] (1924)
*''Music for Orchestra'' (1927)
*''Aubade héroïque'' (1941)

'''Chamber'''
*  ''Concerto for piano, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings'' (1924)
*''Concerto for piano and nine instruments'' (1931)
'''Instrumental'''
*''Elegiac Blues'' (1927, orchestrated 1928)
* Piano Sonata (1930)
*''Elegy'', for piano (1938)
*''{{lang|fr|Trois Pièces Nègres pour les Touches Blanches}}'' [''Three Black Pieces for the White Keys''], piano duet (4 hands) (1949)

'''Film music'''
*''Merchant Seamen'' (semi-documentary; 1941)
*''[[Anna Karenina (1948 film)|Anna Karenina]]'' (1948)

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Bibliography==
* Drescher, Derek (producer). ''Remembering Constant Lambert'', BBC Radio 3 documentary, broadcast 23 August 1975.
* Lloyd, Stephen. ''Constant Lambert: Beyond The Rio Grande''. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2014. {{ISBN|978-1-84383-898-2}}.
* McGrady, Richard. ''[https://www.jstor.org/stable/731562?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents The Music of Constant Lambert]''. In ''Music & Letters'' Vol 51, No 3, July 1970 
* Motion, Andrew. ''The Lamberts: George, Constant & Kit''. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1986. {{ISBN|0-374-18283-3}}.
* Shead, Richard. ''Constant Lambert''. London, 1972. {{ISBN|9780903620017}}.

==External links==
{{wikiquote}}
* {{FadedPage|id=Lambert, Constant|name=Constant Lambert|author=yes}}
* {{IMSLP|id=Lambert, Leonard Constant|cname=Constant Lambert}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20071004023736/http://www.gresham.ac.uk/event.asp?PageId=45&EventId=698 'The Jazz Age'], lecture and concert by [[Chamber Domaine]] given on 6 November 2007 at [[Gresham College]], including the Suite in Three Movements for Piano by Lambert (available for audio and video download).
* [http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/person.asp?LinkID=mp02604 Constant Lambert (1905–1951), Composer, conductor and critic: Sitter in 24 portraits] (National Portrait Gallery)
* {{IMDb name|id=0483101}}
* [https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/118245/1/Smith%20Thesis%202017.pdf Constant Lambert: Dionysian Modernist], Dr Anthony Smith PhD, [[Australian National University]], PhD thesis 2017, accessed 2022-07-15

{{George Washington Lambert|state=collapsed}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lambert, Constant}}
[[Category:1905 births]]
[[Category:1951 deaths]]
[[Category:20th-century British classical composers]]
[[Category:20th-century British conductors (music)]]
[[Category:20th-century British male musicians]]
[[Category:20th-century English musicians]]
[[Category:Alumni of the Royal College of Music]]
[[Category:British ballet composers]]
[[Category:British male classical pianists]]
[[Category:British male conductors (music)]]
[[Category:British male film score composers]]
[[Category:British people of American descent]]
[[Category:Burials at Brompton Cemetery]]
[[Category:Composers for piano]]
[[Category:Deaths from diabetes in the United Kingdom]]
[[Category:Deaths from pneumonia in England]]
[[Category:English classical composers]]
[[Category:English conductors (music)]]
[[Category:English male classical composers]]
[[Category:English people of Australian descent]]
[[Category:Jazz-influenced classical composers]]
[[Category:Lambert family|Constant]]
[[Category:People educated at Christ's Hospital]]
[[Category:Pupils of Ralph Vaughan Williams]]
[[Category:Ballets Russes composers]]