Shortly after World War I (during which he was a cipher officer in Cairo)[2] he joined the Queen's Hall orchestra, and in 1925 he was also appointed principal viola of the Royal Philharmonic Society's orchestra. These positions were relinquished in 1929 when he was asked to replace Harry Waldo Warner in the London Quartet.[5] In 1930 he joined the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
His composition activities had begun early. The premiere of his first orchestral work, Sea Pictures, took place at the Queen's HallProms on 4 September 1923 with the composer conducting.[6] It was repeated the following year. Other Proms premieres included Harlequin and Columbine on 1 October 1925[7] and the ballet The Dream of a Marionette on 13 August 1929.[8] In 1935, Sir Henry Wood conducted the premiere of his Serenade Fantastique with Bernard Shore playing the viola.[9] During the 1940s he was a professor of Ensemble at the Guildhall School of Music.[4]
Today, he is perhaps most remembered as the composer of the score for John Huston's 1956 film Moby Dick. Martin Anderson described it as "a vast, alfresco ballet danced by the sea itself" which "points to what was lost when ill-health prevented the already deeply self-critical Sainton from tackling the symphony he had long planned." The score - restored and partially re-constructed by J. Morgan and W. Stromberg in the late 1990s[10] - shows the combined influence of Ravel, Delius and Vaughan Williams.[11]
Modern recordings on Marco Polo and Chandos of Moby Dick,[12] his tone poem The Island (1939), the symphonic elegy Nadir (first performed in 1949) as well as The Dream of a Marionette have helped the process of re-evaluating his music after years of neglect.[13] His daughter Barbara Clark holds many of the remaining scores.[10]
Sainton also orchestrated a number of scores by the amateur South African composer J.S. Gerber.[14] In April 1915 he married the harpist Gwendolen Mason (1883-1977), who was later professor of Harp at the Royal Academy of Music, where she taught Osian Ellis.[15][16] He died in Petersfield, HampshireinEngland.
^This was short-lived, lasting until the completion of the Quartet's US tour. Sainton was then replaced by William Primrose in June 1930. See Tully Potter article 'Britain's early chamber ambassadors' Classical Recordings Quarterly, (London: Autumn 2010, p. 16
