What is Constant Lambert?
[[File:Constant Lambert by Christopher Wood.jpg|right|thumb|''Constant Lambert'', [[Christopher Wood]], 1926]] '''Leonard Constant Lambert''' (23 August 1905 – 21 August 1951) was a [[United Kingdom|British]] composer and [[Conducting|conductor]]. ==Early years== Lambert’s father was the painter George Washington Lambert who had come to England from [[Australia]]. Lambert was often ill when he was a child. He went to school at [[Christ's Hospital]] and won a [[scholarship]] to the [[Royal College of Music]]. He soon became interested in [[France|French]] and [[Russia]]n music. He became friends with other famous people including the [[Sitwell]] family, [[William Walton]], [[Philip Heseltine]] and [[Bernard van Dieren]]. He and Edith Sitwell were the reciters at a performance of Walton’s ''Façade''. Lambert was a [[prodigy]]: he was composing music for [[orchestra]] when he was only 13, and when he was 20 he was asked to write a [[ballet]] for [[Serge Diaghilev]]'s world-famous [[Ballets Russes]] (''Romeo and Juliet''). He soon became very famous. His best known work is ''The Rio Grande'' for [[piano]] solo, [[choir|chorus]] and orchestra. It has a mixture of musical styles: [[jazz]], [[habanera]]s and the influence of [[Delius]] and [[Duke Ellington]]. ==Works== During the 1930s he performed a lot as a conductor with the [[Vic-Wells Ballet]] (later the [[Royal Ballet]]), but he stopped composing music. Lambert thought he had failed as a composer, and only finished two more big works in the last sixteen years of his life. He continued conducting, and appeared at [[Royal Opera House|Covent Garden]] and in [[BBC]] broadcasts, and travelled to [[Europe]] and [[America]] conducting ballets. He was an excellent ballet conductor and helped the dancers to give their best performance. During the war he became ill. He refused to see a doctor. He was working very hard and also drinking a lot. Lambert liked [[jazz]] and thought it was an important influence on popular culture of the time. He wrote a book ab