He soon became very famous. His best known work is The Rio Grande for piano solo, chorus and orchestra. It has a mixture of musical styles: jazz, habaneras 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 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 about this, called Music Ho! (1934). The book is widely read today, although it shows a very personal approach to music.
Lambert was married twice. His first marriage was to Florence Kaye. He later married Isabel Nichols, an artist, in 1947. After Constant Lambert's death, Isabel married the composer Alan Rawsthorne.
Lambert died on 21 August 1951. He had pneumonia and it was also found that he had diabetes made worse by alcoholism.