Eric Sams

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Eric Sams (May 3, 1926—Sept. 13, 2004) was a British musicologist and Shakespeare scholar.

Born in London, he was raised in Essex; his early brilliance in school earned him a scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge at the age of sixteen. His life-long passion for puzzles and ciphers stood him in good stead in his wartime service in British Intelligence (1944-47). After the war he read modern languages at Cambridge (French and German), 1947-50; upon graduation he entered the Civil Service. In 1952 he married Enid Tidmarsh (d. 2002), a pianist. Their elder son, Richard, is a Japanese scholar and chess master working in Tokyo; their younger son Jeremy Sams is a composer, lyricist, playwright, and theatre director.

In music, Sams wrote on and studied a range of subjects and genres, though his specialty was German lieder. He wrote volumes on the songs of Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, and Hugo Wolf. His theory of Song-Motifs is 20th Century's most important contribution to the research in the field of German Song studies. From 1965 to 1980 he was a regular contributor to The Musical Times with Essays and Reviews. Most notably, he wrote on Schumann's and Brahms's ciphers and music codes (the "Clara-Theme", among others), on Elgar's Enigma and on Schubert's and Schumann's pathologies. His New Grove articles include Schubert and Schumann work-list, "Wolf" and Wolf work-list, "Mörike", "Hanslick" and "Musical Cryptography" (also in Grove 6). He reviewed opera performance for the New Statesman, 1976-8 and wrote Record reviews for Gramophone 1976-78.

In the field of Shakespeare studies, Sams specialized in the early phases of Shakespeare's career. He argued strongly against the concept of memorial reconstruction, believing that variants from standard Shakespeare texts were more likely the playwright's own early versions. He wrote books defending the attributions of the anonymous plays Edward III and Edmund Ironside to Shakespeare, and a chronology of the poet's early career, The Real Shakespeare.

[edit] Selected works by Eric Sams

• The Songs of Hugo Wolf, 1961.
• The Songs of Robert Schumann, 1969.
• Brahms Songs, 1972
• Shakespeare's Lost Play, Edmund Ironside, 1986.
• The Real Shakespeare: Retrieving the Early years, 1564-1594, 1995.
• Shakespeare's Edward III: An Early Play Restored to the Canon, 1996.
• The Songs of Johannes Brahms, 2000.
• Essays and Reviews on Music, on Shakespeare, on Cryptography, 1966-1998, online edition in the web-pages of the Centro Studi "Eric Sams" ([1])
• The Real Shakespeare II: Retrieving the Later Years, 1594-1616, 2008, e-book published by the Centro Studi "Eric Sams" ([2])