Constant Lambert
(1905-1951), Composer, conductor and criticSitter in 33 portraits
Lambert and his brother, the sculptor Maurice Lambert, were brought up in South London. He won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, and in the 1920s was part of the bohemian group that included the Sitwells and William Walton. A champion of modernism, he urged the incorporation of continental and jazz influences into English music, reflected in his best-known composition The Rio Grande (1929). Other works include a major choral masque Summer's Last Will and Testament (1936) and ballet music Horoscope (1938) and Tiresias (1951), both for Margot Fonteyn. He was Musical Director at Sadlers Wells Ballet until 1947.
by Norman Parkinson
bromide print on card mount, 1951
NPG x30025
by Howard Coster
print
NPG x10685
by Baron (Sterling Henry Nahum)
halftone reproduction tear sheet, published 11 September 1946
NPG x193325
Related People
- Florence Lambert (née Chuter, later Hole) (wife)
- George Washington Lambert (father)
- Christopher Sebastian ('Kit') Lambert (son)
- Maurice Lambert (brother)
- Isabel Rawsthorne (née Nicholas) (wife)
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Trevor Bruce d'Egville Powell, Lt Colonel (Retd)
01 June 2020, 00:00
Lambert was an exact contemporary and close friend of the novelist (my distant cousin) Anthony Powell and is likely to have been the inspiration for Hugh Moreland, the musician character in 'A Dance to the Music of Time'.