The Elizabeth Poston Manuscripts (MS Mus. 1877) have recently been fully catalogued as part of the 18-month ‘Archives of Women Musicians’ project. A future blog post will provide an overview of the collection, but as the year draws to a close, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share some of Poston’s Christmas music.[1]

To begin in an obvious place: Poston’s Penguin Book of Christmas Carols (1965) and Second Penguin Book of Christmas Carols (1970) still grace many music stands come Christmas time.[2] Poston was a meticulous musicologist and editor, and her introduction to the first book demonstrates the breadth of research that went into the project. Her colourful, distinctive prose also reveals the strength of her passion for carols and for their histories of adaptation, arrangement, and – indeed – ‘maltreatment’.^[3] For Poston, the Victorian revival of interest in carols was both a blessing and a curse: it revitalised the genre, but also gave rise to some of the repertoire’s ‘dreariest of travesties’, replete with pious, moralising words and ‘turgid’ music. She was particularly offended by ‘the sad case’ of ‘Good King Wenceslas’ – that is, John Mason Neale’s ‘deplorable’ addition of a ‘ponderous moral doggerel’ to a 13th-century melody, which she felt ‘debase[d] a splendidly gay and virile dance tune’.^[4]

Covers of Penguin Carols volumes

Across her long and multifaceted career, Poston arranged carols for many occasions and purposes, and we may infer that the ones she adapted several times were particular favourites. Many of these were medieval in origin: she made multiple arrangements of the 13th-century ‘Angelus ad virginem’, for instance, which she described as ‘a tune as enchanting and irresistible in its gaiety as the dancing angels of Fra Angelico’s Paradiso’.^[5] Some of her arrangements followed this impulse to dance, while others went in a different direction entirely. In her music for the BBC Third Programme’s ballad cantata The Nativity – broadcast on Boxing Day 1950 – ‘Angelus ad virginem’ is heard as a gentle, floating tenor line, soon embellished by a florid solo alto before melting into sparkling, serene polyphony. The score is dedicated to Ralph Vaughan Williams, who shared Poston's enthusiasm for carols and encouraged her work (he also edited and arranged many himself). Poston’s tribute manifests musically, too: it opens with an arrangement of the same carol – ‘The truth sent from above’ – that begins Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on Christmas Carols.

Two arrangements of ‘Angelus ad virginem’, from Liturgy of Love, MS Mus. 1877/1/1/83 (top), and The Nativity (1950), MS Mus. 1877/1/1/32 (below). Poston's music remains in copyright until 2058 and extracts are reproduced here under the 'fair dealing' exceptions in UK law. 

Poston was Music Supervisor for the BBC European Service during the Second World War, and for decades thereafter regularly contributed music for dramas and features broadcasts on the Third Programme and Home Service (and, later, Radio 3, Radio 4, and BBC Television). In her knowledge and interest in medieval and Renaissance literature and music, Poston found kindred spirits in Third Programme producers like Terence Tiller, Raymond Raikes, and Douglas Cleverdon, with whom she collaborated extensively on new radio adaptations of early drama. Following her work with Tiller on The Nativity (1950), Poston wrote music for several further BBC nativity dramatisations, including for Raikes’s A Nativity for N-Town (1962), which was based on plays from 15th-century Lincoln and for which Poston created a score based around carol arrangements. She also composed the score for the third instalment, The Nativity, of John Barton’s The First Stage series – a ground-breaking survey of the development of early English drama. It was broadcast on Christmas Eve 1956, and the front of an autograph score is shown below with cuttings from the seasonal Radio Times issue pasted on.

Cover of autograph score of The Nativity (First Stage Series), with Radio Times cuttings, MS Mus. 1877/2/2/53

Poston worked with Tiller and Cleverdon on The Wakefield Second Shepherd’s Play, first broadcast on 26th December 1947. Her incidental music – scored for flute, oboe d’amore, harp, string quartet, and SATB soloists – was mostly original, but incorporated an arrangement of Peter Warlock’s carol ‘Tyrley Tyrlow’.

