Peter Heyworth

 ( 1921 Births ) 

Heyworth's military service included a period in Vienna, which helped form his musical preferences, which favoured German rather than French music."Peter Heyworth", The Times, 4 October 1991, p. 18 His ambition to become a political or foreign correspondent was frustrated by poor health: he contracted tuberculosis and then Addison's disease. He joined the London weekly The Times Educational Supplement in 1952, and then another weekly, The Observer, under its chief music critic, Eric Blom, whom he succeeded in 1955. He was also a European musical correspondent and critic for The New York Times from 1960 to 1975.Kozinn, Allan. "Peter Heyworth, Music Critic, 70; A Biographer of Otto Klemperer", The New York Times, 4 October 1991, p. D15

Although lacking any formal musical education – he had great difficulty reading scores – Heyworth championed his preferences and attacked his bêtes noires with equal outspokenness. Both in print and in person, he had a reputation for expressing himself trenchantly. He reduced secretaries to tears, quarrelled with Malcolm Sargent and Colin Davis,Sutcliffe, Tom. "Peter Heyworth", The Guardian, 5 October 1991, p. 21 dismissed André Previn as "mediocre",Heyworth, Peter. "Money makes the tunes go around", The Observer, 18 August 1991, p. 50 provoked William Walton into writing music intended to upset him,Kennedy, p. 208 and wrote so woundingly about Elisabeth Schwarzkopf that she permanently gave up singing at Covent Garden.

Heyworth's sympathies were with avant-garde music, and he objected to many new works in traditional musical form, maintaining that the The Proms were "cluttered with a lot of second-rate works and a certain amount of sheer derivative drivel".Heyworth, Peter. "Best of Both Worlds", The Observer, 7 August 1960, Weekend Review, p. 18 He praised the works of Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Harrison Birtwistle, criticised Ralph Vaughan Williams for "heavy-handed heartiness" and being amateurish in his orchestration.Heyworth, Peter. "V.W.'s Eighth", The Observer, 6 May 1956, p. 14 was dismissive of Frederick Delius's music, lukewarm about Benjamin Britten's, and consistently hostile to Walton's.Kennedy, pp. 119–120

Apart from his journalism, Heyworth was editor of a volume of Ernest Newman's writings, Berlioz, Romantic and Classic (1972),WorldCat and author of Conversations with Otto Klemperer (1973) and a two-volume biography, Otto Klemperer: His Life and Times. The first volume was published in 1983; reviewing it in The New York Times, John Rockwell described it as "one of the most informative, readable musical biographies ever written". The second volume was substantially complete at the time of Heyworth's death and was taken to publication in 1996 by John Lucas.WorldCat and Reviewing it in The Sunday Times, Hugh Canning called it "essential reading, not only for the even-handed way he analyses Klemperer's complex musical personality, but also for the richly detailed picture he paints of an era in music-making in which artistic values still counted for a great deal".Canning, Hugh. "The life and times of an electric conductor", The Sunday Times, 7 July 1996, Books section, p. 6

He was a friend of British-American poet W. H. Auden, who dedicated his book of poems City without Walls to Heyworth. The two had met in Berlin in 1964.Mendelson, Edward. Textual Notes. The Complete Works of W. H. Auden: Poems Volume II: 1940-1973, edited by Edward Mendelson, Princeton University Press, 2022, p. 1023.

Heyworth retired from his post at The Observer in June 1991. He died of a stroke on 2 October of that year, while on holiday in Athens. He was unmarried; his long-term partner was Jochen Voigt. Heyworth was survived by a brother and three nephews.

• Michael Kennedy (1989). 9780198167051, Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198167051