Erik Chisholm

Erik William Chisholm (4 January 1904 – 8 June 1965) was a Scottish composer, pianist, organist and conductor sometimes known as "Scotland's forgotten composer".

According to his biographer, Chisholm "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", which led some to give him the nickname "MacBartók".

As composer, performer and impresario, he played an important role in the musical life of Glasgow between the two World Wars and was a founder of the Celtic Ballet and, together with Margaret Morris, created the first full-length Scottish ballet, The Forsaken Mermaid.

After World War II he was Professor and Head of the South African College of Music at the University of Cape Town for 19 years until his death.

Chisholm founded the South African College of Music opera company in Cape Town and was a vital force in bringing new operas to Scotland, England and South Africa.

After returning to Scotland, Chisholm married his second wife, singer and poet Lillias Scott (1913-2018), the daughter of Scottish composer Francis George Scott.

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.

A year later he returned to Scotland and from 1928 to 1933 he was organist at St Matthew's Church, Bath Street, Glasgow, later renamed Renfield St Stephen's and now St Andrew's West.

In 1928, he was accepted to study music at the University of Edinburgh, under his friend and mentor, the renowned musicologist Sir Donald Tovey.

While at university, he had formed the Scottish Ballet Society in 1928 and the Active Society for the Propagation of Contemporary Music in 1929 with fellow composer Francis George Scott and Chisholm's friend Pat Shannon.

From 1930 to 1934 Chisholm also worked as a music critic for the Glasgow Weekly Herald and the Scottish Daily Express.

After his education, Chisholm's work was described as "daring and original", according to Sir Hugh Roberton, while also displaying a strong Scottish character in works such as his Piano Concerto No. 1, subtitled Piobaireachd (1930), the Straloch Suite (1933) and the Sonata An Riobhan Dearg (1939).

From 1930 he was the musical director of the Glasgow Grand Opera Society which performed in the city's Theatre Royal, conducting the British premières of Mozart's Idomeneo in 1934 and Berlioz's Les Troyens and Béatrice et Bénédict in 1935 and 1936, respectively.

Chisholm graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree in 1931 and as Doctor of Music in 1934.

In 1933 he was appointed organist at Glasgow's Barony Church; however, as he had no School Leaving Certificate, he could not study at a university.

Due to the influence of his future wife, Diana Brodie, he approached several influential music friends for letters of support for an exemption to enter university.

In 1933 he was the soloist at the première of his Dance Suite for Orchestra and Piano with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra at an International Society for Contemporary Music festival in Amsterdam.

He also played the Scottish premieres of Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 1 and Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3.

He was also the founding conductor of both the Barony Opera Society, the Scottish Ballet Society, the Professional Organists' Association, and in 1938 he was appointed music director of the Celtic Ballet.

As director he composed four works in collaboration with Margaret Morris, the most famous being The Forsaken Mermaid; the first full-length Scottish ballet.

Chisholm had many friends in the music world, including composers like Béla Bartók, Bax, Alan Bush, Delius, Hindemith, Ireland, Medtner, Kaikhosru Sorabji, Szymanowski and Walton, and invited many of them to Glasgow to perform their works under the auspices of the Active Society.

At the outbreak of World War II, Chisholm, a conscientious objector, was declared unfit for military service on the basis of poor eyesight and a crooked arm.

During the war he conducted performances with the Carl Rosa Opera Company in 1940, and later joined the Entertainments National Service Association as a colonel touring Italy with the Anglo-Polish Ballet in 1943 and served as musical director to the South East Asia Command between 1943 and 1945.

He first formed a multi-racial orchestra in India, but after arguments with his superior, Col. Jack Hawkins, he was removed to Singapore.

Here in 1945 he founded the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.

Many of the musicians were ex-prisoners of War, and from them Chisholm recruited Szymon Goldberg as leader.

Goldberg had successfully hidden his Stradivarius violin up a chimney in the prison camp for three and a half years.

Chisholm created a truly cosmopolitan orchestra of fifteen nationalities from East and West, which gave 50 concerts in Malaya within six months.

In 1946 he was appointed professor of music at the University of Cape Town and director of the South African College of Music.

Chisholm's obituary in The Edinburgh Tatler recalled that "the three highlights of his life were in hearing at age seven Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata played by Frederic Lamond on a piano roll; becoming acquainted with the music of India and lastly being offered the chair of music at Cape Town University in 1947".

That year, Chisholm revived the South African College of Music where he eventually would teach composer Stefans Grové and singer Désirée Talbot.

Using Edinburgh University as his model, Chisholm 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 in 1948.

With the assistance of the Italian baritone Gregorio Fiasconaro, Chisholm also established the college's opera company in 1951 and opera school in 1954.

By the time of his death in 1965, he had composed over a hundred works.

Erik Chisholm was the son of John Chisholm, master house painter, and his wife, Elizabeth McGeachy Macleod.

He left Queen's Park School, Glasgow, at the early age of 13 due to ill-health but showed a talent for music composition and some of his pieces were published during his childhood.

He had piano lessons with Philip Halstead at Glasgow's Athenaeum School of Music, now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and later studied the organ under Herbert Walton, the organist at Glasgow Cathedral.

By the time he was 12 he was giving organ recitals including an important one in Kingston upon Hull.

The pianist Lev Pouishnoff then became his principal teacher and mentor.