Performance direction and excerpt from arrangement of Peter Warlock, ‘Tyrley Tyrlow’, MS Mus. 1877/1/1/18

Friends and dedications

Poston was a close friend of Warlock, and she was greatly affected by his premature death on 27th December 1930. In a heartfelt BBC broadcast on Warlock in 1964, she commented on her continued remembrance and celebration of the composer at Christmas time: ‘Warlock’s carols [...] are in a class of their own. Christmas, the season of his death, is the season at which he still lives’.^[6] Poston’s Two Carols in Memory of Peter Warlock, published by Curwen in 1956, comprise English-language arrangements of the Basque carols ‘Praise our Lord’ and ‘O Bethlehem’. In the latter, Poston draws out a metrical and rhythmic affinity between the carol and Warlock’s ‘Pieds en l’air’ (Capriol Suite), incorporating a gentle homage to her friend’s melodic line in the arrangement’s second verse.

‘O Bethlehem’, from Two Carols in Memory of Peter Warlock, showing incorporation of melody from ‘Pieds en l’air’. MS Mus. 1877/1/2/4/9

Poston’s ‘gift for friendship’ – to borrow the phrase used in Madeleine Davies’s Church Times profile – is abundantly clear in the paratexts of her scores, which very often include dedications to family, friends, and colleagues from the worlds of music, broadcasting, and the church. The earliest original carol in the BL’s collection is titled ‘Salve Jesus, little Lad’, and signed ‘E.P., Xmas 1924’. The 19-year-old composer dedicated the carol to ‘C. P.’ – surely her mother, Clementine Poston, with whom she lived until the latter’s death in 1970. A new edition of this carol has recently been published by the charity Multitude of Voyces, who are also the copyright holders and are able to help with enquiries about any of the composer's music.[7]

Opening, dedication, signature and date of ‘Salve Jesus, Little Lad’, MS Mus. 1877/1/4/2

The image below shows the opening of the beautiful, melancholic carol ‘Sheepfolds’, composed in 1957 and published in 1958. The manuscript here shows a pencilled-in dedication above the title, in Poston’s hand, reading ‘To Donald Ford, if he likes it!’. Below the title, presumably in Donald Ford’s hand, it reads ‘(Which he does, immensely!)’. Such layering of meaning onto her manuscripts suggests so much about Poston’s social networks and compositional processes, which researchers can explore more easily now that the material is fully catalogued and available to BL readers.

‘Sheepfolds’ is a setting of a poem by Madeleva Wolff, who was a prolific poet, religious Sister, and President of Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana. Poston’s autograph scores are accompanied by brief but illuminating correspondence between Poston and Wolff. On receiving a manuscript copy in early 1958, Wolff wrote to Poston:

I write to tell you how deeply touched I am with the poignant setting that you have made [...] We are devoted here at Saint Mary’s to Nativity Plays, to mimes based on the scriptures. You have written to our very hearts and have touched the themes most dear to us. Please know how happy we shall be to use your sensitive interpretations of great moments in the spiritual life of the world.^[8]

Opening and dedication of ‘Sheepfolds’, MS Mus. 1877/1/4/32

Poston was a committed Christian and found constant compositional inspiration in the religion’s calendar and ritual. She was also passionate about writing and arranging accessible, singable music that took its words and source materials seriously – as illustrated in this recording of ‘The Lamb’, and in the recordings of many of the pieces discussed here on the recent disc of Poston’s carols and anthems by the musicians of St Albans Cathedral. These selections have given an impression of the breadth and depth of Poston’s work, but they barely scratch the surface even of the seasonal contents of the BL’s Elizabeth Poston Manuscripts – there’s much to explore beyond the famous ‘Jesus Christ the Apple-Tree’.

