Robin Humphrey Legge (28 June 1862 - 6 April 1933) was an English music writer, the chief music critic of ''The Daily Telegraph'' between 1906 and 1931.Obituary, ''The Musical Times''
Vol. 74, No. 1083 (May, 1933), p. 466

Education

Born in

Bishop's Castle Bishop's Castle is a market town in the south west of Shropshire, England. According to the 2011 Census it had a population of 1,893. Bishop's Castle is east of the Wales-England border, about north-west of Ludlow and about south-west o ...

, Shropshire, Legge read law at

Trinity Hall, Cambridge Trinity Hall (formally The College or Hall of the Holy Trinity in the University of Cambridge) is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. It is the fifth-oldest surviving college of the university, having been founded in 1350 by ...

and then went abroad to study music and languages in Leipzig, Frankfurt, Florence and Munich. While in Europe he encountered many prominent composers and musicians including

Edvard Grieg Edvard Hagerup Grieg ( , ; 15 June 18434 September 1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is widely considered one of the foremost Romantic era composers, and his music is part of the standard classical repertoire worldwide. His use of ...

Frederick Delius file:Fritz Delius (1907).jpg, Delius, photographed in 1907 Frederick Theodore Albert Delius ( 29 January 1862 – 10 June 1934), originally Fritz Delius, was an English composer. Born in Bradford in the north of England to a prosperous mercan ...

Percy Grainger Percy Aldridge Grainger (born George Percy Grainger; 8 July 188220 February 1961) was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist who lived in the United States from 1914 and became an American citizen in 1918. In the course of a long an ...

, Raimund Mühlen,

Arthur Nikisch Arthur Nikisch (12 October 185523 January 1922) was a Hungarian conductor who performed internationally, holding posts in Boston, London, Leipzig and—most importantly—Berlin. He was considered an outstanding interpreter of the music of Br ...

(to whom he taught English),

Ethel Smyth Dame Ethel Mary Smyth (; 22 April 18588 May 1944) was an English composer and a member of the women's suffrage movement. Her compositions include songs, works for piano, chamber music, orchestral works, choral works and operas. Smyth tended t ...

and

Julius Stockhausen The gens Julia (''gēns Iūlia'', ) was one of the most prominent patrician families in ancient Rome. Members of the gens attained the highest dignities of the state in the earliest times of the Republic. The first of the family to obtain the c ...

Music critic

From 1891 to 1906 he worked as assistant music critic for ''The Times'', under chief music critic J A Fuller Maitland. During this time he also wrote for the ''Daily Mail'', ''Life'', and acted as Chess Editor of ''The Daily Courier''. He joined ''The Daily Telegraph'' in 1906 as chief music critic, succeeding Joseph Bennett, and stayed there until his retirement in 1931, establishing the paper's "Saturday music page". He was one of the first to recognise the genius of

Edward Elgar Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, (; 2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934) was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestr ...

, acknowledged

Puccini Giacomo Puccini (Lucca, 22 December 1858Bruxelles, 29 November 1924) was an Italian composer known primarily for his operas. Regarded as the greatest and most successful proponent of Italian opera after Verdi, he was descended from a long li ...

when he was unfashionable, and took the early days of the gramophone seriously. Legge was a sociable and humorous man who enjoyed

billiards Cue sports are a wide variety of games of skill played with a cue, which is used to strike billiard balls and thereby cause them to move around a cloth-covered table bounded by elastic bumpers known as . There are three major subdivisions ...

(which he played on occasion with

Compton Mackenzie Sir Edward Montague Compton Mackenzie, (17 January 1883 – 30 November 1972) was a Scottish writer of fiction, biography, histories and a memoir, as well as a cultural commentator, raconteur and lifelong Scottish nationalist. He was one of th ...

) and

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

, and was an active member of the

Savile Club The Savile Club is a traditional London gentlemen's club founded in 1868. Located in fashionable and historically significant Mayfair, its membership, past and present, include many prominent names. Changing premises Initially calling itself th ...

. In 1926 Basil Maine produced a character sketch of Legge in his ''Musical Times'' column, in which he recalled that Legge's office, at the back of a building in

Piccadilly Piccadilly () is a road in the City of Westminster, London, to the south of Mayfair, between Hyde Park Corner in the west and Piccadilly Circus in the east. It is part of the A4 road that connects central London to Hammersmith, Earl's Cou ...

, was a hub of the musical community in London during the 1920s. "He is visited there by all sorts and conditions - performers, composers, critics, agents, teachers, people with new ideas and people with old grievances". Legge, said Maine, "has striven for an amicable relationship between journalism and musical activity".

H. C. Colles Henry Cope Colles (20 April 18794 March 1943) was an English music critic, music lexicographer, writer on music and organist. He is best known for his 32 years as chief music critic of '' The Times'' (1911–1943) and for editing the 3rd and 4t ...

wrote that Legge had "stimulated the general reader's interest in music and musicians to an uncommon extent".

Other activities

Translations of musical texts include Wallaschek’s (now controversial) ''Die Musik der Naturvölker'', published as ''Primitive Music'' in 1893,

Hofmann Hoffman is a surname of German and Jewish origin. The original meaning in medieval times was "steward", i.e. one who manages the property of another. In English and other European languages, including Yiddish and Dutch, the name can also be sp ...

’s ''Instrumentationslehre'' (1893), and A. Ehrlich's ''Celebrated violinists, past and present'' (1897). As an author, Legge wrote (with W E Hansell) the ''Annals of the Norfolk and Norwich Triennial Music Festivals'' (1896), and contributed articles to the ''Dictionary of National Biography'' and ''Grove's Dictionary of Music''. He was the editor of the ''Norfolk Cricket Annual'' for a decade and published many chess problems. Legge was also an occasional composer: his ''Romance'' for cello and piano, marked Op.1 No 1, was published by Schott in 1904. At the end of his life his address was 33 Oakley Street in Chelsea. He married Aimee Prior Standen (1867-1937) and there was one daughter, Ida Gwendolen (1887-1969). Ida married Henry Burton Tate (of the sugar merchant family) in 1909, but later divorced him. She married Edward Thomas Walhouse Littleton, 5th

Baron Hatherton Baron Hatherton, of Hatherton in the County of Stafford, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1835 for the politician Edward Littleton, Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1833 to 1834. Born Edward Walhouse, he assu ...

in 1925 and became Lady Hatherton.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Legge, Robin 1862 births 1933 deaths English male journalists English writers about music British music critics English music critics Classical music critics