bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Beethoven’s Folksong Settings
Authors: Cooper Barry
Published: November 2023

Beethoven composed far more folksong settings than any other type of composition. Most are British songs, including Auld Lang Syne and the The Miller of Dee, with text by such authors as Burns, Byron and Scott. Yet Beethoven's settings, commissioned by George Thomson of Edinburgh, have been neglected by performers and scholars alike, and nearly all accounts of them are both superficial and startlingly inaccurate. This book is based on a very elablorate study of a wide range of sources, and dispels the many myths that have been circulating about this music. Every one of the 179 settings is dated to within a few weeks and an account is given of the souces of the melodies and texts, the difficulties of sending the music across Europe during the Napoleonic Wars (smugglers were even called upon to assist!), the fees Beethoven received, and when and how the texts were added. By comparing Beethoven's settings with those of his predecessors Pleyel, Haydhn and Kozeluch, the author demonstrates that Beethoven comprehensively transcended the bounds of convention, producing settings of extra-ordinary quality and originality. Suggestions are also made for overcoming the problems of presenting these songs in performance.
Introduction
Authors: Cooper Barry
Published: November 2023

BEETHOVEN composed a large number of folksong settings, in which traditional tunes were provided with preludes, postludes, and accompaniments. Almost all were made for the Edinburgh publisher George Thomson (1757–1851), for whom he also composed sixteen sets of folk song variations for flute and piano, Opp. 105 and 107. The present study concerns just the folksong settings, not the variations.

Thomson was a civil servant by profession, but a keen amateur cellist and music-lover, who became passionately fond of Beethoven’s music. He also showed much interest in folksong—initially that of Scotland but later of other countries—and as a result became a friend of the great Scottish bard Robert Burns (1759–96), publishing many of his poems.
The Accompaniments: Instrumental Parts
Authors: Cooper Barry
Published: November 2023

One of the most important features of a folksong accompaniment is the role of the pianist’s right hand-in particular, whether it merely doubles the voice or is treated independently. There was still a lingering tradition in Beethoven’s day, visible in some of his earliest Lieder, for publishing songs on only two staves so that the right hand would automatically double the voice throughout the song. In some of Thomson’s later publications Beethoven’s settings were actually printed this way, and the two songs Beethoven sent to Simrock (Group XVIII) were also notated on only two staves.
London, Paris, Dublin 1732–1762
Authors: Careri Enrico
Published: November 2023

ALTHOUGH they were composed and performed for many years before they were eventually published, the concertos of Op. II and III achieved a wide dissemination only after the series of public performances organized by Geminiani at Hickford’s Room between December 1731 and April 1732. Following their publication in 1732 they were performed everywhere in England, not only at public concerts or at meetings of music societies, but also between the acts of stage works. The last-mentioned context proves their popularity beyond question, for only music that was known to be in fashion was chosen for the entr’actes. Typical examples besides Geminiani’s concertos were the overtures of Handel’s operas, the same composer’s celebrated Water Music, and Vivaldi’s ‘Cuckoo’ Concerto (RV 335). To give some specific instances: the intervals of The Careless Husband (Haymarket, 20 October 1733) were filled by the first concerto of Geminiani’s Op. II, the Overture to Handel’s Alessandro, and the ‘Cuckoo’; for The Constant Couple (Haymarket, 27 October 1733) the same service was provided by the fourth concerto of Geminiani’s Op. III and the Overture to Tamerlano; in The Relapse (Haymarket, 1 December 1733) it was the turn of the sixth concerto of Geminiani’s Op. II, the Overture to Admeto, and a concerto for two oboes by Pepusch; Love for Love (Haymarket, 4 February 1734) featured the third concerto of Geminiani’s Op. II, the Overture to Tolomeo, and the Water Music; The Country Wife (Drury Lane, 4 February 1735) had the first concerto of Geminiani’s Op. III, the Overture to Esther, and an unidentified concerto for oboe by Geminiani. These Op. II and Op. III concertos remained in the British orchestral repertory until the death of the composer and were reprinted repeatedly up to the end of the century. It is important to bear this fact in mind, for otherwise it would be quite difficult to explain why Geminiani’s standing with the public remained high even though almost all his subsequent compositions met with failure.
Articulation
Authors: Harrison Bernard
Published: November 2023

