86 Facts About Neville Cardus

Sir John Frederick Neville Cardus, CBE was an English writer and critic.

Neville Cardus spent the Second World War years in Australia, where he wrote for The Sydney Morning Herald and gave regular radio talks.

Neville Cardus wrote books on music, and completed his autobiography.

Neville Cardus continued to write on cricket, and produced books on both his specialisms.

Neville Cardus's work was publicly recognised by his appointment as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1964 and the award of a knighthood in 1967, while the music and cricket worlds acknowledged him with numerous honours.

Neville Cardus was born on 2 April 1888 in Rusholme, Manchester.

The birthdate of 2 April 1888 is as given on his baptism record; and it is 2 April when he celebrated his birthday, albeit believing that he was born in 1889: Neville Cardus himself hosted a dinner party on 2 April 1959 believing this to be his 70th birthday.

Four days after the wedding, Neville Cardus's father left by boat for America, with the intention that Ada followed.

Robert Cardus was a retired policeman; Neville referred to him as receiving a small pension, although a search of police archives found no trace of this.

Commentators have suggested that Neville Cardus tended to overstate the deprived aspects of his childhood; his biographer Christopher Brookes asserts that "Neville Cardus was the product neither of a slum, nor a cultural desert".

Neville Cardus described his formal schooling as limited to five years at the local board school, where the curriculum was basic and the methods of tuition harsh: "[T]he boy who showed the faintest sign of freedom of the will was caned".

Neville Cardus circulated it among his schoolmates, until it was discovered and torn up by an irate teacher.

Neville Cardus left school in 1901 and took a variety of short-term, unskilled jobs before finding more secure employment as a clerk with Flemings' marine insurance agency.

Neville Cardus supplemented these studies by attending free lectures at Manchester University, and met regularly with a group of like-minded autodidacts at Alexandra Park or, in the winter, at the Lyons cafe in Albert Square, to discuss and debate for whole afternoons.

Neville Cardus remembered hearing for the first time the melody of the "Vilja" song from Franz Lehar's operetta The Merry Widow, which "curled its way into my heart to stay there for a lifetime".

Neville Cardus began going to the Halle Orchestra's concerts at the Free Trade Hall where, on 3 December 1908, he was present at the premiere of Elgar's first symphony, under Hans Richter.

Neville Cardus regularly attended the fortnightly concerts at the Royal Manchester College of Music, where students' performances were assessed by the principal, Adolph Brodsky.

In 1916 Neville Cardus published his first musical article, "Bantock and Style in Music", in Musical Opinion.

Neville Cardus first played cricket on rough waste land close to his home in Rusholme; as he matured he developed as an effective medium-paced off break bowler, and for several seasons from 1908 onwards he played as a weekend professional in Manchester league cricket.

Neville Cardus reasoned that, by living frugally during the Shrewsbury summers, he would be able to finance his winter studies of music and literature.

Neville Cardus's application was successful, and in May 1912 he began his duties.

Neville Cardus worked initially under Walter Attewell, a former Nottinghamshire professional, and later under the Yorkshire and England cricketer Ted Wainwright.

Neville Cardus made frequent trips to Manchester, for Halle concerts or to watch Thomas Beecham conduct at the Manchester Opera House.

Neville Cardus spent his winters in Manchester, studying hard in anticipation of any opportunity for an opening as a music critic, eking out his summer savings by taking temporary clerical work.

Neville Cardus left Shrewsbury in September 1916 with little money, and no immediate prospects of regular work.

In Neville Cardus's own account of these years he appears to have been fully engaged in reporters' duties, his lack of shorthand being dismissed by the chief reporter, Haslam Mills, who paraphrased Shakespeare: "Some men are born to shorthand, others achieve shorthand, while others have shorthand thrust upon them".

Neville Cardus resumed the duties of part-time secretary to Scott, who was at this time over 70, and had edited The Manchester Guardian since 1872.

In preparation for any opportunity that might arise in that direction, Neville Cardus maintained a daily two-hour study of music or music literature.

