Philip Bate
Encyclopedia
Philip Argall Turner Bate (1909–1999) was a musicologist
, broadcaster
and collector of musical instrument
s.
on March 26, 1909. His father, Percy Herbert Bate, was secretary to the Glasgow Museum of Arts. His mother, Mary Turner, was a keen musician who played piano and violin and sang in Charles Sanford Terry
's Bach Choir in Aberdeen
. His father did not like music in the house, but allowed him to sing nursery rhymes accompanied by his mother at the piano. His father became curator of Aberdeen's Municipal Art Gallery and Museum and died when Philip was four. During his attendance at Aberdeen Grammar School
Bate heard a schools concert given by the Scottish Orchestra and was inspired to learn to play the clarinet. He won a Carnegie
award to study at the University of Aberdeen
, where he took an honours degree
in pure science in 1932.
frequently choosing him for amateur cast broadcasts, not least for his English accent, he applied for and was appointed to a post with the corporation in London
. Bate spent the majority of his career working for the BBC's music department — starting as a balance control assistant between 1934 and 1937 and then as studio manager from 1937 to 1939. On July 21, 1936, Bate married Sheila Glassford Begg, from whom he was later divorced. During the Second World War, Bate worked in military censorship, and was then recalled by the BBC to produce the recording of James Blades
playing the drumbeat used as the symbol of the BBC European Service's resistance broadcasts. Following the war Bate continued to work in television, as a producer for the Empire Music Service between 1946 and 1956.
Bate was involved in producing the early live broadcasts of the Edinburgh Festival
and pioneered many live interview programmes, such as The Conductor Speaks, with Sir Henry Wood
, Sir Malcolm Sargent, Sir Thomas Beecham
, and Leopold Stokowski
. Bate later realised the potential of ballet on television and produced Dame Margot Fonteyn
's first television appearance, encouraging groups like the Paris Opéra Ballet to visit Britain for the first time. Between 1956 and 1967 he undertook senior training positions for the BBC, spending his last working year as the first head of training at the new communications centre in Dublin. On May 23, 1959 Bate married his second wife, Yvonne Mary Leigh-Pollitt.
, Portobello
, and Bermondsey markets
, making friendships with those who shared his interests, such as Canon Francis Galpin, who encouraged Bate to turn his scientific education to the study of musical instruments. Bate used his carpentry skills to make and restore instruments in his collection and after learning metalworking techniques, made reproductions of draw-trumpets
used by David Munrow
's Early Music Consort of London.
In 1946 Bate and a group of friends founded the Galpin Society, the first group to specialize in the history and study of musical instruments. He was its first chairman and from 1977 was its president. As well as writing articles for the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
, Bate wrote the books The Oboe (1956), The Trumpet and Trombone (1966), and The Flute: a Study of its History, Development and Construction (1969).
By the time he was 60, his collection of musical instruments covered the history of woodwind from 1680 onwards and included brass instrument
s and a collection of printed instrument tutors. Convinced that the collection was of value to those concerned with the interpretation of music, and that the instruments should be used and properly maintained, he gave the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments to the University of Oxford
in 1968, on the condition that it was used for teaching and was provided with a specialist curator to care for and lecture on it. Bate continued to add to the collection, and it grew through the acquisition of collections made by many of his friends and colleagues in the Galpin Society.
Bate was made an honorary Master of Arts by Oxford University in 1973. Philip Bate died on November 3, 1999, in the Whittington Hospital
, Islington
and was cremated. His ashes were interred in the music faculty garden next to the Bate Collection in Oxford
.
Musicology
Musicology is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture...
, broadcaster
Presenter
A presenter, or host , is a person or organization responsible for running an event. A museum or university, for example, may be the presenter or host of an exhibit. Likewise, a master of ceremonies is a person that hosts or presents a show...
and collector of musical instrument
Musical instrument
A musical instrument is a device created or adapted for the purpose of making musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. The history of musical instruments dates back to the...
s.
