Kenneth Shenton writes:
SIR David Lumsden was a vitalising force in many aspects of British cultural life, and one of the last of an outstanding generation of musicians produced by the University of Cambridge in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. He was a defining choral technician of the age, bringing the choir of New College, Oxford, to a level of excellence which had few equals.
Likewise, throughout his stewardship of both the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD), in Glasgow, and the Royal Academy of Music, in London, his musical insight helped to mould the creative personalities of many of this country’s most eminent practitioners.
Born in Newcastle upon Tyne on 19 March 1928, David James Lumsden was educated at Dame Allan’s School, in Fenham. Evacuated to the Lake District during the Second World War, he sang, as a schoolboy bass, under Armstrong Gibbs in the Windermere Choral Society. He studied the organ with Conrad Eden at Durham Cathedral, and then, when based in Salisbury for his National Service, took lessons with David Willcocks.
At Cambridge, his tutors were Boris Ord and Thurston Dart. He was the Organ Scholar of Selwyn College, and, for two years, also assisted George Guest at St John’s College. His research into Elizabethan Lute Music brought him numerous awards.
Lumsden began his professional career in earnest in 1954, when he was appointed Organist of St Mary’s, Nottingham, and undertook duties as the University Organist. At the same time, he founded and conducted Nottingham Bach Choir. His broadcasting career began in 1955.
Twelve months later, he succeeded Robert Ashfield as the Organist and Rector Chori of Southwell Minster. Here, he continued and enhanced the work of his predecessor by further enriching and expanding the repertoire. Lumsden was meticulous, exacting, and demanding, his quiet demeanour belying a dogged determination to achieve the very highest standards. While at Southwell, he also served as Director of Music of the University College of North Staffordshire, soon to become Keele University.
Lumsden revelled in the many opportunities afforded by the instrument, and was hailed as one of the leading organists of the time. Musically adventurous, precise and faultless, calm and consistent, he rarely failed to make an impact with his virtuoso. His performances of Bach combined musicality, feeling, and performance practice in exactly the right balance.
He played regularly at the Royal Festival Hall, appeared at the Proms, and toured both Europe and America. His continuo playing, his harpsichord realisations could make even the most austere music speak with a profound truth. Between 1972 and 1975, he was a regular member of the London Virtuosi.
He moved to New College, Oxford, in 1959, as Fellow, Organist, and Tutor, and was appointed a Lecturer in Music in the University. He continued his teaching at the Royal Academy, in London. At New College, he again expanded the repertoire and enlarged the choral body. One of his early recruits was the countertenor the late James Bowman.
Christmas Carols From New College was the first of some twenty LPs on the Abbey label, for whom Lumsden became principal adviser. Choir tours to both Europe and America further enhanced the choir’s reputation. In 1969, he oversaw the installation of the Grant, Degens and Bradbeer three-manual mechanical-action organ in the chapel. He became Sub-Warden in 1970, in which year, he also served as Visiting Professor at Yale University.
Six years later, Lumsden moved north, to Glasgow, to become Principal of the RSAMD. Throughout his time there, he presided over numerous developments that increasingly involved the Academy not only in Glasgow’s musical life but in activities much further afield. The Opera School was strengthened by a closer liaison with Scottish Opera, of which Lumsden was a director.
Under the aegis of Glasgow University, diploma courses became degree courses, while the study of both early and contemporary music intensified through a series of workshops and master classes focused on one or two great composers a year. No mere administrator, Lumsden also conducted the RSAMD Chorus and the BBC Scottish Singers, and was the continuo player for the Scottish Baroque Ensemble.
In 1982, he returned south, this time to London, to succeed Sir Anthony Lewis as the 12th Principal of the Royal Academy of Music (RAM). Here, he was initially constrained by historical attitudes, but later, using as his model New York’s Juilliard School, he set in train a whole raft of restructuring proposals that would affect both staff and students.
In an effort to raise the Academy’s international profile, student numbers were cut, course requirements were refined, and a greater focus was put on masterclasses with leading artists, through the creation of RAM International Chairs. Lumsden was also an enthusiastic advocate of Lord Gowrie’s radical 1989 plan to prune drastically and even further both students and institutions. It did, however, result in the creation of a joint faculty with the Royal College of Music.
Knighted in 1985, Lumsden retired in 1993. He served the Church Music Society as an editor. His other publications include An Anthology of English Lute Music and Thomas Robinson’s Schoole of Musicke. A Past President of the Incorporated Association of Organists and the Royal College of Organists, he also chaired the National Youth Orchestra.
His wife, Sheila, died in 2022. They had four children, the eldest of whom, Andrew, is the current Organist and Director of Music of Winchester Cathedral.
Sir David Lumsden died on 25 February, aged 94.