Thomas Edward Clark (10 May 188830 April 1962) was an English conductor and music producer for the BBC. Through his positions in leading new music organizations and his wide-ranging contacts with British and European composers, he had a major impact on making contemporary classical music available to the British public for over 30 years. He was a leading figure in the BBC's Concerts of Contemporary Music between 1926 and 1939, and he played a significant role in the founding and early development of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He held prominent positions in the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) from its inception in 1922, and was its president from 1947 to 1952.
He was responsible for producing a number of important world and British premieres (some of which he also conducted), and he was associated with most of the important European and British composers, such as Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, Ferruccio Busoni, Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Paul Hindemith, William Walton, Arthur Bliss, Arnold Bax, Peter Warlock, John Ireland, Constant Lambert, Arthur Benjamin, Humphrey Searle, Denis ApIvor, Alan Rawsthorne, Benjamin Britten, Michael Tippett, Benjamin Frankel, Roberto Gerhard, Luigi Dallapiccola, Christian Darnton and others.
Edward Clark was described by some as Mephistophelean. He was outspoken, immensely erudite, and a visionary. But he was also a loose cannon when it came to administrative matters, tending to ruffle feathers with his too-individual approach, brooking no interference, and being distrustful of those who did not share his vision but often inadequately communicating that vision to them. In 1936 these matters contributed in large part to his premature departure from the BBC, and from the inner sanctum of the contemporary music scene, which he had helped to create as much as anyone, and more than most. His personal integrity in regard to the use of official funds also came under question more than once, in one instance leading to a public scandal and court case in which he sued Benjamin Frankel for slander.
Clark's ex-wife Dorothy Eckersley was jailed in 1945 for making anti-British broadcasts on a German radio station during World War II; their teenage son James Clark was also involved in this. His second wife was the composer Elisabeth Lutyens, with whom he had another son.
Early life Thomas Edward Clark was born in Newcastle upon Tyne on 10 May 1888. His father, James Bowness Clark (1863–1934), was a coal exporter and amateur musician who supported his son's musical interests and for two decades was the secretary of the Newcastle and Gateshead Choral Union. He and his wife Elizabeth née Thirlaway (1858–1939) had three children.Jennifer Doctor, 'Clark, (Thomas) Edward (1888–1962)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 31 January 2013
Edward Clark was educated at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle. Studying in Paris in 1907 and 1908, he met Claude Debussy, Albert Roussel and Maurice Ravel. He returned to Newcastle and presented a paper called "Paper on a Modern French Composer: Claude Debussy"; at that time he formulated a strong desire to encourage British audiences "to understand this music of to-day before it becomes the music of the day before yesterday". In 1909 he studied conducting with Oskar Fried in Berlin while employed as the Berlin correspondent for The Musical Times.
Meeting with Schoenberg and his circle Clark's first exposure to the music of Arnold Schoenberg was at a performance of his symphonic poem Pelleas und Melisande on 31 October 1910 at a concert by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Berlin. He was profoundly impressed by this music, and he was introduced to Schoenberg and Anton Webern after the concert. He became Schoenberg's champion and, along with people like Artur Schnabel, Ferruccio Busoni, Oskar Fried and others, he convinced him to move from Vienna to Berlin, because of the greater opportunities and contacts there. From 1910 until 1912 Clark studied with Schoenberg in Berlin, the only British student he ever had. At first Clark was his sole pupil, then he was joined by Eduard Steuermann, and others later. Clark arranged for Schoenberg to give a series of ten public lectures at the Stern Conservatory ("10 Lectures on the Aesthetics of Music and the Rules of Composition"), which he also attended. He helped raise funds for Schoenberg, and played a part in having his Five Pieces for Orchestra published in a cheap edition, which sold out quickly. One of the purchasers was Sir Henry Wood.
On 3 September 1912, Wood conducted the world premiere of the Five Pieces for Orchestra at a Promenade Concert at the Queen's Hall in London. At Wood's suggestion, Clark invited Schoenberg to make his British conducting debut, and on 17 January 1914 he conducted the same work at the same venue.This was attended by Gustav Holst, who obtained a copy of the score, the only Schoenberg score he ever owned. Echoes of the work appear in The Planets (originally titled Seven Pieces for Large Orchestra), and in the opening of his ballet The Lure (1921), which closely resembles the third of Schoenberg's Five Pieces (Lambourn).
Clark attended the Leipzig premiere of Gurre-Lieder in January 1914 along with Schoenberg, Webern and others. He had been considering settling permanently in Germany, and the matter was decided when he was offered a professional post in Stettin.Stettin was then part of Germany; it is now Szczecin in Poland. In early August 1914 he was attending the Bayreuth Festival, on his way to take up that appointment, when World War I broke out.The 1914 Bayreuth Festival got underway on 22 July, but was interrupted on 4 August (Hilmes). He was arrested at Bayreuth as an enemy alien, and interned at Ruhleben internment camp near Berlin; Edgar Bainton, his colleague from Newcastle, was also interned at that time, as were Ernest MacMillan, Arthur Benjamin and others. Clark was released in May 1918 through the offices of the Red Cross.
