Erik Chisholm

Erik Chisholm, born in 1904, is often referred to as ‘Scotland’s forgotten composer’ (by the time of his death only 17 of his 100 works had been published), but he was hugely influential in Glasgow’s development as a centre of music. He was inspired by fellow Glaswegian, Frederic Lamond, to take up the piano, studying at the Scottish National Academy (now the RCS), and with Leff Pouschinoff and Sergei Rachmaninov. Primarily a composer, he paralleled Hungary’s Béla Bartók in his absorption of folk idioms into his music, which led to Chisholm’s nickname: MacBartók. Sir Arnold Bax dubbed him:

the most progressive composer Scotland has ever produced

  and Sir Hugh S. Roberton described him as

daring and original

He spent some time working in Nova Scotia before returning to study and work in Scotland, establishing the Scottish Ballet Society in 1928 and the Active Society for the Propagation of Contemporary Music a year later with fellow composers Pat Shannon and Francis George Scott. With the Society, he persuaded many of his friends and acquaintances to come to Glasgow to give premieres. In the space of 10 years, over 200 new compositions were aired, including works by William Walton, Béla Bartók, Paul Hindemith, John Ireland, Frederick Delius and Karol Szymanowski.

He conducted the British premieres of Mozart’s Idomeneo in 1934 and Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict in 1936. In 1935, his production of Les Troyens by Berlioz, the first outside of France, resulted in special 'Berlioz Trains' having to be commissioned to bring opera-goers from London.

During World War II, he formed a multi-racial orchestra in India, before moving to Singapore to establish the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. The leader in Singapore was an ex-Prisoner of War, Szymon Goldberg, who had managed to hide a priceless Stradivarius violin in the chimney of the prisoner camp for nearly four years.

In 1947, Chisholm moved to South Africa, where he became the director of the South African College of Music in Cape Town, composing, performing, teaching, and campaigning against apartheid. It was in Cape Town that he died, aged 61, of a heart-attack.