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Percy Alfred Scholes (pronounced skolz; 24 July 1877 – 31 July 1958) was an English musician, journalist, vegetarianism activist and prolific writer, whose best-known achievement was his compilation of the first edition of the Oxford Companion to Music. His 1948 biography The Great Dr Burney was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
At various times Scholes was music critic for the Evening Standard (1913-1920), The Observer (1920–1925) (immediately following Ernest Newman's departure) and the Radio Times (1923–1929). From 1923 up until 1928 (when he departed for Switzerland) he was making regular music appreciation broadcasts on BBC radio.Prictor, Megan. "To Catch the World: Percy Scholes and the English Musical Association Movement, 1918-1939", in Context 15 and 16 (1998) Radio Times, Issue 3, 30 September 1923, p. 15.
He was made an Officer of the Star of Rumania in 1930 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries in 1938. He was founder and general secretary of the Anglo-American Conference on Musical Education, Lausanne (1929 and 1931). Scholes and his wife came back to the UK in 1940, but with his health in decline they returned to Switzerland at the end of 1956. He ended his days in Cornaux, Chamby sur Montreux. Obituary, The New York Times, 3 August 1958.
Scholes' oldest brother Ernest Frederick Pugh Scholes (1868–1966) was a Methodist missionary and vegetarian who lived to the age of 98.
Scholes was awarded the OBE in the 1956 New Year's Honours List for his music contributions.
He was also the author of Puritans and Music in England and New England: A Contribution to the Cultural History of Two Nations (1934). In 1947, he produced the two volume, 960 page The Mirror of Music, compiling, enlarging and commenting on material published in The Musical Times between 1844 and 1944.Shenton, Kenneth. Everyman and His Music: Percy Scholes (1877-1958) (2008).
Scholes was deeply concerned with connecting music with a wider audience through musical appreciation in the tradition of Charles Burney, an influence he cited himself and the subject of his biography in 1948. Frank Howes (writing as "Our Music Critic" in The Times) called The Listener's Guide to Music (1919) "that masterpiece of simplification".'Percy Scholes: Pioneer of Musical Appreciation', in The Times, 2 August 1957, p. 10. He recognised very early the possibilities of the gramophone as an aid to knowledge and understanding of music. His First Book of the Gramophone Record (1924) lists fifty records of music from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, with a commentary on each; a Second Book followed in 1925. From 1930 onwards, Scholes collaborated with the Columbia Graphophone Company in The Columbia History of Music by Ear and Eye; this comprised five volumes, each containing an explanatory booklet and eight 78rpm records specially made for the series, including Renaissance vocal and instrumental items performed by Arnold Dolmetsch and his family.
He also worked on the innovative 'AudioGraphic' project for the Aeolian Company creating richly annotated player-piano (pianola) rolls, having joined as Secretary the Honorary Advisory Committee on the Use of Piano-Player Rolls in Education, chaired by Sir Alexander Mackenzie, in 1925. The AudioGraphic rolls were printed with music biographical and analytical commentary material and illustrations including woodcuts, photographs of drama and opera productions, and paintings, which could occupy over two metres of the roll. These rolls were issued in England from around 1926 to 1929 and America from 1927 to 1930.
Scholes led the public denunciations of Arthur Eaglefield Hull when his book Music: Classical, Romantic and Modern (1927) was found to include material borrowed from other writers. How much of this was plagiarism and how much a mere careless, hasty failure to cite sources is not known, but the scandal left Hull very upset. He took his own life by throwing himself under a train at Huddersfield station on 4 November 1928. Sibley Music Library: Arthur Eaglefield HullScholes, Percy. "The Ethics of Borrowing", Musical Times, No 1019, 1 January 1928, p. 59. Scholes also made enemies amongst The Sackbut group which included Peter Warlock and Ursula Greville. Scholes' criticism of Hubert Foss' Song-cycle on Poems of Thomas Hardy infuriated Heseltine, who sent Scholes abusive letters, took to telephoning him late at night, and circulated a petition seeking his sacking from the The Observer. Scholes sought legal advice on this matter but took no action.Prictor, Megan J. (2000). "Music and the ordinary listener: music appreciation and the media in England, 1918-1939". PhD thesis, Faculty of Music, The University of Melbourne. Reviews of Christian Darnton's You and Music (1940) were generally positive until Scholes catalogued so many serious and obvious errors (such as “Binary form may be represented by A.B.A.”) that he presented the work as an elaborate joke to trap unwary reviewers. Scholes, Percy A. "Our Humourless Reviewers", Musical Times, No 1179, May 1941, pp. 176–177.