Neville Cardus had earlier written four articles on cricket for the newspaper.

On 19 May 1919 Neville Cardus went to the first day of Lancashire's match with Derbyshire.

Scott nonetheless saw a potential, and from the beginning of 1920 Neville Cardus became the paper's regular cricket correspondent, under the by-line "Cricketer", a position he held for 20 years.

In January 1920 Neville Cardus reported on two recitals by the Russian tenor Vladimir Rosing, and apparently impressed Scott with the quality of his notice, although the accuracy of Neville Cardus's summary of events has been questioned.

Neville Cardus remained circumspect about his commitment to the sport: "Never have I regarded my cricket as more than a means to an end; that end being always music".

Neville Cardus did this, according to his fellow cricket writer Gerald Howat, by using imagery and metaphor to create "a mythology of characters and scenes".

The focus of much of Neville Cardus's cricket writing was the Lancashire side of the inter-war years, and in particular their twice-yearly battles with rivals Yorkshire.

Neville Cardus's eye was as much on the players and their personalities as on the game, on "the match within the match", with the actual scores treated as secondary.

Neville Cardus was generally approving of Jardine's controversial bodyline tactics, writing on 5 March 1933: "[H]ad [Jardine] been a weak man, all the energy of Larwood [England's premier bowler] might have proved as vain a thing as it did in 1930".

Neville Cardus considered that a lack of central direction was adversely affecting the orchestra, and his biting criticisms of some performances led to temporarily strained relations.

Neville Cardus was wrapped in a monk-like gown, and his face was strong and disdainful, every line on it graven by intrepid living.

Neville Cardus, writing of his meeting with Frederick Delius, October 1929.

Neville Cardus often expressed views contrary to popular and critical opinion.

Neville Cardus dismissed Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring as "a sophisticated exploitation of primitive rum-ti-tum".

When Harty introduced Gershwin's symphonic poem An American in Paris into a Halle concert, Neville Cardus proposed "a 150 per cent [import] tariff against this sort of American dry-goods".

Neville Cardus professed to think that Sullivan's "preoccupation with comic opera, to the neglect of oratorio and symphony" was a "deplorable" loss to English music, although he wrote that without Gilbert, nothing of Sullivan's music would have survived.

Neville Cardus championed Delius against the consensus of his fellow-critics: "His music looks back on days intensely lived through; it knows the pathos of mortal things doomed to fade and vanish".

Also against the grain of critical opinion, Neville Cardus commended the then unfashionable music of Richard Strauss and Anton Bruckner.

Neville Cardus later numbered Beecham, with Elgar and Delius, as "one of the three most original spirits known in English music since Purcell".

Allen was the occasion of Neville Cardus's first visit to the country.

Fry, a former England cricket captain, was a boyhood hero of Neville Cardus, and was covering the Tests for the London Evening Standard.

In Bradman, Neville Cardus found a sophistication and sensitivity that other writers had failed to detect.

When interviewed on his arrival in Australia, Neville Cardus speculated how he would cope for the six months of the tour without music; he was touched when the following day music students in Perth gave him a private recital of music by Chopin and Hugo Wolf.

Neville Cardus made a private visit to Australia from mid-January to mid-March 1938.

At first Neville Cardus failed to adjust his expectations to the prevailing standard of music-making in Australia, which was not at that time comparable to the best on offer in Europe or America.

Neville Cardus's topics included concert works, such as the late Beethoven string quartets and Mahler's Ninth Symphony, operas including The Marriage of Figaro and Der Rosenkavalier, and performers such as Wilhelm Furtwangler and Arturo Toscanini.

Neville Cardus gave a weekly, fifteen-minute talk on music, illustrated by records, for the children's Argonauts Club programme and regularly wrote for ABC Weekly.

Neville Cardus rented a small flat in the Kings Cross district of Sydney, where he wrote his Ten Composers and Autobiography.

Neville Cardus said later that he found the discipline of writing for seven hours a day difficult at first, but that the process had turned him from a journalist into something more substantial.

