Tunes of Glory: The Life of Malcolm Sargent [Hardcover]

Richard Aldous has written a compelling biography which echoes in its nimble prose Sargent's own demeanour as a conductor. Aldous has travailed in the archives ( these notably include Sargent's own papers and major collections at the BBC, EMI and the Public Record Office) to recover the details of the conductor's extraordinary private and public lives, but he wears this learning lightly. The result is a book which is gracefully written but which nevertheless focuses squarely on Sargent's significance as an icon of British cultural history.

Sargent's private life was one marked by intense sadness. The death of his daughter Pamela in 1944, a difficult and finally estranged relationship with his wife and a similarly strained relationship with his son, Peter (who discussed his father at length with the author of this book) are hauntingly counterpointed by Aldous against the glittering prizes of Sargent's professional career. At another remove, the sometimes hilarious chronicle of sex-and-shopping stories (without much shopping) threaded throughout the narrative features a cast of characters straight from Evelyn Waugh. The index boasts, among others, Diana Bowes-Lyon, Lady Mary de Zulueta, Sidonie Goossens, Marina, Princess of Greece and Denmark and Edwina Mountbatten. Nevertheless, as Aldous succinctly remarks, Sargent 'enjoyed a love life that was physically active but emotionally stagnant.' Lady de Zulueta (his assistant in the 1950s) describes Sargent's frenetic socialising as 'an anaesthetic for having no happy home of his own.'

It is the public figure, however, that merits this striking retrieval of a lonely life. The crowning achievement of this book is that it first recovers the reach of Sargent's musicianship (notably by comparison with Thomas Beecham, who comes off rather badly here) not only in terms of Sargent's renowned abilities as a choral and orchestral conductor of enormous drive and popularity, but also with regard to his special relationship with contemporary composers including Walton and Sibelius. Aldous then redeems Sargent from his tired reputation as a prom idol and looks instead to his role in moving serious music to the centre of British public life. In this respect, chapter eight of this biography, subtitled 'The Baton and the Blitz' is exemplary. Aldous shows how Sargent, especially through his performances of The Dream of Gerontius rallied English public morale at a time when bombs rained down on London. The war years - but not only these- show Sargent at his best in this biography, because the conductor's vital instinct for showmanship found a worthy purpose. What Aldous describes as 'the mid-century transition to mass culture' - a process which animated Sargent's career and then blighted it in retrospect - gained sharp, new meaning in the crisis of war.
Tunes of Glory is a decisive contribution to British cultural history. It has already begun to attract the kind of controversy that its subject did during his lifetime, but that fact testifies to its significance.