Early life and education
Bate was born in GlasgowGlasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
on March 26, 1909. His father, Percy Herbert Bate, was secretary to the Glasgow Museum of Arts. His mother, Mary Turner, was a keen musician who played piano and violin and sang in Charles Sanford Terry
Charles Sanford Terry (historian)
Charles Sanford Terry was an English historian and musicologist who published extensively on Scottish and European history as well as the life and works of J. S. Bach.-Career:...
's Bach Choir in Aberdeen
Aberdeen
Aberdeen is Scotland's third most populous city, one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas and the United Kingdom's 25th most populous city, with an official population estimate of ....
. His father did not like music in the house, but allowed him to sing nursery rhymes accompanied by his mother at the piano. His father became curator of Aberdeen's Municipal Art Gallery and Museum and died when Philip was four. During his attendance at Aberdeen Grammar School
Aberdeen Grammar School
Aberdeen Grammar School, known to students as The Grammar is a state secondary school in the City of Aberdeen, Scotland. It is one of twelve secondary schools run by the Aberdeen City Council educational department...
Bate heard a schools concert given by the Scottish Orchestra and was inspired to learn to play the clarinet. He won a Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American industrialist, businessman, and entrepreneur who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century...
award to study at the University of Aberdeen
University of Aberdeen
The University of Aberdeen, an ancient university founded in 1495, in Aberdeen, Scotland, is a British university. It is the third oldest university in Scotland, and the fifth oldest in the United Kingdom and wider English-speaking world...
, where he took an honours degree
Bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...
in pure science in 1932.
Broadcasting
Bate had intended to continue his studies as a postgraduate in geology but having been a member of the university's dramatic societies and with the new drama department of the Aberdeen station of the BBCBBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
frequently choosing him for amateur cast broadcasts, not least for his English accent, he applied for and was appointed to a post with the corporation in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. Bate spent the majority of his career working for the BBC's music department — starting as a balance control assistant between 1934 and 1937 and then as studio manager from 1937 to 1939. On July 21, 1936, Bate married Sheila Glassford Begg, from whom he was later divorced. During the Second World War, Bate worked in military censorship, and was then recalled by the BBC to produce the recording of James Blades
James Blades
James "Jimmy" Blades OBE was an English percussionist.He was one of the most distinguished percussionists in Western music, with long and varied career. His book Percussion Instruments and their History is a standard reference work on the subject Blades was born in Peterborough, England in 1901...
playing the drumbeat used as the symbol of the BBC European Service's resistance broadcasts. Following the war Bate continued to work in television, as a producer for the Empire Music Service between 1946 and 1956.
Bate was involved in producing the early live broadcasts of the Edinburgh Festival
Edinburgh International Festival
The Edinburgh International Festival is a festival of performing arts that takes place in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, over three weeks from around the middle of August. By invitation from the Festival Director, the International Festival brings top class performers of music , theatre, opera...
and pioneered many live interview programmes, such as The Conductor Speaks, with Sir Henry Wood
Henry Wood (conductor)
Sir Henry Joseph Wood, CH was an English conductor best known for his association with London's annual series of promenade concerts, known as the Proms. He conducted them for nearly half a century, introducing hundreds of new works to British audiences...
, Sir Malcolm Sargent, Sir Thomas Beecham
Thomas Beecham
Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet CH was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras...
, and Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British-born, naturalised American orchestral conductor, well known for his free-hand performing style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from many of the great orchestras he conducted.In America, Stokowski...
. Bate later realised the potential of ballet on television and produced Dame Margot Fonteyn
Margot Fonteyn
Dame Margot Fonteyn de Arias, DBE , was an English ballerina of the 20th century. She is widely regarded as one of the greatest classical ballet dancers of all time...
