Ernest Newman

[2][3] The young Roberts was intended to pursue a career in the Indian Civil Service, but his health broke down, and he was medically advised not to contemplate residence in India.

In his spare time he acquired complete or partial competence in nine foreign languages,[3] wrote for a number of journals on music, literature, religion and philosophical subjects,[2] and published his first two books, Gluck and the Opera, in 1895 and A Study of Wagner, in 1899.

This displayed, in the words of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, "the three most prominent characteristics of his critical thought: scepticism, dialectic skill, and passion for accuracy.

"[2] He published the book under the pen name Hugh Mortimer Cecil, but all his other works bore the name Ernest Newman, which he adopted to suggest the fresh approach he intended to take toward his subjects: "a new man in earnest".

The Guardian later said of this period in his career, "At Birmingham he was at his best, pungent every morning about the latest singer or fiddler, quick to value a new work, while every week he turned his Monday article into an exciting debating-ground.

[5] He also wrote weekly articles for The Manchester Guardian (1919–24) and Glasgow Herald (1924–28)[2] and contributed to The Musical Times between 1910 and 1955 on subjects as varied as Claude Debussy;[11] Women and Music;[12] Elgar;[13] Johannes Brahms;[14] Beethoven's "Unsterbliche Geliebte";[15] Bayreuth;[16] Franz Liszt;[17] J. S. Bach;[18] Bantock;[19] Hugo Wolf;[20] Arnold Schoenberg;[21] Russian Opera and Russian Nationalism;[22] Nikolai Medtner;[23] Hector Berlioz;[24] Enrique Granados;[25] and Modest Mussorgsky.

In 1959, The Times judged it "likely to remain the standard biography of Wagner in the English language," and Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians commented in 2009, "it has still not been surpassed although research has uncovered much that is new.

For most of his life, Newman strongly resisted all official honours, but in his old age he agreed to accept the Order of the White Rose of Finland in 1956 and Germany's Grosse Verdienstkreuz in 1958, as well as an honorary doctorate from the University of Exeter in 1959.

[2] In 1955 a tribute described as a Festschrift, Fanfare for Ernest Newman was published to mark his golden jubilee as a critic, with contributions from Neville Cardus, Philip Hope-Wallace, Gerald Abraham, Winton Dean, Christopher Hassall and Sir Jack Westrup, among others.

Here is the picture of a relentless worker, frequently struggling with ill health, obstinate in his determination to make enough to live on, groaning under the self-imposed burden of his life of Wagner....

Copious reading, a well-ordered system of notebooks, and a forensic style of argument developed from his early training in classical literature and philosophy, carried him far in this aim.