Opening of ‘Jesus Christ the Apple-Tree’, MS Mus. 1877/1/4/45

References

[1] An overview of the Poston collection, alongside a report on the ‘Hidden Collections’ project of which it was part, is also forthcoming in Frankie Perry and Loukia Drosopoulou, ‘Archives of Women Musicians: A “Hidden Collections” Cataloguing Project at the British Library', Brio, 61/2. The musical and literary works of Elizabeth Poston remain in copyright until 2058. The charity Multitude of Voyces is the official representative of the composer’s copyright and enquiries should be directed to [email protected]. Images have been reproduced here under the exceptions to copyright detailed at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptions-to-copyright.  

[2] ‘Christmas’ is being used here as a shorthand to cover the general season spanning Advent to and beyond Epiphany.

^[3] Elizabeth Poston, ed., The Penguin Book of Christmas Carols (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965), especially ‘Introduction’, pp. 9-18, and ‘Notes of the carols’, pp. 21-32.

^[4] Ibid., 9; 15; 25.

^[5] Ibid., 10.

^[6] Elizabeth Poston, ‘Dispelling the Jackals’, broadcast BBC Third Programme, 1964, reproduced in John Alabaster, Elizabeth Poston: catalogue of works with biographical context (Stevenage, Herts: The Friends of Forster Country, rev ed., 2022, ©transferred to Multitude of Voyces 2022), 187-192: 192. Neither Alabaster’s reproduction, nor the reproduction in Peter Warlock: A Centenary Celebration (1994) give the exact date of broadcast, but the BBC Programme Index (genome.ch.bbc.co.uk) shows that Poston produced and presented a series of programmes about Warlock running 1964-1965.

[7] The new edition renders the title ‘Salve Iesus’, following orthographic advice. Further information about the charity’s Poston project can be found here: https://www.multitudeofvoyces.co.uk/elizabeth-poston/.

^[8] Letter from Sister M. Madeleva Wolff to Elizabeth Poston, 14 March, 1958. MS Mus. 1877/1/4/32.

Frankie Perry, Music Manuscripts and Archives Cataloguer

To mark The National Lottery’s 30th birthday celebrations this year we have put together a blog post about the archive of the Royal Philharmonic Society (RPS), acquired by the British Library in 2002 thanks in part to a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, alongside generous donations from other individuals and trusts. This post highlights some of the treasures found in the RPS archive and the research that the archive has sparked since its acquisition by the Library.

The RPS and its archive

The Royal Philharmonic Society (RPS) was founded in 1813 as the Philharmonic Society of London by a group of 30 professional musicians with the purpose ‘to promote the performance, in the most perfect manner possible, of the best and most approved instrumental music’. It continues today as a busy charitable organisation devoted to ‘creating opportunities for musicians to excel, championing the vital role that music plays in all our lives’. The Society began by establishing an annual concert season which included music by the greatest composers of the time, with new commissions from composers like Beethoven, Cherubini, Mendelssohn, Dvořák, and Saint-Saëns, some of whom were also invited to conduct their own works. The Society also has a long history of inviting distinguished performers to perform at its concerts, among them figures like Clara Schumann and Pablo Casals. You can find out more about the RPS’s impressive history and current activities on the RPS website and through the selected literature in the ‘References’ section below.

Over the years, the performing and administrative activities of the RPS resulted in the formation of a considerable archive (now British Library RPS MS 1-417). This contains over 270 manuscript scores, including many composer’s autograph manuscripts of works performed by the RPS, alongside dozens of volumes of letters and important administrative documents up to 1968. The latter include a series of 20 minute books in which the proceedings of meetings of the Directors of the RPS were recorded. These minute books are full of valuable information about the running of the Society, its financial affairs, the planning of each concert season, the commissioning of new works, matters raised by its members, and much more.

One such minute book records the commissioning of a new symphony from Beethoven in November 1822 and the Directors’ decision to offer Beethoven £50 for this. Notes of the meeting show that they hoped to receive it by March 1823, in time for performance during the 1823 concert season. This became Beethoven’s famous Symphony no.9 and the manuscript in the RPS archive is known as the ‘London manuscript’.

    ‘Resolved that an offer of £50 be made to Beethoven for a M.S. Sym[phon]y. He having permission to dispose of it at the expiration of Eighteen Months after the receipt of it. It being a proviso that it shall arrive during the Month of March next.’ 

