Ernest Newman

Born William Roberts in Liverpool in 1868, Ernest Newman became one of the best-known English music critics of the first half of the twentieth century. He adopted the pen name Ernest Newman early in his career and was widely admired for a style that aimed at clear, intellectually serious criticism rather than purely personal reaction.

Alongside journalism, he wrote a long list of books on music and composers. He is especially remembered for his studies of Wagner, but he also wrote on figures including Gluck and Beethoven, bringing the same close attention and argumentative energy to both biography and criticism.

Newman died in 1959. His reputation has lasted because he treated music criticism as something more than reviewing a performance: for him, it was a way of thinking carefully about art, ideas, and standards, and writing about them in a way ordinary readers could still follow.