10 - Conclusion: Ernest Newman Remembered

Summary

How should Ernest Newman be remembered? Had he become a ‘sour old cynic’ in his old age, as Vera Newman feared? Or was he a forward thinker, a progressive biographer? Was he mean-spirited for his sometime confrontational arguments with his readers and rivals? Is he remembered as a naïve and cantankerous old-school positivist, harbouring utopian dreams for an unrealizable system of principles in history, criticism and biography?

In the course of writing this book, I have pondered these questions many times. If Newman was a sour old cynic, he was merely being consistent. His cynicism is evident early in his career in A Study of Wagner (1899), where he cast doubt on the quality of Wagner's prose works. His damning biography of Franz Liszt was certainly a low point in his career. But should one careless book tarnish the reputation and legacy of a scholar whose other works were generally successful and highly regarded?

One of Newman's greatest legacies is ‘The Word of Music’ column for the Sunday Times that, by all accounts, was a highlight of that paper. Newman often wrote affectionately of his audience—‘the plain man’, as he termed it— but he sometimes railed against his readers, thinking them stupid and ignorant. He stopped writing articles on the physiology of criticism from the early 1920s, on the grounds that his readers could not get to grips with his argument. Newman's confrontations with his rivals make for amusing reading, and his stubbornness (some might say arrogance) was often on display. He rarely backed down from a tussle and he always had the last say. He never admitted he was wrong, and certainly never apologized. His fiery exchange with Robertson in the late 1890s is a case in point. But Newman made something of a blood sport of these heady confrontations. He loved a literary spectacle, a good fight.

It is not surprising that Newman lacked sympathy for much of the music composed in his own lifetime. His first love was the romantics and the neo-romantics. It is surprising, though, that he kept his job on the Sunday Times for so long, considering his blind spot for most French music, new music and his resistance to technology. But Newman had become an institution, and institutions are sometimes difficult to refurbish.