Field, John

▪ British ballet dancer and director

byname of  John Greenfield  

born Oct. 22, 1921, Doncaster, Yorkshire, Eng.

died Aug. 3, 1991, Esher, Surrey

      British ballet dancer and director, long-time artistic director of the Royal Ballet's touring company (1956–70).

      Field studied dance in Liverpool and first appeared with the Liverpool Ballet Club at age 17. He became a soloist with the Sadler's Wells Ballet in 1939, joined the Royal Air Force in 1942, and returned to the company after World War II, becoming a principal dancer. He danced many leading roles and partnered most of the company's ballerinas, most notably Beryl Grey, Svetlana Beriosova, and Margot Fonteyn.

      Field retired from dancing in 1956 to take charge of the second company of Sadler's Wells, which became the Royal Ballet a few months later. He became assistant director in 1957, continuing to guide the second company when it concentrated on touring. When Sir Frederick Ashton retired (1970) as director of the Royal Ballet, Field and Kenneth MacMillan (MacMillan, Sir Kenneth) were appointed codirectors. This arrangement, however, proved unsuitable to Field, who left a few months later. He was director of ballet at La Scala in Milan (1971–74), artistic director (1975–79) and director (1976–79) of the Royal Academy of Dancing in London, and artistic director (1979–81) and director (1982–84) of the London Festival Ballet (now the English National Ballet). He was codirector (with his wife, former dancer Anne Heaton) of the British Ballet Organisation from 1984 until a month before his death in 1991.

▪ Irish composer

born July 26, 1782, Dublin

died Jan. 23, 1837, Moscow

 Irish pianist and composer, whose nocturnes for piano were among models used by Chopin.

      Field first studied music at home with his father and grandfather and afterward in London with Muzio Clementi (Clementi, Muzio), under whose tuition, given in return for Field's services as a piano demonstrator and salesman, the boy made rapid progress. In 1802 Clementi took Field to Paris and later to Germany and Russia. Field quickly secured recognition as a pianist and composer and in 1803 settled in Russia, becoming for a time a popular and fashionable teacher. He played extensively throughout Europe during the next 30 years and had great success with one of his E flat piano concerti at a Philharmonic Society concert in London in 1832. He is credited with being one of the earliest to develop the use of the sustaining pedal, both in the prescription of it for his music and in his own performance.

      Field was one of the earliest of the purely piano virtuosos, and his style and technique strikingly anticipated those of Chopin. As a composer he was at his best in shorter pieces, where his expressive melodies and his imaginative harmonies, often chromatic, are not exposed to the strain of long development. Field wrote seven piano concerti and four sonatas, in which high quality is often apparent but not consistently maintained. In the nocturnes, more concise and intimate than his larger works, Field's music is distinguished in style and varied in mood.

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