A page from a Minute book in the RPS Archive recording the offer of £50 to Beethoven for the commission of a new symphony (3rd paragraph from the top). British Library RPS MS 280, f.2.

The manuscript that Beethoven sent to the Philharmonic Society in 1824 of his Symphony no.9 was a copy prepared by three music copyists under his supervision. The manuscript includes numerous minor corrections and annotations in Beethoven’s hand, alongside markings arising from the first London performance.

The opening of the 4th movement of Beethoven’s Symphony no.9 in the RPS manuscript. British Library RPS MS 5, f. 91.

In 2021 the Library held the exhibition Beethoven: Idealist. Innovator. Icon, which included a number of collection items from the RPS Archive, including the London manuscript of the Ninth symphony. This was displayed alongside Beethoven’s autograph manuscript (on loan from the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin) for the first time in the UK.

The RPS Archive also includes 47 volumes of letters from numerous British and European composers and musicians who corresponded with the RPS. Among them, one from Tchaikovsky following his visit to Britain in 1893. The composer had conducted his Fourth Symphony at a Philharmonic Society concert in May that year and wrote to the secretary, Francesco Berger, of his eagerness to return to conduct a new symphony he was working on (that was his Sixth, but Tchaikovsky died later in the year before another visit could be organised).

Letter from P.I. Tchaikovsky to the RPS Secretary Francesco Berger. British Library RPS MS 366, f. 165.

The archive includes much more too, from concert programmes, posters and official notices through to a number of objects. Among them are a tuning fork and numerous ivory counters with Directors’ and other members’ names on them.

This tuning fork in the RPS archive is dated 1896 on the fork. It was mounted on a wooden base and kept inside a wooden box. British Library, RPS MS 327 B.

These ivory counters were issued to Directors and other members of the Philharmonic Society, probably instead of tickets to concerts or to indicate attendance at meetings. The name of the director/member was given on one side of the counter with the other displaying ‘Philharmonic Society’. British Library RPS MS 326.

Such a wide-ranging archive has provided plenty of scope for research of different kinds over the years, and indeed it has been a frequently-consulted addition to the British Library’s collection both onsite and online (the entire RPS archive was digitised in 2013 for the Gale database, Nineteenth Century Collections Online). As well as material relating to famous composers and performers, the archive also offers insights and glimpses of other individuals. People like Joseph Harris, copyist of the instrumental parts for the first London performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, who we hear from in letters describing his work (he said that the Ninth was “the longest & most difficult thing I ever copied… yet the most beautiful Composition”).

The 19th century was a period in which the ‘business’ of music making and the act of concert going became increasingly established in ways we can still recognise today. The wealth of detail in the RPS Archive has allowed researchers to map this change through the seemingly prosaic but essential processes documented in minute books, financial ledgers and other administrative documentation. Being able to preserve the archive here at the British Library is especially beneficial because of the connections with other collections held here, be it those of individuals who worked with or for the Society, or of other concert organisations. Together, such collections help to provide a rich and vivid picture of music making and concert life from the 19th century onwards. 

Chris Scobie, Lead Curator Music Manuscripts and Archives

Loukia Drosopoulou, Curator Music

References

The Royal Philharmonic Society: The History and Future of Music. https://royalphilharmonicsociety.org.uk/assets/files/RPS_A5_History_booklet_08_revised.pdf

Leanne Langley, ‘A Place for Music: John Nash, Regent Street and the Philharmonic Society of London’, Electronic British Library Journal, 2013. https://doi.org/10.23636/1057

Cyril Ehrlich, First philharmonic: a history of the Royal Philharmonic Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 1995.

