Newman, Ernest, 1868-1959 (Personal Name)

Gluck and the opera, 1895: title page (Ernest Newman)

New Grove, 2nd ed. (Newman, Ernest (Roberts, William); b. Nov. 30, 1868, Everton, Lancs., d. July 7, 1959, Tadworth, Surrey; English writer on music)

Wikipedia, 22 November 2017 (Newman was born William Roberts in Everton, a district of Liverpool. He had no formal musical education but taught himself to play the piano "after a fashion", could read music as easily as books, studied vocal music, composition, harmony and counterpoint, and introduced himself to a wide range of music through reading scores. He became a clerk in the Bank of Liverpool from 1889 to 1903. In his spare time he acquired complete or partial competence in nine foreign languages, wrote for a number of journals on music, literature, religion and philosophical subjects, and published his first two books, Gluck and the Opera, in 1895 and A Study of Wagner, in 1899. In 1897, Newman wrote Pseudo-Philosophy at the End of the Nineteenth Century, a critique of imprecise and subjective writing. 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". He subsequently used the name in his private life as well as his public life)