Eric Blom

Eric Walter Blom (20 August 188811 April 1959) was a Swiss-born British-naturalised music lexicographer, music critic and writer. He is best known as the editor of the 5th edition of ''Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' (1954).

Biography

Blom was born in Bern, Switzerland. His father was of Danish and British descent, and his mother was Swiss. He was educated in German-speaking Switzerland,Frank Howes, "Blom, Eric (Walter)" in ''Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', 5th edition, Supplementary Volume, 1961 and later in England. He was largely self-taught in music. He started in music journalism by assisting Rosa Newmarch in writing program notes for Sir Henry J. Wood's Prom Concerts, which were notable for their abundance of accurate information. From 1923 to 1931 he was the London music correspondent for the ''Manchester Guardian''. He then went to the ''Birmingham Post'' (1931–46, succeeding A J Sheldon), and returned to London in 1949, as music critic for ''The Observer''. He retired as chief music critic for ''The Observer'' in 1953, but still wrote weekly contributions right up till his death.

He was the editor of ''Music & Letters'' from 1937 to 1950, and again from 1954 until his death. He withdrew in 1950 because of his preoccupation with the preparation of ''Grove's Dictionary''. He returned in 1954 only because the proprietor and then-editor, Richard Capell, died. In his capacity as musical adviser to the Dent publishing firm, he also edited the ''Master Musicians'' series, of which he wrote "Mozart". He discovered a number of young authors and gave them their first opportunities to write music biography.

Eric Blom's first lexicographical work was ''Everyman's Dictionary of Music'' (first published by J. M. Dent in 1946), which went through several editions (it was revised in 1988 by D. Cummings as ''The New Everyman Dictionary of Music'').

He succeeded H. C. Colles as editor of '' Grove's Dictionary'' for the 5th edition (usually referred to as "Grove V"). Colles had confined the dictionary to five and six volumes for Grove III and IV respectively (1927, 1940). Blom expanded it to nine volumes for Grove V (1954). As well his overall editing responsibilities, Blom personally wrote hundreds of entries, including Arthur Sullivan.The Unperson of English Music
He also translated many entries by foreign contributors (he was fluent in German, Danish, Italian and French as well as English). A Supplementary Volume was published in 1961, after Blom's death, but he had done most of the work on it. His introduction and acknowledgments were included, and he is credited as editor, with Denis Stevens as associate editor. His own biography, written by Frank Howes (the chief music critic of ''The Times''McBrayer thesis
/ref>), appeared in the Supplementary Volume. Grove V was reprinted in 1966, 1968, 1970, 1973 and 1975, and remained the standard edition of Grove until the New Grove was released in 1980.

Blom was forthright in his opinions. He could be almost gushing about his favourites, particularly Mozart, and most especially his operas. He wrote that Benjamin Britten's ''Peter Grimes'' was "so impressive and original that only the most absurd prejudice will keep it out of the great foreign opera houses". Equally, he did not shrink from criticising composers he thought less of, and introduced some of his own prejudices. He was capable of uniquely insightful comments on well-known works in which he held a minority opinion; e.g., that the solo part of the Sibelius Violin Concerto "is closely interwoven with the symphonic tissue, and is therefore neglected by the average virtuoso" (even though it is in fact one of the most popular and frequently played and recorded of all violin concertos). Even more notoriously, he wrote that Rachmaninoff "did not have the individuality of Taneyev or Medtner. Technically he was highly gifted, but also severely limited. His music is ... monotonous in texture ... The enormous popular success some few of Rakhmaninov's works had in his lifetime is not likely to last, and musicians never regarded it with much favour". To this, Harold C. Schonberg, New York critic not immune to snobbery of his own, in his ''Lives of the Great Composers'', responded with equally outspoken unfairness, "It is one of the most outrageously snobbish and even stupid statements ever to be found in a work that is supposed to be an objective reference".

Blom translated many documents for Otto Erich Deutsch's ''Mozart: A Documentary Biography'' (published 1965).

He assisted Gervase Hughes in the writing of his book
The Music of Arthur Sullivan
'. In 1956, for the Mozart bicentenary, he published some of Mozart's letters translated by Emily Anderson.

In 1941 Blom wrote a detective novel, ''Death on the Down Beat'', using the pseudonym Sebastian Farr. The novel concerns the shooting of a conductor during a performance of Strauss’s ''Ein Heldenleben''. The book was republished in 2022 under the British Library Crime Classics imprint.

Once back in London at the end of the 1940s, Blom's address was 10 Alma Terrace, Allen Street in Kensington. He died on 11 April 1959, and is interred at Golders Green Crematorium. He had requested that at his funeral, the organist play J.S. Bach's final chorale prelude ''Vor Deinen Thron tret' ich zu Dir'' (''I step before Thy throne, O Lord''). Unfortunately, 'Bach chorale' was misunderstood, and the laughably incongruous "Barcarolle" from Offenbach's ''The Tales of Hoffmann'' was played instead.

Other writings

His other books include:
* ''Stepchildren of Music'' (1923)
* ''The Romance of the Piano'' (1927)
* ''A General Index to Modern Musical Literature in the English Language'' (1927; this indexes periodicals for the years 1915–26)
* ''The Limitations of Music'' (1928)
* ''Mozart'' (1935; part of the Master Musicians series)
* ''Beethoven's Pianoforte Sonatas Discussed'' (1938)
* ''A Musical Postbag'' (1941; collected essays)
* ''Music in England'' (1942; rev. 1947)
* ''Some Great Composers'' (1944)
* ''Classics, Major and Minor, with Some Other Musical Ruminations'' (London, 1958)
* Translated Richard Specht's ''Johannes Brahms: Leben und Werk eines deutschen Meisters''Eric Blom
at Goodreads
* Translated Weissman's ''Music Come to Earth''
*Translated the libretto of Mozart's ''Die Entführung aus dem Serail'', which he rendered as ''The Elopement from the Harem''
* ''Tchaikovsky Orchestral Works''
* ''Piano Music of Beethoven''open library
/ref>
* ''The Trouble Factory''
* ''The Music Lover's Miscellany''
* ''Schubert''
* ''Strauss: The Rose Cavalier''
* ''Diccionario de la Musica''
* ''Bach'' (The Mayfair Biographies)
* "Delius and America", in ''The Musical Quarterly''
* Blom contributed the article on Arthur Sullivan in the ''International Cyclopaedia of Music and Musicians'' (New York, 1939)
* He revised H. C. Colles's "The Growth of Music: a Study in Musical History" (1959)

References

Sources

* Frank Howes, "Blom, Eric (Walter)" in ''Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', 5th edition, Supplementary Volume, 1961

External links

*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Blom, Eric
1888 births
1959 deaths
British non-fiction writers
British lexicographers
British male journalists
The Guardian journalists
The Observer people
British biographers
Schubert scholars
Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
Danish–English translators
French–English translators
German–English translators
Italian–English translators
Golders Green Crematorium
British music critics
Classical music critics
People from Bern
20th-century non-fiction writers
Male biographers
20th-century lexicographers
Swiss emigrants to the United Kingdom