Most directors of cathedral music would probably consider their energies amply enough absorbed by the demands of choir and organ and liturgy, but a few years into his tenure at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, Dr. John Stainer (1840–1901) found duty beckoning him away from the choir-stalls and organ-loft to the belfry in the north-west tower.  Here, in the mid-1870s, over 160 years after the cathedral’s completion, there still hung no full peal of bells for change-ringing, only the solitary service-bell.  (The three clock bells chiming faithfully over in the south-west tower were entirely separate: what was lacking were bells to celebrate Sundays, feast-days and great occasions.)  It was a situation incompatible with civic and national pride, and a problem which now fell to Dr. Stainer, at least in part, to remedy.  With the other members of the newly-formed Bell Committee, he set about creating cathedral music of an altogether different kind.

John Stainer: ‘A genial, good-natured, likeable man’

John Stainer, c. 1878. Reproduced in Lock and Whitfield, ‘Men of mark: a gallery of contemporary portraits of men distinguished in the Senate, the Church, in science, literature and art, the army, navy, law, medicine’ (London: Sampson Low, 1876-1883). British Library RB.23.b.7030.

Stainer, a native of London who had sung as a boy treble at St. Paul’s, had been appointed organist and Director of Music in 1872, aged 32.  He is generally acknowledged to have made considerable improvements to the Cathedral’s musical standards while remaining, as one description has it, ‘by all accounts […] a genial, good-natured, likeable man whose industrious personality engendered respect in others.’ [1]  He was also a composer in his own right: ‘God so loved the world’, from his oratorio ‘The Crucifixion’, is still sung regularly in Holy Week. 

Campanology must presumably have been relatively unfamiliar territory for him, but his ‘industrious personality’ he nevertheless threw into the work of the Bell Committee.  Three years were to suffice for the necessary fund-raising and the commissioning of a brand-new peal of twelve bells.  Tuned to the key of B flat and weighing thirteen tons in all – at the time the world’s heaviest peal of twelve, and still second only to the bells of Liverpool Anglican Cathedral – they were cast at the (still-extant) foundry of John Taylor & Co. in Loughborough, carried gingerly to London, hoisted into the north-west belfry through a gap apparently left specifically for that purpose by the ever-prescient Sir Christopher Wren, and rung for the first time on All Saints’ Day, November 1st, 1878. [2]

Enter H. R. Haweis, foe of ‘din and discord’

Such a prominent change to London’s soundscape was bound to attract much attention and comment.  One figure who could be counted upon to offer an opinion was the Rev. Hugh Reginald Haweis (1838–1901), the charismatic, go-ahead vicar of St James’s, Marylebone.  A veteran of the Italian War of Independence and an early advocate of the Sunday opening of museums and galleries, he had made a name for himself by arguing controversially that spiritualism was compatible with Christianity, and, even more controversially, by actually attending séances.  Amidst all this he still found time for music, and in particular for a keen interest in bells.  His expertise, though amateur, was well-respected – he had been the author of the article ‘Bell’ in the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, published earlier that year [3] – and indeed, when it came to bells, he was a hard man to please: ‘I question whether there is a musically true chime of bells in the whole of England, and if it exists, I doubt whether any one knows or cares for its musical superiority.’ [4]  He was convinced of the tonal supremacy of Belgian bells, writing repeatedly of the ‘relief’ afforded him by visits to ‘the old cathedrals of Belgium, with their musical chimes and their splendid carillons’. [5]  ‘Willingly do I escape from the din and discord of English belfries to Belgium, loving and beloved of bells,’ he declared.[6]

H. R. Haweis, c. 1888. Reproduced in J. Waléry, ‘Our celebrities: a portrait gallery’ (London, publisher unknown, 1888). British Library 1764.e.5.

So he could certainly be expected to take an interest in the tintinnabulary developments at St. Paul’s, and to wish to see and hear the new peal at closer quarters.  Just over a week before the inauguration, John Stainer wrote to him with a personal invitation.   ‘Our formal opening will take place at 5.30 on Nov[ember] 1st but if you will mount the tower with me at 11 on that day you shall have the bells struck for your own special benefit.’ [7]  Stainer also sketched out a musical stave indicating the pitches of the new bells, along with their respective weights.

Letter from John Stainer to H. R. Haweis, 22nd October 1878. British Library MS Mus. 1928. Reproduced with permission. You may not use the material for commercial purposes.

