Erik Chisholm

Erik Chisholm
Born	4 January 1904 Glasgow, Scotland
Died	8 June 1965 Cape Town, South Africa
Occupation(s)	Composer and conductor
Spouse	Diana Brodie
Children	Sheila, Fiona and Morag
Parent(s)	John Chisholm and Elizabeth Macleod

Dr Erik William Chisholm (4 January, 1904, Glasgow, Scotland — 8 June, 1965, Cape Town, South Africa) was a Scottish composer and conductor often known as Scotland’s forgotten composer. For 19 years he was also the dean and director of the South African College of Music at the University of Cape Town. He was the first composer to absorb Celtic idioms into his music in form as well as content, his achievement paralleling that of Bartók in its depth of understanding and its daring.

Early life and education

He was the son of John Chisholm, master house painter, and his wife, Elizabeth McGeachy Macleod. He left school at the age of 13 due to ill-health but he showed a talent for composition and some of his pieces were published in his childhood. He had piano lessons with Philip Halstead at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and later studied the organ under Herbert Walton, the organist at Glasgow Cathedral. The pianist Leff Pouishnoff then became his principal teacher and mentor. In 1927 he travelled to Nova Scotia, Canada, where he was appointed the organist and choirmaster at the Westminster Presbyterian Church, New Glasgow, and director of music at Pictou Academy. However, a year later he returned to Glasgow and became the organist at Barony Church and taught privately. As he had no school-leaving certificate he could not study at a university so under his future wife, Diana Brodie's, influence he approached several influential music friends for letters of support of an exemption. In 1928, he was accepted to study Music at the University of Edinburgh, under his friend and mentor the renowned musicologist Sir Donald Tovey, and he graduated with a BMus in 1931 and a DMus in 1934. While at university, he had formed the Scottish Ballet Society (1928) and the Active Society for the Propagation of Contemporary Music (1929) with Francis George Scott and Pat Shannon. In the years 1930 - 1934 he also worked as a music critic with the Glasgow Weekly Herald and the Scottish Daily Express.

Scottish career

During these years his music was both "daring and original", according to Sir Hugh Roberton, while also displaying a strong Scottish character in works such as his Pibroch Piano Concerto (1930), the Straloch Suite for Orchestra (1933) and the Sonata 'An Riobhan Dearg' (1939). In 1930 he became the conductor of the Glasgow Grand Opera. In 1933 he was the soloist at the première of his piano concerto no. 1 in Amsterdam. He conducted the British premières of Mozart's Idomeneo in 1934 and Berlioz's Les Troyens and Béatrice et Bénédict in 1935 and 1936 respectively. He was the founder conductor of both the Barony Opera Society and the Scottish Ballet Society; he established the Professional Organists' Association; and in 1938 he was appointed music director of the Celtic Ballet, for which he composed four works in collaboration with Margaret Morris, the most famous being The Forsaken Mermaid. On the outbreak of World War II he was declared unfit for military service, however he conducted performances with the Carl Rosa Opera in 1940, and later joined the Entertainments National Service Association with which he toured Italy with the Anglo-Polish Ballet in 1943 and served as musical director to the south-east Asia command between 1943 and 1945. He also formed a multi-racial orchestra in India and founded the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. In 1946 he was appointed professor of music at the University of Cape Town and director of the South African College of Music.

South African career

Strubenholm, the home of the SA College of Music.

He revived the South African College of Music using Edinburgh University as his model. He appointed new staff, extended the number of courses, and introduced new degrees and diplomas. In order to encourage budding South African musicians he founded the South African National Music Press to help young African composers in 1948, established the university opera company in 1951, and started the university opera school in 1954 with the assistance of the Italian baritone Gregorio Fiasconaro. The opera company became a national success and toured as far afield as Zambia, London and Glasgow. In the winter of 1956 - 1957 Chisholm's ambitious festival of SA Music and Musicians took London by storm with a programme of Wigmore Hall concerts and the London première at the Rudolf Steiner Theatre of Bela Bartók's opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle. The company also performed Menotti's The Consul as well as Chisholm's own opera The Inland Woman, based on a drama of the sea by Irish author Mary Lavin. In 1952 Syzmon Goldberg premièred his violin concerto at the Van Riebeeck Music Festival in Cape Town. In 1954 his opera trilogy Murder in Three Keys enjoyed a six-week season in New York. In 1956 he was invited to Moscow to conduct the Moscow State Orchestra in his second piano concerto The Hindustani with Agnes Walker as soloist. He was responsible for bringing the music of Leos Janácek, Bela Bartók, Paul Hindemith, and Nicholas Medtner to Britain. Chisholm did not support the current South African policy of Apartheid and was considered left-wing. Chisholm had convinced Ronald Stevenson, a fellow Scot, to lecture at the University of Cape Town. When they performed Stevenson's Passacaglia, notes were placed in the programme referring to Lenin's slogan of peace, bread and land and also in salute of the 'emergent Africa'.

"The very next day, there was a police invasion of Erik Chisholm’s study. And they emptied the drawers, emptied everything, trying to search for incriminating evidence, because he had been to Russia and indeed he had at least one volume of Scottish folk songs published in the Soviet Union. But Erik Chisholm was not particularly political at that time."

Later years and legacy

Composing at his Petrof piano with Towser, his concert-going Spaniel, at his feet.

In his later years he concentrated on operas and composed 12. His inspirations were drawn from "sources as varied as Hindustan, the Outer Hebrides, the neo-classical and baroque, pibroch, astrology and literature". On his premature death in 1965, aged 61, from a heart attack, he left all his music to UCT. Erik Chisholm wrote well over 100 works, including 35 orchestral works, 7 concertante works (including a Violin Concerto and two Piano Concertos), 7 works for orchestra and voice or chorus, 54 piano works, 3 organ works, 43 songs, 8 choral part-songs, 7 ballets, 9 operas including one on Robert Burns. Only 17 works were published, of which only 14 were issued in printed score. Erik also made several interesting arrangements, including a string orchestra version of Alkan's Symphonie Op 39, a composer still largely unknown at that time, and Paderewski's Theme Varié, arranged for two pianos. Because Scottish composers are few and the quality of his music is often good, his apologists have argued that his works should be heard more regularly. But his music can be harsh and his uncompromising approach is often unattractive to audiences. Even so, some of his works have been revived, and recordings of his piano and vocal music have been made. He had a lifelong interest in Scottish music and published a collection of Celtic folk-songs in 1964. He was also interested in Czech music, and completed his book The Operas of Leoš Janáček shortly before his death. His services to Czech music were recognized formally in 1956, when he was awarded the Dvořák medal. The Manuscripts and Archives Library at UCT holds the Chisholm collection of papers and manuscripts; his published scores are in the College of Music library and many copies have now been sent to the Scottish Music Information Centre in Glasgow. According to his daughter, Fiona Chisholm, Erik Chisholm was :

"Restlessly energetic and with an eclectic range of interests encompassing literature, astronomy, Celtic songs, art, writing, cinematography and politics, Erik Chisholm packed about three lives into one."

There is a forthcoming biography of Erik Chisholm, written by John Purser with the foreward by Sir Charles Mackerras, Chasing A Restless Muse: Erik Chisholm, Scottish Modernist (1904-1965). Recently, many of his works have been released on CD, performed by Murray McLachlan.

Writings

Chisholm, E. (1971) Operas of Leos Janacek, Elsevier. ISBN 0080128548.

Sources

• Biography of Sheila Chisholm on FMR
• Newspaper Articles on Erik Chisholm
• ERIK CHISHOLM