The eighteenth-century theorists who deal with the subject of articulation in keyboard music describe four different types of touch, namely staccato, legato, the ‘ordinary’ touch, and portato or Tragen der Töne. While there is a considerable degree of uniformity in these eighteenth-century theoretical descriptions of each type of touch, important distinctions need to be made between eighteenth- and nineteenth-century discussions of this subject, and not a few problematic interpretations of this evidence in the modern literature require re-evaluation. Staccato is, according to C. P. E. Bach, indicated by either a Strich or a Punkt and the duration of the notes so marked is ‘a little less than half of their notated length’, although Bach indicates that the extent of the staccato is dependent on the value of the note, the tempo and the dynamic level. Staccato occurs ‘in general’ in ‘leaping passages and rapid tempos’. Marpurg's description in the Anleitung zum Clavierspielen is similar to Bach's, but he recommends that the staccato note be held ‘for half’ its value. In Principes du clavecin, Marpurg gives the realization of the staccato note as exactly half the notated value (table II, figs. 8.a-c) and adds that the staccato Strich is sometimes used instead of the Punkt. Türk's comments at the end of the eighteenth century on the notation of staccato are an elaboration on those of Bach, but in one respect (the question of whether the distinction between Strich and Punkt is functional) they are prophetic of nineteenth-century descriptions: ‘The signs at a [i.e. Strich] and b [i.e. Punkt] have the same meaning, but some would like to indicate by the stroke (a) that a shorter staccato be played than that indicated by the dot (b).’
Francis Poulenc
Authors: Mellers Wilfrid
Published: November 2023

Once considered as little more than the froth in the wake of the First World War, a witty boy-hedonist who, in the giddy Twenties, tweaked the noses of moribund establishmentarians, Poulenc has in fact proved unexpectedly durable - more so than any of his colleagues among Les Six, including those who developed more grandiose ambitions. Here is a survey of Poulenc's music, based on careful selection of his works, and written by an authoritative guide. Having placed Poulenc in the context of French life and society after the First World War and considered him in relation to his masters and mentors, especially Satie and Chabrier, Mellers turns to Poulenc's Diaghilev ballet, Les Biches, to important sequels to it, such as Concert champêtre and Aubade, and to works of transition, such as the Concerto for two pianos and orchestra. The next section discusses the `social' music of Poulenc's middle years - especially the music for piano (for Poulenc a domestic instrument), written during the Thirties, and the centrality of song in his work; some account is offered of his relationship with his main poets, Guillaume Apollinaire, Paul Eluard, and Louise de Vilmorin. Mellers mext considers the impact on Poulenc of the Second World War, especially as manifest in the great choral work Quatre Motets de Pénitence and the Organ Concerto. Separate chapters deal with the three main operatic pieces and Poulenc's relationship to Bernanos and Jean Cocteau; with the late devotional works, especially the Stabat Mater, the Gloriam and the Sept Répons des Ténèbres; and with the chamber works of the last few years. The chapters are illustrated througout with music examples. Adopting a broadly chronological approach, Mellers traces Poulenc's development as a composer from enfant terrible to a mature composer both for secular Society and for the liturgy of the Catholic Church; in so doing he points to the reasons for the durability and pertinacity of his appeal. Mellers further assesses Poulenc's place in the French tradition, and, in a Postlude, pays tribute to the warm regard with which Poulenc was held by so many of his fellow musicians.
Edward Elgar
Authors: Moore Jerrold Northrop
Published: November 2023

Edward Elgar is among the greatest of all English composers, and this major biography, the culmination of twenty years’ work, is probably the most complete and perceptive study of the composer to date. Drawing on the vast amount of source material, much of it previously unpublished, Jerrold Northrop Moore presents Elgar’s life and works as inseparable parts of a single creative career. This classic study, unavailable for many years, is here reissued as a Clarendon Paperback.
‘Jubilating Always in my Songs’
Authors: Wegman Rob C
Published: November 2023

On 17 January 1491 the canons of St Donatian’s discharged Jacob Obrecht ‘because of the better’.1 No doubt this motivation, however ambiguously worded, reflected the composer’s rather than the chapter’s point of view. Only he could now expect a change for the better, not the church, which was ill-prepared for his departure, and would have to struggle with interim succentors for nearly two years.2 Obrecht was now in his early thirties, and had established himself as the leading composer of northern Europe. His masses and motets were finding their way to musical centres hundreds of miles removed from Bruges, spreading his fame to all corners of the Continent.
Early Episcopal Music in America
Authors: Wilson Ruth M
Published: November 2023

The formal process by which remnants of colonial Anglican ecclesiastical societies were welded into an autonomous American church began its most important phase in Philadelphia in 1785. With the working out of a trial liturgy, the stage was set for the next step, a few years of experimentation with the Proposed Book in episcopal congregations. Representatives of the churches within the states then came together in 1789 to hammer out a final settlement, and by 1790 the important elements of the Anglican Church were in place: a united episcopate, a federal system of government, and a liturgy. The revised liturgy authorized for use on I October 1790 adhered to the general outline of services in the 1662 English prayer book, but, as might be expected, there were substantial changes in the text. Also, part of the Communion liturgy of the Episcopal Church in Scotland was adopted according to suggestions made by the Scottish bishops to the first American bishop, Samuel Seabury, at the time of his 1784 ordination in Aberdeen.
British Keyboard Music to c.1660
Authors: Brookes Virginia
Published: November 2023

This is a work of reference in two parts: part 1 is an itemized list of the contents of all the manuscript and printed sources of British keyboard music to c. 1660; part 2 is a thematic index, listed alphabetically by composer, of all the pieces contained in the sources. Each piece in the index is numbered and that number will also be found against its entry in the source list; thus each piece may be placed in the context of its origins. The book concludes with a computerized code of the musical incipits, so that it is possible to discover if any piece is included in any source. The index itself consists of the musical incipit, and a list of all the known sources, with folio numbers, deviant titles and ascriptions, and modern printed sources, if any.
Planned
Authors: Simeone Nigel , Tyrrell John , Němcová Alena
Published: November 2023