's first television appearance, encouraging groups like the Paris Opéra Ballet to visit Britain for the first time. Between 1956 and 1967 he undertook senior training positions for the BBC, spending his last working year as the first head of training at the new communications centre in Dublin. On May 23, 1959 Bate married his second wife, Yvonne Mary Leigh-Pollitt.
Legacy
Beginning from the time he was at school, Bate had been interested by musical instruments, which he began to collect and study. He would visit junk shops and markets to seek out items: one clarinet from a market stall cost him a week's pocket money — his first flute, by William Henry Potter, was given to him by friends, and the next he inherited from his flautist grandfather. Whilst in London he would frequent the Caledonian RoadCaledonian Road (London)
The Caledonian Road, in Islington, North London is a road, about one and half miles long, running north-south from Camden Road near the junction with Holloway Road to Pentonville Road in the south. It is often known colloquially as the "Cally" and forms the entirety of the A5203.The street is...
, Portobello
Portobello Road
Portobello Road is a street in the Notting Hill district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in west London, England. It runs almost the length of Notting Hill from south to north, roughly parallel with Ladbroke Grove. On Saturdays it is home to Portobello Road Market, one of London's...
, and Bermondsey markets
Bermondsey Market
Officially called New Caledonian Market, Bermondsey Market is an antiques market located at Bermondsey Square on Tower Bridge Road in Bermondsey, part of the London Borough of Southwark, in South London, England...
, making friendships with those who shared his interests, such as Canon Francis Galpin, who encouraged Bate to turn his scientific education to the study of musical instruments. Bate used his carpentry skills to make and restore instruments in his collection and after learning metalworking techniques, made reproductions of draw-trumpets
Baroque trumpet
The baroque trumpet is a musical instrument in the brass family. It was invented in the mid-20th century based on ideas from the natural trumpet of the 16th to 18th centuries and designed to allow modern performers to imitate the earlier instrument for music of that time...
used by David Munrow
David Munrow
David Munrow was a British musician and early music historian.- Biography and career :Munrow was born in Birmingham and was the son of Birmingham University dance teacher Hilda Norman Munrow and Albert Davis 'Dave' Munrow, a Birmingham University lecturer and physical education instructor who...
's Early Music Consort of London.
In 1946 Bate and a group of friends founded the Galpin Society, the first group to specialize in the history and study of musical instruments. He was its first chairman and from 1977 was its president. As well as writing articles for the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, it is the largest single reference work on Western music. The dictionary has gone through several editions since the 19th century...
, Bate wrote the books The Oboe (1956), The Trumpet and Trombone (1966), and The Flute: a Study of its History, Development and Construction (1969).
By the time he was 60, his collection of musical instruments covered the history of woodwind from 1680 onwards and included brass instrument
Brass instrument
A brass instrument is a musical instrument whose sound is produced by sympathetic vibration of air in a tubular resonator in sympathy with the vibration of the player's lips...
s and a collection of printed instrument tutors. Convinced that the collection was of value to those concerned with the interpretation of music, and that the instruments should be used and properly maintained, he gave the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments to the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
in 1968, on the condition that it was used for teaching and was provided with a specialist curator to care for and lecture on it. Bate continued to add to the collection, and it grew through the acquisition of collections made by many of his friends and colleagues in the Galpin Society.
Bate was made an honorary Master of Arts by Oxford University in 1973. Philip Bate died on November 3, 1999, in the Whittington Hospital
Whittington Hospital
The Whittington Hospital is a British hospital in Archway, Islington, London. It is named after Richard Whittington.It is a district general hospital, although it is also a teaching hospital of the UCL Medical School and Middlesex University School of Health and Social Sciences.- History :Although...
, Islington
Islington
Islington is a neighbourhood in Greater London, England and forms the central district of the London Borough of Islington. It is a district of Inner London, spanning from Islington High Street to Highbury Fields, encompassing the area around the busy Upper Street...
and was cremated. His ashes were interred in the music faculty garden next to the Bate Collection in Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
.