Prof Erik Chisholm

Prof Erik Chisholm

Dean and Director of the South African College of Music (1946-1965), composer, conductor and all-round musician.

(4 January 1904 in Cathcart, Glasgow - 8June 1965 in Cape Town)

Chisholm received his initial training at the Athenaeum School of Music in Glasgow (now The Royal Scottish Academy of Music), with piano playing (Philip Halstead) and organ (Herbert Walton) as his practical subjects. He started composing at an early age, and performed his own piano sonatina at a British Music Society concert when he was 13 years old. Three years later (1920), he made his debut as a pianist in a performance of the Liszt Piano concerto no. 1 in Hull. Subsequently he continued his piano studies with the Russian pianist, Leff Pouishnoff. 

Until 1928, Chisholm lived in Canada, where he was music master at the Pictou Academy in Nova Scotia and, concurrently, organist and choirmaster at the Westminster Presbyterian Church in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. Besides his official duties, he toured, giving piano recitals in which he introduced the music of Bartok and Schonberg to Canadian audiences; he also played as pianist with the German violinist, Berenice Stultz. Returning to Scotland, he was organist and choirmaster at the Barony Church in Glasgow, and established a reputation as an organist, pianist, conductor and enthusiastic supporter of contemporary music. The Society for Contemporary Music was especially busy under his direction (1930-38) and gave first performances of about two hundred new compositions by living composers, who often performed in recitals of their works. In the meantime he studied at the Edinburgh University with Sir Donald Tovey, and graduated as a B.Mus. (1931) and as a D. Mus. (1934). From 1935 co 1940 he acted as musical director of the Celtic Ballet for whom he composed folk ballets. 

After resigning as organist, Chisholm was active in the re-organization of the Carl Rosa Opera Company (1940-1941) and toured with them as conductor, and later as advance publicity manager. He was conductor of the Anglo-Polish Ballet Company for three years (1941-1944) and accompanied them to Italy. As pianist, he concentrated especially on new and rarely heard works, such as Bartok's Concerto no. 1, Medmer's Concerto no. 2, the Delius Concerto, piano works of Schönberg and Szymanowsky's Piano sonata no. 3. At the outbreak of war Chisholm joined ENSA and organized orchestral concerts in India and in the Far East. Under war conditions scores were hardly available, and he often had to write scores by listening to gramophone records.

In 1946 he arrived in Cape Town to assume his duties as Professor of Music and Dean of the Faculty of Music at the University of Cape Town. The appointment had originally been made in 1939, but the war retarded the possibility of putting it into effect. Chisholm promptly reorganized the staff of the College of Music, creating twelve new full-time appointments; extended the curriculum from 32 to 75 courses, adding new degrees and diplomas; established an opera school (1954) with a full-time director (Gregorio Fiasconaro); revived the weekly Hiddingh Hall concerts; and led the University Opera Company in widespread tours. At the same time he founded and organized the South African section of the ISCM ( 1948) and gave concerts of contemporary music, including a series of orchestral concerts with the Cape Town Municipal Orchestra.

The repertoire of Chisholm's University Opera Company included numerous contemporary works · by Bartok, Chisholm, John Joubert, Martinu, Menotti, and other rarely heard works such as The Portuguese inn-keeper (Cherubini), Iphigenia in Tauris (Gluck), Suor Angelica, Gianni Schicchi and Il Tabarro (Puccini), and Prodana Nevesta (Smetana). This dynamic activity culminated in a musical festival by College students and members of the staff which Chisholm presented in London and Glasgow (December 1957 - January 1958). The six Wigmore Hall concerts each included at least one first performance, or first London performance. This was the first venture of the kind undertaken by a South African student group.

In 1957 Chisholm was invited to the Soviet Union to conduct two concerts of the USSR State Orchestra, which included performances of his Second piano concerto. In the same year he was nominated a member of ·an international jury to adjudicate 200 new compositions. In 1962 he was nominated as musical delegate from Scotland, to study music educational methods in the USSR; on two occasions he was invited to attend the Janacek Music Festival in Czechoslovakia, as a guest of honour. He was also awarded a Carnegie Travel Grant for an extended tour of the United States and Canada, where he lectured on the music of South African composers at 43 universities and music schools.

These vigorous activities, often spiced with pungent and sometimes visionary articles in the South African press, still left him time for a steady output of new works, of which several were conspicuously successful. The one-act opera Dark sonnet (libretto, Eugene O'Neill), which is part of a trilogy called Murder in three keys, was televised by the BBC in December 1953, and the whole trilogy ran for 10 weeks in New York in the summer of 1954. His operas The inland woman and The pardoner's tale were successfully performed in. Cape Town, and various major instrumental works were given performances in England, America and elsewhere. A thorough study of his numerous and varied compositions is still in abeyance. Of his dynamic influence on the music and musical education in South Africa there can be not the slightest doubt.

For a full list of his compositions please visit the South African Music Encyclopaedia. Vol. 1.

Source

Malan, Dr. Jacque P., ed. South African Music Encyclopaedia. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979, 271-275.