According to his annotations in his copy of Chateaubriand’s tale, Jan ácek read it between 16 Aug 1884 and 23 Jan 1885. His scenario provides a division of the material into three acts, subdivided into events and some numbers, together with a cast list with voice types.
The music of the middle years, 1876-82
Authors: MacDonald Malcolm
Published: November 2023

Brahms had waited a long time to fulfil Schumann’s prophecy that he would become the age’s leading symphonist. With the D minor Piano Concerto, growing out of his earliest symphonic attempt, and even more with the Requiem, he might have been considered to have established his credentials as a master of major orchestral and choral forms. Yet the Symphony itself had long seemed beyond his reach. He well knew that anything he produced would immediately be judged by the highest standards, and found wanting on the slightest excuse. This was, after all, the Classical form par excellence, invested with proud tradition and enormous authority by Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann himself and, above all, Beethoven. Brahms could not avoid the feeling that here more than anywhere he was forced to challenge Beethoven on his own ground.
A Music of the Future
Authors: MacDonald Malcolm
Published: November 2023

We can see from our vantage-point of 1966 that Schumann was wrong: Brahms was not to be the prophet of a new age. He is no founder of a new dynasty, not even an intermediate name in a long continuous line, but the very last of the classical Caesars ... Schoenberg, who was beginning to compose in the nineties, owes in his early works much to Wagner, something perhaps to Schubert, nothing to Brahms.

One day during the last summer of Brahms’s life, he took a walk along the shore of the Traunsee near lschl with Gustav Mahler, who was trying to enlist Brahms’s support for his candidacy as conductor of the Vienna Hofoper. It is not certain how much of Mahler’s music Brahms knew,1 but he admired him as a conductor, declaring a performance of Don Giovanni Mahler had given in Budapest in 1890 the best he had ever heard.
The man Liszt
Authors: Watson Derek
Published: November 2023

In his biography of Sir Henry Irving, Edward Gordon Craig quotes the actor’s son Laurence: ‘I wish they wouldn’t make such a whitewinged angel of father.
Musical language: technique and transformation
Authors: Watson Derek
Published: November 2023

Liszt’s absorption of musical styles in his youth and early maturity is as wide as the map of his travels. The list of composers from whom he made transcriptions is long, and includes some who shaped his own musical language. He had a thorough grounding in Bach and the Viennese classics. His teacher Czerny, the revered Beethoven and, later, Schubert were primary influences.
The Preparation of Copy
Authors: Caldwell John
Published: November 2023

It is possible to take the greatest care over editorial methods and principles, and yet to neglect those aspects of presentation which can improve the chances of acceptance by a publisher and greatly speed the process of publication thereafter.

It goes without saying that a clear script is a desideratum. ‘Good scribes use thick nibs and black ink’, ran this book’s predecessor, a recipe whose validity is amply_ confirmed by the late Thurston Dart’s bold and characterful hand. The blacker the ink-and the whiter the paper-the clearer will be the result, and the better the photocopy you make of your manuscript. It is essential to keep an exact copy: your precious manuscript may have travelled half-way round the world before you see it returned with a first proof. Copies should also be kept of all proof stages-this writer speaks from bitter experience. Nothing can completely insulate one against loss in the post or in some other way, but the keeping of copies can greatly minimize the inconvenience thus caused and also enables queries to be dealt with quickly by telephone.
The Melodic Art of the Trouvères: Orality and the Question of Melodic Variants
Authors: O’neill Mary
Published: November 2023

One of the most controversial and elusive aspects of trouvère scholarship remains the question of the role of orality, a rather vague term but one which embraces aspects of the generative process, of performance, and of transmission. In musicological scholarship the concept of orality has principally been invoked in relation to the transmission of the early repertoire, where it is seen to account for the lack of written sources in the considerable gap between the ‘composition’ of the early repertoire and the date of the earliest surviving written source, in many cases a period of some ﬁfty or more years. The danger of relying on negative evidence, that is the lack of written sources, as proof of oral transmission in the ﬁrst half of the thirteenth century is obvious, particularly since a study of the surviving written sources attests the existence of earlier, but now lost, written exemplars.
The Later Trouvère Tradition: Continuation and Innovation
Authors: O’neill Mary
Published: November 2023

Tradition is not a thing of the past but a living and dynamic process that began in the past, ﬂourishes in the present, and looks forward into the future as well. While it does not seek novelty for its own sake, it does not avoid the new in the life around it. While the repertory of trouvère song can in one sense be regarded as a continuation of the twelfth-century lyric art of the troubadours of Occitania, it evolved into a quite distinctive and markedly more diversiﬁed repertoire during the thirteenth century, particularly in the second and third quarters of that century. The unique course of its development and expansion was a direct product, not merely of the geographical relocation, but also of the immediate circumstances of its new social, historical, and cultural context.
The Interaction of Oral, Written, and Literate Processes
Authors: O’neill Mary
Published: November 2023

