Philip Bate

Philip Argall Turner Bate (1909–1999) was a musicologist, broadcaster and collector of musical instruments.

Bate was born in Glasgow on March 26, 1909. His father, Percy Herbert Bate, was secretary to the Glasgow Museum of Arts. His mother, Mary Turner, was a keen musician who played piano and violin and sang in Charles Sanford Terry's Bach Choir in Aberdeen. His father did not like music in the house, but allowed him to sing nursery rhymes accompanied by his mother at the piano. His father became curator of Aberdeen's Municipal Art Gallery and Museum and died when Philip was four. During his attendance at Aberdeen Grammar School Bate heard a schools concert given by the Scottish Orchestra and was inspired to learn to play the clarinet. He won a Carnegie award to study at the University of Aberdeen, where he took an honours degree in pure science in 1932.

Bate had intended to continue his studies as a postgraduate in geology but having been a member of the university's dramatic societies and with the new drama department of the Aberdeen station of the BBC frequently choosing him for amateur cast broadcasts, not least for his English accent, he applied for and was appointed to a post with the corporation in London. Bate spent the majority of his career working for the BBC's music department — starting as a balance control assistant between 1934 and 1937 and then as studio manager from 1937 to 1939. On July 21, 1936, Bate married Sheila Glassford Begg, from whom he was later divorced. During the Second World War, Bate worked in military censorship, and was then recalled by the BBC to produce the recording of James Blades playing the drumbeat used as the symbol of the BBC European Service's resistance broadcasts. Following the war Bate continued to work in television, as a producer for the Empire Music Service between 1946 and 1956.

Bate was involved in producing the early live broadcasts of the Edinburgh Festival and pioneered many live interview programmes, such as The Conductor Speaks, with Sir Henry Wood, Sir Malcolm Sargent, Sir Thomas Beecham, and Leopold Stokowski. Bate later realised the potential of ballet on television and produced Dame Margot Fonteyn's first television appearance, encouraging groups like the Paris Opéra Ballet to visit Britain for the first time. Between 1956 and 1967 he undertook senior training positions for the BBC, spending his last working year as the first head of training at the new communications centre in Dublin. On May 23, 1959 Bate married his second wife, Yvonne Mary Leigh-Pollitt.

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