Basil Maine
{{short description|English writer and music critic (1894–1972)}}
Basil Stephen Maine (4 March 1894 - 13 October 1972) was an English writer and critic on music. Among his publications is Behold These Daniels (1928), a stylistic survey on the approaches of his music critic contemporaries.
Life and career
Maine was born in Sheringham, Norfolk and educated at the City of Norwich School.[http://cnsobg.org.uk/archives/annals.html Annals of the City of Norwich School] At Cambridge he studied music with Edward Dent, Cyril Rootham and Charles Wood.H.C.Colles (rev. Peter Platt. Basil Maine, Grove Music Online, 2001 During the war he taught for a while at Durnford School in Dorset, where his pupils included Ian Fleming and Peter Fleming.Nicholas Shakespeare. Ian Fleming: The Complete Man (2023), p.48 In the autumn of 1918 he was appointed assistant organist at Durham Cathedral, staying there until May 1919.[http://www.duresme.org.uk/CATH/successn.htm The succession of organists at Durham Cathedral] Maine was a life member of the Royal College of Organists.Landon Ronald. Who's Who in Music (1935), p. 184
After that he shifted his career towards journalism, becoming music critic for newspapers such as The Spectator, The Daily Telegraph (from 1922), the Morning Post (1930) and the Sunday Times (1935–40). He was also an actor, public speaker and (from 1926) a broadcaster.[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ucDuGqo82s Dagger Speech from Macbeth, read by Basil Maine, Parlophone E967, 1930][https://www.proquest.com/openview/51e5d3bf39671d78/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=2913 Maine, Basil.The Critic and the Actor, in The Sackbut; London Vol 7, April 1927, p 268-270] In 1930 he was the orator in the first performance of Morning Heroes by Arthur Bliss at the Norwich Festival,[https://www.chandos.net/chanimages/Booklets/CH5159.pdf Burn, Andrew. Morning Heroes, Notes to Chandos CH5159 (2015)] and he also narrated in performances of Honegger's Le roi David and Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale. He wrote some choral works for the Norwich Festival, including O Lord our Governor and Praise to God in 1936.Who's Who in Music, first post-war edition (1949-50), p. 137 Maine was ordained as a priest in 1939.
Maine wrote biography as well as music criticism. His early volume Behold these Daniels consists of 12 character sketches of critics (including the author) that originally appeared in Musical Times columns in 1926–7. The sketches include Ernest Newman, Edwin Evans, Robin Legge and H.C.Colles.Musical Times No 1026, 1 August 1928, p 714 The two-volume Elgar: his Life and Works, published a year before the subject's death, is his best-known work.Reviewed in The Musical Times No 1085, July 1933, p 608 Our Ambassador King is now a curiosity - a biography of King Edward VIII written before the abdication, with no mention of Mrs Simpson.[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ambassador-Majesty-Edward-Devotion-Service/dp/B00085YIA0 Our Ambassador King] The Best of Me, completed in 1937, is autobiographical and Twang with our Music (from 1957) is a collection of essays marking "the completion of 30 years' practice in the uncertain science of music criticism".[http://www.jstor.org/stable/730288 Reviewed by "S.B." in Music & Letters Vol 38 No 3, 1957, p 284–285]
In the 1930s Maine lived at Stone Roof, Drax Avenue in Wimbledon. By 1950 his address was Warham Rectory, Wells-next-the-Sea in Norfolk.
Selected writings
- Receive It So (1926)
- {{cite book |year=1928 |title=Behold These Daniels: Being Studies of Contemporary Music Critics |publisher=H. & W. Brown |location=London |oclc=2763914 }}
- The Divisions of Music (as editor, 1930)
- Reflected Music and Other Essays (1930)
- Rondo (novel, 1930, dedicated to Anna May Wong)
- Plummer's Cut (novel, 1932)
- Elgar: his Life and Works (1933)
- Chopin (1933, second edition 1949)
- 'Paderewski' (in Great Contemporaries: Essays by Various Hands, 1935)
- Our Ambassador King (1936)
- The Best of Me: A Study in Autobiography (1937)
- The Glory of English Music (1937)
- Franklin Roosevelt His Life And Achievement (1938)
- People are Much Alike (autobiography, 1938)
- The BBC and its Audience (1939)
- New Paths in Music (1940)
- Basil Maine on Music (1945)
- Twang with our Music (1957)