One of most dramatic developments to take place during the thirteenth century was the spread in learning and, in particular, the laicization of the book. There was a vast increase in the production of books and especially those in the vernacular. Bernhard Bischoff, Brian Stock, Simon Gaunt, and others have commented in different contexts about the emerging ‘centrality of writing in medieval French culture’ from the twelfth century onwards and the tendency ‘to privilege the written word over the spoken word’. Although by the time the production of the extant books containing the trouvère lyric repertoire was undertaken the tradition was in many regards in decline, literacy nonetheless had an inﬂuence not only in the transmission of this repertoire, but also, to a degree, on some facets of the development of the later repertoire.
Disney’s Dream: The Rite of Spring Sequence from ‘Fantasia’
Authors: Cook Nicholas
Published: November 2023

Stravinsky’s damning words capture the tone of academic commentary, in so far as there has been any such thing, on the film that Walt Disney believed ‘would signal a new dawn for the animated cartoon’. 3 Disney’s hopes were pinned not only on the technical innovations that ‘Fantasia’ exploited (including unprecedentedly intensive use of the studio’s multi-plane cameras, which allowed independent control of several layers of animation, and a multi-speaker sound system known as ‘Fantasound’), but also on the prospect of bringing works of the high art tradition to mass audiences. ‘Think of the numbers of people who will now be able to hear your music,’ he told Stravinsky.4
Dresden and Vienna
Authors: Stockigt Janice B
Published: November 2023

It is not known exactly when Zelenka arrived in Dresden. According to a petition dated 18 November 1733 and addressed to ‘Allerdurchlauchtigster Großlmächtigster König und Churfürst, Allergnädigster Herr’ (Friedrich August II), Zelenka claimed that ‘already for twenty-four years I have had the honour of serving Your Most High Royal House’. If this is an accurate statement, then he must have arrived in Dresden in late 1709 or 1710, a date supported by Fürstenau, who wrote ‘Im Jahre 1710 ward Johann Dismas Zelenka also Contrabassist mit 300 Thlr. Gehalt angestellt’. However, in a later petition to Friedrich August II, dated 11 February 1736, Zelenka stated that he ‘had the privilege to serve in the August Royal Household for twenty-five consecutive years’, an indication that he arrived during 1711.
Owners, Dealers, and Prices
Authors: Maunder Richard
Published: November 2023

ALTHOUGH many advertisers of instruments in the Wienerisches Diariuml Wiener Zeitung preferred to remain anonymous, and former owners of effects sold at auction were very rarely named, some of them can be identified with reasonable confidence because entries in the ‘deaths’ column show that the addresses given were theirs. Much can therefore be learnt about instruments belonging to both professional and amateur musicians, which supplements what is already known from other sources such as letters: see Appendix C for a full list of eighteenth-century Viennese owners and their instruments.
Glenn Gould
Authors: Bazzana Kevin
Published: November 2023

This book is a detailed study of the Canadian pianist, broadcaster, writer, and composer Glenn Gould (1932-82). While focussed primarily on his performances, it also situates his work and thought more broadly within relevant musical, cultural, intellectual, and historical contexts. It incorporates most of the existing primary and secondary literature on Gould, as well as many ideas, interpretations, and perspectives that have never before been offered. It also incorporates ideas from a wide range of literature, both musical and otherwise, and has benefitted from on-site research at The Glenn Gould Papers in the National Library of Canada. The book offers a more comprehensive, balanced, and thoroughly researched portrait of Gould as pianist and interpreter than any previous volume in the Gould literature. Following an introduction that summarizes Gould's career and the posthumous interest in him, the book divides into two parts. Part 1, `Premises', focuses on the intellectual and aesthetic ideas that informed Gould's performances, and draws on literature from many fields, including music history and aesthetics, cultural history, the history of performance practice, theatre, literary criticism, and music analysis. The three large chapters of Part 1 cover a wide range of topics: Gould's idealism, views on the musical work, musical tastes, and repertoire; his position on the role of the performer; the analytical, critical, and ethical discourses embodied in his performances; and his approach to performance in the contexts of Romanticism, modernism, neo-Classicism, post-structuralism, the historical performance movement, twentieth-century theatrical and literary practices, and cultural currents in the 1950s and 1960s. Part 2, `Practices', focuses in detail on Gould the pianist, illuminating important features of his style through prose description and critical analysis, and including graphic musical examples and plates. This second part focusses on specific aspects of Gould's performance practices: his relationship to the piano; his approach to counterpoint, rhythm, dynamics, articulation and phrasing, and ornamentation; and his uses of recording technology as a kind of performance practice. A conclusion serves in part as a summary of previous findings, but also discusses how, in light of these findings, Gould's work as a performer might ultimately be assessed.
Change and Constancy: The Essential Lutos ł awski
Authors: Stucky Steven
Published: November 2023

