Edwin Evans (music critic)

Edwin Evans (1 September 1874 – 3 March 1945) was an English music critic.^[1]

Evans was born in London. His father (1844-1923) of the same name was a composer, writer on music and an organist.^[2] Edwin's early education was at Lille from the age of nine until eleven, then at Echternach in Luxembourg for another four years. On returning to England, he successively worked in cable telegraphy, the stock exchange and banking, and financial journalism.^[3]

Then in 1901 he started his career in music criticism, first writing on French music, championing the music of Claude Debussy in particular but also of Henri Duparc, Paul Dukas, Gabriel Fauré and Maurice Ravel. He went on to champion Russian composers, notably those associated with Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, and British composers: in 1919–20 he wrote a series of articles on British composers for The Musical Times.^[4]

He was music critic of the Pall Mall Gazette (1912–23),^[1] and from 1933 he was music critic for the Daily Mail, succeeding Richard Capell.^[5] In 1938 he was elected President of the International Society for Contemporary Music, succeeding Edward Dent.^[4] He died in London in 1945, aged 70. His private library, which included a collection began by his father, would form the basis of the Central Music Library (now known as the Westminster Music Library) established in Westminster in the following year.^[6] The library holds a portrait in oils of Evans painted in 1916 by Mary Eristoff.^[7][8]

Further reading

• "The Place and Function of Romanticism" - The Musical Times (1930)
• List of chief music critics

Notes and references

1. Colles, H.C. & Frank Howes. "Edwin Evans", in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan (1980)
2. James Duff Brown, Stephen Samuel Stratton: British Musical Biography (1897), p. 141
3. Thomson, Oscar and Slonimsky, Nicolas (eds) (1942). The International Cyclopedia of Music & Musicians. London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd. p. 515
4. Obituary, The Musical Times Vol. 86, No. 1226 (April 1945), pp. 105-108
5. "Lord Berners by Peter Dickinson". MusicWeb International. Retrieved 2010-05-29.
6. "The Central Music Library", The Musical Times, Vol. 92, No. 1304 (Oct., 1951), pp. 441-449. Retrieved 24 September 2020.
7. Lewis and Susan Foreman: London, a Musical Gazetteer (2005), p. 103
8. 'Edwin Evans' by Mary Eristoff-Kazak (Princess) (1857–1934), ArtUK