Haweis pronounces his verdict

As it turned out, Haweis did not have to wait that long to carry out his inspection, nor Stainer to find out his verdict.  On 29^th October, a letter from Haweis appeared in the Times: ‘Fresh from a tour in Belgium, with the sound of the Mechlin [Mechelen] and Ghent bells still ringing in my ears, I ascended, with note-book, candle, and muffled hammer, the side tower of St. Paul’s Cathedral, in which twelve new bells have just been placed by the munificence of the City companies […]’.  (A pause to point out that ‘For eight years I have pleaded the cause of bells and carillons in England.’)  Having first excoriated the flatness of Big Ben at the Palace of Westminster (‘hoarse, cracked, and gong-like […] the scourge of the neighbourhood’), the new peal at St. Paul’s he merely damned with faint praise.  ‘It is as good as most in England,’ he wrote. ‘Ten years ago it would have been passed by architects and bell committees with applause – will probably be so passed now – and the newspapers may speak of the “superb new peal” and its “mellow silver tones”, the cost, and so forth – and indeed it is quite as good as I expected and as expensive as needs be.’ [8]

But after six hours in the belfry he had discovered a more fundamental flaw: the bells were out of tune.  ‘I am quite clear that the radical imperfection of the octave and a half as it now hangs will appear whenever the first attempt is made to ring a tune on the first seven and last five of St. Paul’s bells.’ [9]  He also believed that they had been hung in such a way as to damage the tower when ringing.

Whether Haweis returned on the morning of the 1^st November to take up Stainer’s invitation, or what passed between the two men if he did, is not known.  But that evening the Cathedral was ‘crowded to the doors’ for the inauguration, with thousands more gathered in the churchyard and down Ludgate Hill to hear the first peal rung by the Ancient Society of College Youths, the City of London’s foremost bell-ringing society.  (The Society is well-named in that, tracing its foundation to 1637, before the Great Fire, it is older than the cathedral itself, as well as most of the City’s churches.) [10]

The west front of St. Paul’s seen in N. D’Anvers, ‘Some Account of the Great Buildings of London’ (London: Marcus Ward, 1879). Autotype photograph by Frederick York (1879). The change-ringing bells hang in the north-west tower on the left.

A regular ‘ding-dong’ in the Times?

In subsequent days Stainer and other members of the Bell Committee wrote to the Times in defence of their work.  Stainer took Haweis to task on the question of tuning.  It was not a question of pitch but of timbre, he argued; all bells sound several secondary tones as well as the principal one, and Haweis must, moreover, have been striking the bells in the wrong place.  ‘The only place where a bell should be struck is on the sound bow itself […]  Would Mr. Haweis test a [Stradivarius] violin by bowing it below the bridge?  […]  When properly tested on the sound-bow, there will be found a remarkable purity of tone throughout the St. Paul’s peal […]  They are in excellent tune, and capitally hung.’ [11]

Haweis returned to the letters page on November 14th, the tenor of his argument unaltered.  The bells were sharp, he was sure of it, and in any case, if the ear has an impression of sharpness, it scarcely matters whether timbre or pitch is the technical cause: ‘It is no more apology for sharp bells to say that they seem sharp when they sound sharp, but are really “excellently in tune,” as Dr. Stainer says St. Paul’s bells are, than to tell me that my boot is a comfortable fit although it seems to pinch […]’ [12]

A lasting legacy for Londoners

Other committee members continued the debate in subsequent editions, but Haweis, never to be persuaded, was to maintain his lamentation of the deficiencies of both St. Paul’s and Westminster belfries, notably at a Royal Institution lecture the following February. [13]  Stainer, for his part, seems to have been content to let the bells speak for themselves.  At any rate, he had given enough satisfaction to Dean and Chapter to be entrusted with the installation in the south-west tower, three years later, of ‘Great Paul’, at sixteen tons the United Kingdom’s largest working bell, and the second-largest ever cast in this country. [14]  He was knighted for his services in 1888, but in the same year had to resign his position owing to failing eyesight.