Witold Lutos ławski’s professional life spanned sixty years, from the Piano Sonata in 1934 until his death in 1994. Now that new works have ceased to flow from his pen, Lutos ławski’s long artistic trajectory can be viewed in full. But what sort of arc does that trajectory describe? Can its beginning and end points be understood as stations on a single, unbroken journey, or do Lutos ławski’s periodic shifts in musical language, some of them seemingly extreme, suggest instead a series of separate, shorter trajectories? Does his reuvre represent one fundamental, unchangeable musical persona, or several?
Rites of Passage: Nove cantum melodie, the Burgundian Court, and Binchois’s Early Career
Authors: Weller Philip
Published: November 2023

Thewedding in 1430 of Philip the Good and Isabella of Portugal was one of the high points in a constellation of political and ceremonial events which together shaped the self-image of the Burgundian court under Philip the Good during a crucial phase of its development. While the rise of the duchy of Burgundy is an extraordinary political and cultural phenomenon in its own right, the concatenation of events leading up to and flowing from the time of the wedding represents a historical moment of special significance. Music played a crucial role in these events, not as mere ‘luxury’ and decoration, but in channelling and concentrating their significance as vital and formative elements in the life of the state. As the occasions attendant on the nuptials came and went, music was a prominent and often very public part of the proceedings. Furthermore, it played a supremely ‘functionar role-functional not in the prosaic modern sense of a merely pragmatic or cosmetic adjunct to events, but in the stronger sense that the events themselves were focused and amplified, and thereby made more powerful and significant, by the varied musical manifestations that accompanied them.
Binchois the Borrower
Authors: Kirkman Andrew
Published: November 2023

In his chanson Je me merveil/J’ay pluseurs fois, Jacob de Senleches issues a censure that strikes the modern listener as surprisingly familiar. Lamenting that many around him are attempting composition, he resolves to relinquish his craft, since, as he says, they are engaged in copying, or imitating, the work of others (‘se veult meller de contrefaire’). Senleches’s comment is clearly, and cleverly, ironic: he sets the word ‘contrefaire’ to a direct quotation, as Yolanda Plumley has revealed, of Philippus de Caserta’s En attendant souffrir; indeed, lest there be any doubt about it, Senleches quotes the song’s opening. Nor is this the only time that the latter draws on the farmer’s work: Senleches’s En attendant, Esperance contains its own musical reference to En attendant souffrir, one of a network of musical and textual interconnections which, as Plumley has traced, link his music with that of other composers working in the musical hothouse of the ars subtilior.
Soviet Opera at B.B.C.: Shostakowitch’s ‘Lady Macbeth’ (1936)
Authors: Kildea Paul
Published: November 2023

‘Oedipus Rex’ broadcast on February 12th, and ‘Lady Macbeth’ broadcast on March 18th with Albert Coates conducting, are the most important events of this season’s B.B.C. concert programmes. Shostakowitch belongs to the school of young Soviet composers. His latest opera Katrina Ismailowa is a love story which is treated very naturalistically. The opera had a tremendous success in Prague and other Western European countries.‘Oedipus Rex’ demonstrated Stravinsky’s remarkable sense of style in drawing inspiration from every age of music and in leaving the whole a perfect shape, satisfying every aesthetic and emotional demand. But since the established idea of’originality’ dies hard, it is easy to see why Stravinsky’s later works are regarded with disfavour. Another difficulty is his later method of dramatic composition. The set, stylised musical numbers, the Latin words, and the masks worn by most of the actors combine to give the impression of an impersonal comment on Sophocles’ drama rather than a re-enactment of it.A deep contrast to this method appears in ‘Lady Macbeth.’ Here the music is the terrible sadistic drama itself, and it is only in the remarkable entr’actes that Shostakowitch makes detached comments on the previous gruesome events on the stage.
‘As You Like It’ Walton’s Music (1936)
Authors: Kildea Paul
Published: November 2023

That the directors of 20th Century Fox Film Corporation should have invited one of the 20th century stars of British music to write for one of its biggest productions is very creditable indeed.1 But the invitation seems to have exhausted their enterprise. His name, perhaps symbolically, is absent from the programme, and the opportunities he has had for writing serious film music seem negligible. There is, of course, the Grand Introduction over the credit titles-pompous and heraldic in the traditional manner. There is a Grand Oratorio Finale with full orchestra, based on Elizabethan songs, in which a bunch of Albert Hall contralti is very prominent. Both these are written with great competence, andindeed Walton is incapable of any sort of inefficiency.But apart from suitable Waldweben2 noises at the beginning of each sequence, which tactfully fade out as the action starts, that is the whole of Walton’s contribution to As You Like It.Once [sic] cannot feel that the microphone has entered very deeply into Walton’s scoring soul.3 A large orchestra in which strings are very prominent has been used, and in the accompanying pastoral music one is conscious of the energetic ranks of the London Philharmonic sweating away behind the threeply trees.
Vienna (1945)
Authors: Kildea Paul
Published: November 2023