In The Oxford Companion to Music some composers (Alban Berg, Schönberg and Anton Webern, for example) were described in somewhat unsympathetic and dismissive terms. His article on Jazz states that "jazz is to serious music as daily journalism is to serious writing"; similarly, his article on the composer John Henry Maunder states that Maunder's "seemingly inexhaustible cantatas, Penitence, Pardon and Peace and From Olivet to Calvary, long enjoyed popularity, and still aid the devotions of undemanding congregations in less sophisticated areas."
Scholes authored two booklets on vegetarianism, Some Aesthetic and Everyday Reflections on the Vegetarian System of Diet (1931) and Why I am a Vegetarian (1948).
His former assistant John Owen Ward revised the Tenth Edition of the Companion in 1970. Ward considered it "inappropriate to change radically the characteristic rich anecdotal quality of Dr. Scholes' style." and left much of Scholes' distinctive work intact.John Owen Ward. Preface to the Tenth Edition (1969) In 1983 Oxford University Press produced The New Oxford Companion to Music, edited by Denis Arnold, which consciously tried to overcome some of the perceived deficiencies of the Scholes' work. This included taking a more eclectic line on music to be included, and resulted in a two-volume work of some 2000 pages. The 2002 edition, edited by Alison Latham, reverted to the original title, and single-volume format.
Work
Scholes wrote more than 30 books, mainly concerning music appreciation. His best-known work is The Oxford Companion to Music, which was first published in 1938.Percy A. Scholes. The Oxford Companion to Music, First Edition (1938) and Seventh Edition (1947), Oxford University Press Like Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1878–89) the Companion sought to reach out beyond professional musicians to the amateur as well.Dibble, Jeremy, and Horton, Julian (eds.). British Musical Criticism and Intellectual Thought - 1850-1950 (2018), p, 4 This work took him six years to produce and consisted of over a million words (surpassing the length of the Bible). Scholes was assisted by various clerical assistants, but wrote virtually all the text himself. The only exceptions were the article on solfege (for which he was dissatisfied with his own article) and the synopses of the plots of operas (which he regarded as too boring). Although the Oxford Companion to Music was (and is) regarded as authoritative, the text of the first edition is enlivened by Scholes' own anecdotal and sometimes quirky style.Ward, J.O. Scholes, Percy Alfred (1877-1958) in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004
Style and temperament
"Nothing he put out was ever 'ghosted'; all bore the individual stamp of the salty P.A.S style," wrote W. R. Anderson in 1958. Musical Times, No 1387, September 1958, p. 501. In his writing for this work, and elsewhere, Scholes never believed in holding back his personal views in favour of a neutral point of view. He is credited with the description of harpsichord music as sounding like "a toasting fork on a birdcage" actually,; when describing Handel and Bach, he said that "Handel was the more elegant composer, but Bach was the more thorough".
Vegetarianism
Scholes was a patron of the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports.Kunitz, Stanley. (1955). Twentieth Century Authors: A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Literature. H. W. Wilson. p. 880 He was a strict vegetarian.Mackenzie, Compton. (1963). My Life and Times: Octave five, 1915-1923. Chatto & Windus. p. 242 Compton Mackenzie who dined with Scholes at the Savile Club noted that he ate two carrots for his dinner. He was a vice-president of the Vegetarian Society and the London Vegetarian Society. Who's Who, Volume 110. A. & C. Black, 1958. p. 2695
Death and legacy
Scholes died in 1958, aged eighty-one, in Vevey, Switzerland, where he had been living for many years. Shortly before his death, his "professional" library was acquired by the National Library of Canada. This comprised approximately 50 linear metres of research files and correspondence. Library and Archives Canada
Publications
External links
Categories: 1877 Births, 1958 Deaths, Alumni Of Kingswood College, British Animal Welfare Workers, British Classical Music Critics, English Male Journalists, English Music Critics, English Writers About Music, English Vegetarianism Activists, James Tait Black Memorial Prize Recipients, People Associated With The Vegetarian Society
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