On his return to London, he became assistant conductor to Ernest Ansermet and Adrian Boult for Sergei Diaghilev's seasons of the Ballets Russes, and he became friendly with Diaghilev and Igor Stravinsky. In the winter and spring of 1921 he presented two series of concerts of new music, which proved very popular but made him little money. On 8 April at the Queen's Hall he presented the UK premiere of Stravinsky's 1919 Suite from The Firebird, and two world premieres: Arnold Bax's The Bard of the Dimbovitza, song cycle with orchestra, with Ethel Fenton (mezzo-soprano) and the "Storm Music" from Arthur Bliss's incidental music for The Tempest.
On 20 April 1921 Arthur Bliss's Conversations for string quartet had its world premiere at a Clark concert. On 6 May 1921 he presented Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9, to British audiences for the first time, at the Aeolian Hall. The players were Charles Woodhouse (violin), John Barbirolli (cello), Léon Goossens (oboe), and Aubrey Brain and Alfred Brain (horns). This was part of a series of four concerts of recent works by French, German and English composers, many of them first English performances. On 20 May 1921 he conducted the British premiere of Manuel de Falla's Nights in the Gardens of Spain, with the composer at the piano.
Clark attended the inaugural session of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) in Salzburg in 1922, and remained a significant figure in the organisation for the rest of his life.
In August 1921 he married Dorothy ("Dolly") Stephen, and their son James Royston Clark was born in 1923.
British Broadcasting Corporation
Clark was hired by the BBC in August 1924 as Musical Director for their Newcastle station. His imagination, creativity and innovative approaches to programming were soon noted, attracting praise from local Newcastle musical circles; but so too were his administrative shortcomings. In December 1924, in Newcastle, Clark conducted the world premiere of the orchestral version of Arnold Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht. The Newcastle station orchestra was disbanded at the end of 1926, and Clark transferred to London in January 1927 as a programme planner, at the request of Percy Pitt.
Although he was employed full-time by the BBC for only another seven years, it was primarily through his influence that the BBC became established as an international patron of new music. He also did a considerable amount of conducting during this period, sometimes of the works he was producing for the BBC, and sometimes on a freelance basis.
On 19 June 1927 he conducted the British premiere of Igor Stravinsky's Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments, with the composer (in his British radio debut) and the Wireless Symphony Orchestra. On 10–12 July 1927 he conducted three fully staged performances of L'Histoire du soldat at the Arts Theatre Club; they were sung in English and the third performance was broadcast. Clark had also performed this work in its British premiere in the autumn of 1926 in Newcastle.
In November of that year he was able to secure Oskar Fried his first British conducting engagement (the programme included Weber, Brahms and Liszt). Clark invited Schoenberg to London to conduct the first British performance of his Gurre-Lieder on 27 January 1928, and assisted with the rehearsals. (He had tried to have the premiere the previous year, on 14 April 1927, but these plans fell through.)
In April 1929, Edward Clark along with Julian Herbage of the BBC's Music Department devised a plan for a 114-piece orchestra that was especially suited to broadcasting, and one that could be split into four different smaller groups as required. This was the original workable concept for the BBC Symphony Orchestra after some earlier ideas from Sir Thomas Beecham foundered. Beecham was the first choice for chief conductor, but he withdrew and Adrian Boult directed the orchestra for the next 20 years. Boult did not always support Clark's choices of repertoire, however. He refused to play the music of Alexander Scriabin that Clark programmed, calling it "evil music", and even issued a ban on Scriabin's music from broadcasts in the 1930s. It is also true that he had no personal sympathy with the music of the Second Viennese School, describing Alban Berg's Lyric Suite as "a Kensington drawing room apology for what Berg really meant", but Clark's influence was such that he was at least prepared to participate in performances of this music.
It was Clark who suggested to William Walton that he invite Paul Hindemith to be the soloist at the premiere of his Viola Concerto in 1929, when the dedicatee Lionel Tertis declined. Tertis also claimed to have suggested Hindemith in his place, but Walton confirmed it was Clark's idea. Walton was initially somewhat reluctant to invite Hindemith, as he felt he had modelled the concerto too closely after the latter's style, which he would quickly recognise; but thanks to Edward Clark, the invitation was sent and accepted, the premiere took place on 3 October, and the two composers became lifelong friends (they had met briefly in 1923).
Clark played an even greater role in Walton's Belshazzar's Feast: he was its progenitor. On 21 August 1929 he asked Walton for a work suitable for broadcasting, written for a small choir, soloist, and an orchestra not exceeding 15 players. Walton later thanked Clark for bringing Belshazzar's Feast to the attention of Sergei Prokofiev, who showed some interest in it.
His friend John Ireland introduced Alan Bush to Clark, who was responsible for having many of Bush's works broadcast between 1929 and 1936.
On 3 March 1930, Edward Clark played a major part in the first complete broadcast (18 poems) of Walton's Façade, at the Central Hall, Westminster, with Edith Sitwell and Constant Lambert (speakers), Leslie Heward conducting.