To a musician, of all cities in the world, Vienna must surely be the best beloved. From the day when one’s childish fingers stumbled through the sonatas of Mozart, or the Moments Musicales of Schubert, to the exciting day not long before this war when one heard the Violin Concerto of Alban Berg for the 1st time, Viennese music has played a dominating part in one’s life. In that great and lovely city there has flourished a musical tradition which nothing has yet supplanted. For two hundred years every kind of music has flowered there. Masses, Operas, Symphonies, Concertos, all sorts of dance music, songs, chamber music and so on. For two hundred years, Vienna has been the spiritual home of the most extraordinary number of great composers. If they weren’t lucky enough to be born there, they emigrated there. Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Lanner, all the Strausses, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler, Schonberg, Berg and Webern, and the rest of that glorious list. Sometimes they cursed Vienna for her laziness; despised her for her narrow-minded-ness: Figaro was a flop: Schubert never heard his C-major Symphony: Mahler had unending battles with the press: Berg was never officially recognised: but always her sweetness, and charm, her gaiety and her warmth, coaxed out of composers the best they had to give.
Peter Grimes (1945)
Authors: Kildea Paul
Published: November 2023

During the summer of 1941, while working in California, I came across a copy of The Listener containing an article about George Crabbe by E. M. Forster. I did not know any of the poems of Crabbe at that time, but reading about him gave me such a feeling of nostalgia for Suffolk, where I had always lived, that I searched for a copy of his works, and made a beginning with ‘The Borough.’ Mr. Forster’s article is reproduced in this book: it is easy to see how his excellent account of this ‘entirely English poet’ evoked a longing for the realities of that grim and exciting seacoast around Aldeburgh.1Earlier in the year, I had written the music of Paul Bunyan, an operetta to a text by W H. Auden, which was performed for a week at Columbia University, New York.2 The critics damned it unmercifully, but the public seemed to find something enjoyable in the performances. Despite the criticisms, I wanted to write more works for the stage. ‘The Borough’-and particularly the story of ‘Peter Grimes’-provided a subject and a background from which Peter Pears and I began trying to construct the scenario of an opera.
Piano works by Frederic Chopin and Gabriel Faure (1949)
Authors: Kildea Paul
Published: November 2023

A great virtuoso pianist of the nineteenth century did not, as today, only give recitals in mammoth concert-halls with delirious audiences of thousands; he also appeared in the exquisite drawing-rooms of elegant and discriminating patronesses. For these delicate occasions, very extended or strenuous compositions were out of place-being wearisome and rather embarrassing at such close quarters. So a kind of short, decorative and evocative music has come to be called Salon music. We have nocturnes, impromptus, fantasias, barcarolles, scherzos, and every sort of dance music-though never to be danced to. All the best ideas of Chopin were cast in this form, and with his superb melodic gift, and his vivid and original imagination for colours, many small masterpieces were created. Half-a-century later Faure was writing for the Paris Salons. At first his little pieces were closely modelled on Chopin, but soon he developed a highly original style of his own-most personal melodies, with daring and surprising harmonies, and always beautifully imaginative textures. One often feels that his audiences must have been bewildered by the strangeness and apparent vagueness of some of his later pieces, especially the great Nocturnes.
Boyd Neel: The Story of an Orchestra (1950)
Authors: Kildea Paul
Published: November 2023

It gives me great pleasure to introduce this account of the Boyd Neel Orchestra by its gifted and energetic founder and conductor. Such an account is welcome, for in its seventeen years of existence this orchestra has gained an important position in our musical life. The Boyd Neel Orchestra was the first in Great Britain and among the first in the world to establish on the musical scene the small self-contained orchestral ensemble. To their efforts largely is due the fact that the public nowadays will accept the distinction between Great music and Big music, will realize that importance is not achieved by a large, thick sound and that a band of hundred is not five times as good as a group of twenty. And what a repertoire the orchestra has made known to us-not only music foreign to the limited, nineteenth century-ridden orchestral programmes of to-day, but also much familiar music which yet needs the thin clear lines of a small ensemble to make really musical sense. Let us composers, too, remember what Boyd Neel has done for us. Not only has he asked for and used new music but-here’s the difference-he has used it many times.1 If Boyd Neel and his orchestra like and believe in new music, they play it over and over again until the audience get used to it and begin to like it too; not for it a first performance and then the dusty shelf.
Britten and South-East Asia (1956)
Authors: Kildea Paul
Published: November 2023