Neville Cardus had not as yet decided to leave Australia permanently, but "felt in need of spiritual refreshment".

Neville Cardus found a war-weary England in which much had changed; familiar landmarks had disappeared, and old friends and acquaintances had died.

The Free Trade Hall was a burnt-out shell, and the Queen's Hall in London completely destroyed; however, Neville Cardus was struck by the apparent good health of the English music scene.

Neville Cardus found an undamaged Lord's, and enjoyed a season of magnificent cricket, marked by the batting exploits of the Middlesex pair, Denis Compton and Bill Edrich.

Neville Cardus was back in Sydney by the end of the year, but early in 1948, having accepted an offer from The Sunday Times to cover that year's Test series against Australia, he left for England again.

In 1949 Neville Cardus set up his London home at the National Liberal Club, while Edith took a flat in Bickenhall Mansions, just off Baker Street.

Neville Cardus found London's musical life invigorating, with five major orchestras and a host of distinguished conductors and solo artists performing regularly.

Outside London, Neville Cardus was a regular visitor to the Edinburgh Festival and to Glyndebourne, and was in Manchester for the reopening of the Free Trade Hall and the "homecoming" of the Halle Orchestra in November 1951.

Neville Cardus had first heard Ferrier at the Edinburgh Festival in 1947; he became a devoted admirer to the extent that, eventually, questions were raised about his critical blindness to her technical weaknesses.

Neville Cardus was devastated by her death from cancer in October 1953; the following year he edited and contributed to a memorial volume of tributes.

Neville Cardus wrote the first volume of a detailed analysis entitled Gustav Mahler: His Mind and his Music; the book, dealing with Mahler's first five symphonies, was published in 1965, but was poorly received by critics.

Neville Cardus found time to enjoy Sydney's theatrical and music scene, but was disappointed in what he perceived as a decline in the city's musical standards.

On Fry's death in 1956 Neville Cardus wrote of him as "A great Englishman, measured by any standards of occupation, art and civilisation".

In 1959, still in harness, Newman died at the age of 90; Neville Cardus considered him the most outstanding of all music critics, and thought he should have been appointed a Companion of Honour, or even to the Order of Merit.

Neville Cardus maintained a keen antagonism towards much of contemporary music; discussing Pierre Boulez's Pli selon pli after a performance in 1965, he said he "could not relate the varied succession of aural phenomena to music as my musical intelligence and senses recognise music".

In 1964 Neville Cardus was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Just over two years later Neville Cardus was awarded a knighthood, the first music critic to receive such an honour, although in all likelihood it was awarded as much for his cricket writing.

Neville Cardus felt that much of the old ethos had departed, and that his once-sacrosanct copy was now at the mercy of subeditors.

Neville Cardus was particularly incensed by the treatment meted out to his 1969 Edinburgh Festival reports, and referred to the subeditors' room as "the Abattoir" in one of many letters complaining of editorial butchery.

Neville Cardus died on 28 February 1975 at the Nuffield Clinic, London, a few days after collapsing at home.

Neville Cardus was not a model, any more than Macaulay, say, was a model for the aspiring historian.

Neville Cardus laid his head against her bosom and listened to the beating of her heart.

Colin Davis highlighted "the quality and verve of Neville Cardus's writing", which had made him a household name.

Beside his CBE and knighthood, Neville Cardus received numerous honours from the musical and cricketing worlds, at home and overseas.

Neville Cardus's friends encountered initial resistance when they sought his election to the MCC, although he was eventually accepted in 1958.

Neville Cardus was denied the civic honour of the Freedom of the City of Manchester, and although he made light of this omission he was hurt by it.

Neville Cardus managed to maintain close friendships with both Beecham and Sir John Barbirolli, though the two conductors cordially disliked one another.

Neville Cardus ends his autobiography by declaring: "If I know that my Redeemer liveth it is not on the church's testimony, but because of what Handel affirms".

Hughes, who was more than 30 years younger than Neville Cardus, became his literary executor after his death, and edited several collections of his cricketing and musical writings.