Stainer and Haweis died within three months of each other in 1901.  The bells, of which Stainer had predicted ‘Londoners will some day be proud’, rang on, Sunday in and Sunday out, gradually embroidering themselves into the life of the City. [15]  ‘And neighbouring towers and spirelets joined the ringing / With answering echoes from heavy commercial walls, / Till all were drowned as the sailing clouds went singing / On the roaring flood of a twelve-voiced peal from Paul’s,’ John Betjeman was to write in 1955, by then recalling the Sunday morning soundscape of the pre-Blitz City. [16]  Many of the bells he was remembering had been first silenced by wartime conditions, then destroyed in the bombing of their churches — but, almost miraculously, those of St. Paul’s had survived, and to this day ring out for half an hour before three services on Sundays.

But Haweis’s ultimate wish, one to which Stainer had expressed sympathy, is yet to be fulfilled: the installation of a carillon in the south-west tower of St. Paul’s: ‘I still hope,’ he had written, ‘to see Dr. Stainer […] seated there at a noble carillon clavecin of 40 Belgian bells, whose melodious tongues will then utter aloud the open secrets of the great Tone-Poets, while the crowd below […] shall be rapt in wonder […].’ [17]  A project, perhaps, for some future Director of Music.

Dominic Newman, Manuscripts Cataloguer

MS Mus. 1928, a newly-catalogued collection of various musicians’ letters, is now available for consultation in the Rare Books & Music Reading Room.

References

[1] Dibble, J.  (2004, September 23).  ‘Stainer, Sir John (1840–1901), musicologist and composer.’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 25 Oct. 2023, from https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-36234.

[2] St Paul’s Cathedral, ‘The bells’, web article.  Retrieved 26 Oct. 2023 from https://www.stpauls.co.uk/bells.

[3] Baigent, E.  (2004, September 23). ‘Haweis, Hugh Reginald (1838–1901), author and Church of England clergyman’. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 25 Oct. 2023, from https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-33763.

[4] Haweis, H. R., Music and Morals (London: Longmans, 1872), p. 389.

[5] Ibid., p. 377.

[6] Ibid., p. 387.

[7] Letter from John Stainer to Hugh Reginald Haweis, 22 Oct. 1878.  British Library MS Mus. 1928.

[8] Haweis, H. R., “The New Bells Of St. Paul’s.” The Times, 29 Oct. 1878, p. 8.  The Times Digital Archive, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS135052125/TTDA?u=blibrary&sid=bookmark-TTDA&xid=6035918d. Accessed 13 Oct. 2023.

[9] The Times, 29 Oct. 1878, ibid.

[10] “The Bells Of St. Paul’s.” The Times, 2 Nov. 1878, p. 8. The Times Digital Archive, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS135314274/TTDA?u=blibrary&sid=bookmark-TTDA&xid=74c6b84b. Accessed 26 Oct. 2023.

[11] The Times, Nov. 7th, 1878.

[12] Haweis, H. R. “St. Paul's Bells.” The Times, 14 Nov. 1878, p. 11. The Times Digital Archive, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS185777006/TTDA?u=blibrary&sid=bookmark-TTDA&xid=48be56ae. Accessed 13 Oct. 2023.

[13] The Times, 10 Feb. 1879.

[14] “The Bells Of St. Paul’s.” The Times, 2 Nov. 1878, ibid.

[15] Stainer incidentally has another musical legacy in London: Stainer Street, near his birth-place in Southwark.  This street is unusual in being enclosed along its entire length by a long brick tunnel-like arch holding up the platforms of London Bridge station.  The arch is effectively a barrel-vault and creates, appropriately enough, a church-like acoustic.  Into this space, which is now part of the station concourse, an old church organ was installed in 2022; at the time of writing it is available for anyone to play free of charge.

[16] John Betjeman, ‘Monody on the Death of Aldersgate Street Station’, in Collected Poems (London: John Murray, 1985), p. 270.

[17] The Times, 14 Nov. 1878, ibid.