HAMBLETON: I now take you to South-East Asia, but not in actuality; only as seen musically by Benjamin Britten, whom I interviewed in his home in Aldeburgh in 1956, just after he and Peter Pears had returned from a concert tour of the world. I spoke to him generally about his tour and I found him a very accurate reporter, with the gift of recalling circumstantial details. For this programme I’ve taken the part where he speaks of the musicians, about the exotic music he heard, particularly in Siam. He began by telling me how his own music was received. BRITTEN: Many of the places you go to had quite a big European population. In Java, for instance, the audiences were predominantly Dutch, therefore the concerts were not at all unlike concerts in The Hague or Amsterdam. In Japan, of course, where the audiences were entirely Japanese, the reception to Western music is extremely exciting. It’s highly cultured and extremely enthusiastic-very choosy. If they like you they like you very much; if they don’t like you I don’t think they mince matters at all. I conducted there an orchestra, which was a fascinating experience-a very technically highly developed orchestra, but with a quality quite unlike any European or American orchestra I’ve ever heard; and that is not a criticism-that’s just a comment. Ah-where else? We had many Chinese in our audiences in Singapore and in Hong Kong, and one felt that the young Chinese particularly were extremely interested in Western music, but one must add that most of the orientals one played to were as bewildered by much of our music as one is bewildered by much of their music. HAMBLETON: Did they put any of their bewilderment into words? Did you speak to any professional musicians there, for example?
To the Music Lovers of Japan (1957)
Authors: Kildea Paul
Published: November 2023

It gives me great pleasure to send this New Year’s greeting to the music-lovers of Japan. Although my acquaintance with Japan is very limited, the short time I have spent there remains very vividly in my mind. I was there in the early spring of 1956 for two weeks, and had the great pleasure of conducting a concert of my works with the NHK orchestra, and of giving with Mr Peter Pears (also for NHK) what in fact was our first recital for television anywhere in the world.1 We were treated with great courtesy and friendship, and I was very impressed with the high standard of playing of the orchestra, and with the players’ considerable understanding of my music. We greatly enjoyed these two concerts. In fact we were both (and I can include Mr Pears in this) astounded by the enthusiasm for and knowledge of Western music we met everywhere. One of the nicest examples of this was the excellent little group of Tokyo Madrigal Singers, under their intelligent conductor Kei [Kei-ichi] Kurosawa, which we heard at a party given for us. We even, after the serious part of the programme was over, took part light-heartedly in the singing ourselves.
On Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (1959)
Authors: Kildea Paul
Published: November 2023

AMIS: And now Purcell. No one has championed his music more than Benjamin Britten, and the first question I want to put to him is, what is it, Mr Britten, that you find so sympathetic about the music of Purcell? BRITTEN: That’s a difficult question to answer briefly. He was open to many influences, he was a practical composer, he wrote for many different occasions, he was a Church composer, a theatre composer, wrote for the home all that I find immensely sympathetic. Above all, I love his setting of words. I had never realized before I first met Purcell’s music that words could be set with such ingenuity, with such colour. AMIS: You’ve recently made a new version of his opera Dido and Aeneas that has been recorded for the BBC Transcription Service. I want to ask you why you felt it necessary to make a new version.1BRITTEN: A work like Dido is not complete in itself. As we know, the continuo, the general bass, needs realizing: it’s only a series of figures and the bass notes, therefore each generation particularly must find a new way of doing this. I’m not saying that what one does today supersedes what was done yesterday, but-except that today has a new point of view about Purcell.
On Realizing the Continua in Purcell’s Songs(1959)
Authors: Kildea Paul
Published: November 2023

In practically every one of our concerts, given the length of three continents over the last twenty years, Peter Pears and I have included a group of Purcell’s songs. Although they were not included for chauvinistic reasons, it has been nice to find that foreign audiences accept these English songs alongside those of their own great classic song-writers. It is pleasant to get cheers at the end of Purcell’s ‘Alleluia’ in the home of Schubert and Wolf, requests for a repeat of ‘Man is for the woman made’ in the birthplace of Mozart, appreciative giggles at the end of’There’s not a swain of the Plain’ in Faure’s home town, and an impressive silence as the last bars of’Job’s Curse’ die away in Dusseldorf, where Schumann spent many years. And not only in foreign places; in England too where, to our shame, the music of Purcell is still shockingly unknown. It is unknown because so much of it is unobtainable in print, and so much of what is available is in realizations which are frankly dull and out of date. Because all Purcell’s solo songs, secular and sacred, as well as his many big scenas, have to be realized. We have these wonderful vocal parts, and fine strong basses, but nothing in between (even the figures for the harmony are often missing). If the tradition of improvisation from a figured bass were not lost, this would not be so serious, but to most people now, until a worked-out edition is available, these cold, unfilled-in lines mean nothing, and the incredible beauty and vitality, and infinite variety of these hundreds of songs go undiscovered. Therefore over these many years I have myself realized about twenty secular songs (mostly from Orpheus Britannicus), a few sacred songs, four of the big Divine Hymns (from the Harmonia Sacra) and half-a-dozen duets (some taken from the dramatic works reprinted separately by Purcell’s widow in Orpheus Britannicus)-all with piano. I have also realized for other occasions the Golden Sonata, and continua parts of the fine lcome Song of 1687, and Purcell’s masterpiece, Dido and Aeneas, for harpsichord. There is also a sequence of songs, a Suite from Orpheus Britannicus, where I realized the figured bass for strings.
Britten and Pears in Canada (1961)
Authors: Kildea Paul
Published: November 2023

