Biography
Musician, music teacher, composer, communist poet and veteran of the Spanish Civil War. Former pupil of Arnold Dolmetsch. Married Elizabeth in 1940.
Miles Tomalin, was a close personal friend of Arnold Dolmetsch and his family over many years. Miles learned to play the recorder with Dolmetsch and became known as his most accomplished student, and a performer and composer in his own right. Tomalin claimed, probably correctly, to have been the first to introduce the recorder as a viable avenue to the teaching of music in schools. He taught music and recorders at Dunhurst, the Junior Branch of Bedales, alongside Dolmetsch who taught strings. Tomalin composed recorder music for the children to play and also songs and theatrical pieces which employed their musical and dramatic talents. Dunhurst retains, to the present day, a strong music and theatre department with a specialist external recorder teacher. As a player, Tomalin participated in numerous Haslemere festivals, often performing with many other famous figures of the early 20th-century early music revival like Diana Poulton, Dorothy Swainson and Christopher Ball. He knew, amongst others, David Munrow and John Thomson, later the founding editor of the distinguished Early Music journal. Tomalin brought his family into contact with the Dolmetsches after hearing a performance by them in Cambridge where he was studying. His father, Harry Ferdinand Tomalin, a wealthy businessman, was an owner/manager of the Jaeger clothing company who generously supported the arts in general, and Dolmetsch’s activities in particular. He sponsored a luncheon in Dolmetsch’s honour at the Jaeger store in London, followed by a week of invitation concerts held there each evening. To add to the success of these events, he devoted a complete display window in Oxford Street to Dolmetsch viols, recorders and keyboard instruments. Tomalin also commissioned many Dolmetsch instruments for himself, including a lavishly decorated clavichord which Dolmetsch describes in his booklet ‘Dolmetsch and his Instruments’ (Haslemere Museum).
