Four: Captain Sir J. Steuart Wilson, King's Royal Rifle Corps, who was severely wounded at...

Four: Captain Sir J. Steuart Wilson, King’s Royal Rifle Corps, who was severely wounded at Ypres on 28 December 1914, and again at High Wood on 20 August 1916, and was later employed at the War Office in the Intelligence Bureau with Military Intelligence 3B; a prominent musician and one of the foremost British tenors of the 20th Century, in later life he served as Music Director of the Arts Council, and the Director of Music at the B.B.C.

1914-15 Star (Capt. J. S. Wilson. K.R. Rif. C.); British War and Victory Medals (Capt. J. S. Wilson.); Italy, Kingdom, Order of the Crown of Italy, Chevalier’s breast badge, gold and enamel, mounted court-style for display, nearly extremely fine (4) £600-£800

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Knight Bachelor London Gazette 10 June 1948: James Steuart Wilson, Esq., lately Music Director, Arts Council of Great Britain.

Order of the Crown of Italy, Fifth Class London Gazette 26 May 1917.

Sir James Steuart Wilson was born in Bristol in 1889, the son of the headmaster of Clifton College, Canon James Wilson, D.D., and the brother of the Sir Arnold T. Wilson, K.C.I.E., C.S.I., C.M.G., D.S.O., M.P. Educated at Winchester College and King's College, Cambridge (where he was in the University’s Officer Training Corps), his early studies and career in music and singing in London, Germany and Switzerland were interrupted by the outbreak of war in 1914, and he was commissioned Second Lieutenant in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps on 15 August 1914. Promoted Captain on 22 September 1914, he served with the 2nd Battalion during the Great War on the Western Front from 23 November 1914 (and thereby missing out on a 1914 Star by a matter of hours), and was severely wounded at Ypres by gunshot through the lungs on 28 December 1914, wounds that led to the loss of a lung and a kidney.

Repatriated back to England on 20 January 1915, Wilson’s injuries seemed almost certain to curtail any career in singing, but whislt recuperating he continued to practise singing techniques. After a long recovery, he returned to the Front with the 6th Battalion, K.R.R.C., as Officer Commanding ‘A’ Company, and was again severely wounded in the attack on High Wood on the Somme on 19-20 August 1916, suffering a penetrating gun shot wound to the abdomen.

Repatriated once more back to England, another very long period of recovery was necessary, before he was posted to the General Staff at the War Office in the Intelligence Bureau with Military Intelligence 3B, also serving at General Headquarters in France. For his services during the Great War he was awarded the Fifth Class of the Order of the Crown of Italy.

To the surprise of many friends, despite the severity of the wounds and their effects on his breathing, he persevered with singing and over the course of the inter-War years built up a formidable reputation as a leading concert and oratorio singer, performing under the baton of many famous composers. Wilson became a leading interpreter of Schubert songs and of the Evangelist in Bach’s Passions and of the title part in Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, which he sang under the baton of the composer and other conductors including Hamilton Harty, Malcolm Sargent, Albert Coates, and Adrian Boult. The Times called him ‘the best exponent of [Gerontius] at the present time’. The tenor Peter Pears said that it was hearing Wilson singing as Evangelist in Bach’s St Matthew Passion that ‘started me off’.

Wilson developed a particularly close relationship with Ralph Vaughan Williams and gave some of the first performances of Vaughan Williams’ works, as well as being the dedicatee of a number of works by Vaughan Williams. He also wrote extensively (books and articles) on music and teaching throughout his life, and was instrumental in founding the London-based sextet, the English Singers, in 1920, the group specialising (unusually for that time) in music of the English renaissance.

In 1937 Wilson settled in the United States and joined the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia; there he taught singing, English diction, vocal repertoire, and vocal ensemble. He continued to give concert recitals into the early 1940s. In 1941 he resigned from the Curtis Institute and the following year returned to England. This move marked the end of Wilson's professional career as a singer. The following year he joined the B.B.C. and was appointed Music Director for the BBC Overseas Service. After the war he was appointed Music Director of the Arts Council of Great Britain, newly formed from the wartime Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts, and he helped reorganise the music department for peacetime work. In that post, he gave support to Benjamin Britten's English Opera Group in its first years. He was knighted for his services as Director of the Arts Council in 1948, and was appointed the BBC's Director of Music. In 1949, aged 60, he moved to Covent Garden to take the post of Deputy General Administrator of the Royal Opera House and in that position he gave support to the Polish composer Andrzej Panufnik, who had recently defected from communist Poland and was responsible, amongst many other things, for securing the premiere of Vaughan Williams' The Pilgrim’s Progress at the Royal Opera House in 1951. His last major appointment was as Principal of the Birmingham School of Music from 1957 to 1960, which he ‘administered with an aggressive sensitivity and wit that veered between the inspired and the impossible.’

Throughout his life Wilson always has a deep attachment to Petersfield, and appreciated the ‘endless variety of beauty which that corner of Hampshire affords’. He died at his home in Petersfield on 18 December 1966, aged 77, and is buried in Steep Churchyard.

Sold with the following archive:
i) A copy of the detailed biography of Wilson (“English Singer”) by his wife; this of course contains information on his military career.
ii) An original 78 rpm record of “The English Singers” which Wilson founded in 1920 (singing a piece by Weelkes and a folk song arranged by Vaughan Williams )
iii) An “Ace of Clubs” 33 rpm LP of Wilson singing a range of songs, taken from recitals in the 1920s-30s.
iv) A paperback 1923 Novello score of The Dream of Gerontius by Sir Edward Elgar, signed by Sir Henry Wood (twice, one dated 1927), Steuart Wilson and two other singers, the covers frail
v) A large file of research, including copies of rolls, MIC, officer service papers, army lists, gazettes, Who's Who entries, and other research.