GARVIE: Mr Britten, we’ve seen you rushing from studio to studio to conduct in Vancouver these last few days, and you seem to spend a great deal of time performing with Peter Pears around the world, conducting your own works, recording them, and yet you seem to write more than most contemporary composers.1 How do you arrange your time to compose? BRITTEN: I try to keep a certain period of each year clear to write, but you know I don’t write very much; I mean compared with Schubert or Mozart or the great ones I write awfully little. PEARS: But here you are, 48, and you’ve reached Op. 62 or something; Mozart had reached Kochel 600 or something and he had been dead for fifteen years hadn’t he? BRITTEN: Yes I know. Don’t make me feel smaller than I feel already. GARVIE: Well I think it’s true though that the modern composers do write more slowly or write less. Is this something to do with the climate of the time? Is it the actual business of writing out is now much more arduous? BRITTEN: That I think is quite true. I think today, I mean to write a symphony means an orchestra very much bigger than ever Mozart or Schubert contemplated. I mean I think someone once said that there are more notes in one Wagner opera than there are words in the whole of Shakespeare; I mean whether that’s true I simply don’t know, I’ve never counted, but I think that is an indication of the complication of modern music. But I think there is another side to the question which I deplore and that is that I think so many modern composers take themselves too seriously. They will write great works all the time. I think greatness happens accidentally-that sometimes one can write a little tiny piece for children or for brass band or something like that, and it may quite easily turn out to be much more important for posterity-if one can worry about posterity-than anyone’s symphonies in B flat minor. I think Schoenberg himself said that you can’t save the world with every Adagio.
British Composers in Interview: Benjamin Britten (1963)
Authors: Kildea Paul
Published: November 2023

SCHAFER: Born by the sea, you have returned to it to live and work in the natural environment of a fishing village. Is the physical presence of the sea an incentive for your work?BRITTEN: Yes, a very central one. To what extent its presence is a stimulus I cannot say, but I love the sea and certain works of mine communicate this affection. About three years ago I moved from my house absolutely on the edge of the sea to my present home half a mile inland.1 But I miss the old place; I often go walking by the sea and these walks are a stimulus to the extent that they help me sort out my ideas.SCHAFER: Do you have special feelings about large cities-London, for example?BRITTEN: I hate them! When I come up for a day to London to do the usualboring things, I rush about and in the end get terribly behind and utterly exhausted. Probably I don’t appreciate London. I realize that on a spring or an autumn day it can be ravishing, but as I don’t live there I don’t often have a chance to appreciate that.SCHAFER: Do you hate all cities?BRITTEN: I adore Venice, but it’s unique. I used to like Amsterdam and I enjoy my occasional visits to Copenhagen.
The Artist-to the People (1963)
Authors: Kildea Paul
Published: November 2023

I must admit that right up to my departure for the Soviet Union I was beset with doubts whether our musical art, which has developed in national traditions different from those of Russia, would be understandable and acceptable to Soviet audiences. I am glad that my anxieties were dissolved at the very first concert. Soviet audiences are unusually musical-this I knew beforehand-but are also remarkable for the enviable breadth of their musical appreciation. They are a wonderful public.PRAVDA: What do you think, Mr Britten, about the role of the composer, and the artist in general, in present day society?BRITTEN: I think that one of the fundamental dangers in creative artistic work in our day lies in the tendency of a certain section of composers and other artists towards a departure from themes prompted by real life, towards abstract experimentation in their workshops. Instead of serving as a creative laboratory for the artistic interpretation of reality, the workshop of a different type of artist is turned into the well known ‘ivory tower’ in which he seals himself tightly off from the real world.In general I think that ‘art for art’s sake’ cannot exist. One of the principal social obligations of the artist consists of the moulding, education and development of the artistic taste of the people. Nor do I accept the division of audiences into the ‘elite’ and all the others. The works of Mozart, Bach and Shakespeare are understandable both to the former and the latter. Obviously the main point is not who the artist chooses to address himself to in his work, but what he has to say to people.
Musician of the Year (1964)
Authors: Kildea Paul
Published: November 2023

WARRACK: Louis MacNeice once quoted you, in 1940, as saying, ‘An artist ought either to live where he has live roots or no roots at all; in England today the artist feels essentially lonely, twisted in dying roots, always in opposition to a group.’ Was this what was behind your going to America in 1939?BRITTEN: That certainly describes my feelings at the time, but the phraseology sounds more like Louis than me! OrWystanAuden-1 was terrifically under Auden’s influence at the time. He preached that one’s roots should be in ideas and people, not places or environment. Also, I was immensely depressed about Europe. I’d been vaguely political, as we all were.The Hitler pressure was mounting, and the governments seemed to be encouraging him or not standing up to him; Europe looked finished. So when Auden went off to America, in late 1938 I think, I followed as soon as I could, in the spring of 1939. Another thing was that it had been very hard to get started as a composer in England. My works had made a small impact, but there were never any number of performances. There had been some in New York and there were plans for more. I wanted to go there, to see if this meant there was a chance of getting going properly. I’d met Aaron Copland when he was in England. He’d been very nice to me and encouraged me to go to see the United States. I think I just had to abandon my roots for a while, to find out if I’d really got any at all, or to find out where they really were.