01 May 2014
Preserving the legacy of Muriel Herbert
One of the most rewarding aspects of working in the British Library's Music department is having the opportunity to preserve music which could otherwise have been lost to the world. It is even more rewarding when that music turns out to be exceedingly good. The songs of British composer Muriel Herbert are just such a case in point.
Muriel Herbert died 30 years ago today, at the age of 86, leaving behind almost 100 songs and a small number of pieces for violin and piano. She had been born in Sheffield in 1897 and grew up in Liverpool, and in 1917 won a composition scholarship to study at the Royal College of Music with Charles Stanford. After leaving the Royal College she remained in London, composing, teaching and giving recitals. She met the composer Roger Quilter, who recommended her to the publisher Augener, and during the 1920s she had several songs published by Augener and Elkin.
The poets whose words Herbert chose to set ranged from the eighth-century Alcuin of York to James Joyce, and also included, among many others, Robert Herrick, Lord Byron, Christina Rossetti and Thomas Hardy. She seems to have been particularly inspired by James Joyce's poetry, setting four of his poems. She performed two of them, ‘I Hear an Army Charging’ and ‘Lean out of the Window’, in Paris for Joyce himself.
Herbert's performances of her own music appear to have been well received. This undated cutting relates to a recital she gave at the Sandon Music Room in Liverpool, where she sang and accompanied herself on the piano.
Herbert also gave several broadcast recitals on BBC radio, including this recital in 1938. Sadly, no recordings of any of Herbert's recitals appear to have survived.
Herbert had continued to compose throughout the 1920s, but then came marriage and motherhood, and subsequently the breakdown of her marriage, and she found less time for composition. She moved with her two children to Welwyn Garden City, where she became a respected music teacher. At her death, most of her works remained unpublished, preserved only in her neatly-written autograph manuscripts, in most cases in a single copy.
Muriel Herbert's younger daughter, the writer Claire Tomalin, was determined that the music should be preserved. As she later wrote in the Guardian, she searched out every scrap of music she could find and bundled all the manuscripts into folders. Although no one seemed interested initially, a BBC producer, Bill Lloyd, who had been taught by Herbert, suggested recording some of the songs. The musicologist Valerie Langfield also gave help and encouragement, and in 2009 the premiere recording was issued to great acclaim by Linn Records with singers James Gilchrist and Ailish Tynan and pianist David Owen Norris. You can hear clips from these songs on Linn's website, and listen to Claire Tomalin talking about her mother's music on Woman's Hour in 2009 on the BBC website.
We were delighted when Ms Tomalin decided to present the much-treasured collection of music manuscripts to the British Library. When we received them, some of the manuscripts were in a fragile state, fraying around the edges and in need of conservation. They have now been catalogued, conserved and bound into sturdy volumes to prevent further damage.
Thirty years on from Muriel Herbert's death, it seems that her legacy is rather more secure; other recordings and performances are in the pipeline, some of her unpublished songs have been printed for the first time and her autograph manuscripts are now available for present and future generations of performers and researchers to explore at the British Library, where they have the collection number MS Mus. 1724.
British Music at the British Library: two free events on 10 May
On Saturday 10 May 2014 in the Foyle Suite, British Library Centre for Conservation there will be two free events to celebrate the outstanding British music collections at the British Library.
The Full English Archive Open Day
From 10.30 to 1.30, the Full English Archive Open Day will give access to some of the original manuscript folksong transcriptions of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Percy Grainger, with illustrated talks about the early folk revival and the collectors. This presentation forms part of the Full English project, supported by the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund and developed by the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS). For the first time 19 of the most significant manuscript collections of folk music, song and dance amassed in England during the folk revival of early 20th century are available to browse and search online. Also find out how The Full English digital archive works and can be used, and learn about the project’s development from author and folklorist Steve Roud and EFDSS Library Director Malcolm Taylor OBE.
This event is supported by the English Folk Dance and Song Society. Further information:
The British Music Society Annual Lecture:
'Sir John Barbirolli: British Music's Cockney Emissary'
In the afternoon(starting at 2.30), join Dr Raymond Holden, the Sir John Barbirolli Lecturer in Music at the Royal Academy of Music, for a talk about 'Sir John Barbirolli: British Music's Cockney Emissary'. Dr Holden will use recordings, marked scores and other performance artefacts to chart the role of Sir John Barbirolli as British Music's leading international advocate. This presentation will be the Annual Lecture of the British Music Society. Material from both the Royal Academy of Music and the British Library will be on display. The lecture will start at 2.30pm and will be presented in two 50-minute halves with a short break.
This event is supported by the British Music Society. Further information: http://www.britishmusicsociety.com/bms-events/
Admission to both events is free, but to reserve a seat please book free tickets in advance through the British Library Box Office:
Full English: http://www.bl.uk/whatson/events/event159831.html
Barbirolli: http://www.bl.uk/whatson/events/event159832.html
24 April 2014
Mozart Manuscripts Online
250 years ago, on 23 April 1764, the eight-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart arrived in London with his father Leopold, mother Anna Maria, and sister Maria Anna (Nannerl). The visit formed part of an ambitious European tour, in which the Mozart children were presented as musical prodigies in public concerts and to private patrons.
Their visit to London, which would last for 15 months, has special significance for the British Library, since Mozart may be counted as the first in an illustrious line of composers to have presented manuscripts to the Library. This event took place during the course of the family's visit to the British Museum, in July 1765. On that occasion, Mozart deposited a copy of his first sacred composition (and only setting of an English text), God is our Refuge, written with the assistance of his father Leopold, together with copies of two sets of keyboard sonatas published the previous year in Paris.
Since that time, the Library has maintained a long tradition of collecting printed and manuscript sources for Mozart’s music, cultivated both under its previous guise as part of the British Museum and in its present incarnation as an autonomous library based at St. Pancras.
The Library’s Mozart holdings have therefore grown apace, with items acquired individually from dealers and at auction, via the legal deposit of music published in the UK, and as part of larger collections – notably those amassed by Vincent Novello, Edward Meyerstein, and Stefan Zweig.
The most spectacular single acquisition came in 1986, with the donation by Stefan Zweig’s heirs of his collection of musical and literary autographs, which contained among other treasures twelve Mozart manuscripts. Most notable among these is the thematic catalogue ('Verzeichnüss aller meine Werke vom Monath febrario 1784 . . .') that Mozart maintained from 1784 till his death in 1791, in which he noted - among other details - the date, title and first few bars of music for each work. In 2006, this rich and revealing document became the first of the Library’s Mozart sources to be digitised and was made available via the Turning the Pages website to mark the composer’s 250th anniversary. It is also available as an e-book and via the Library's Digitised Manuscripts portal.
The Library has now digitised the remaining Mozart autograph manuscripts in its collection. For ease of reference, we thought it would be helpful to provide the following classified list with a brief title or description of each work and a hyperlink (embedded in the shelfmark) to the digital images. Unless otherwise specified, the manuscripts are full autograph scores of the respective works.
For anyone curious to explore a little further, click on the Köchel numbers for links to the relevant entries in Wikipedia (where available), where you'll also find links to public domain recordings and editions available from the Neue Mozart Ausgabe and the International Music Score Library Project. Using these resources will make it possible to compare Mozart’s notation with various editions, or to follow the composer’s score while listening to a recording in the comfort of your own home.
Chamber music
Minuet in F (K. 168a): Add MS 47861a, f. 10v (lower portion of divided leaf) and MS Mus. 1040, f. 1v (upper portion of divided leaf)
String Quartet in B flat (K. 172): Add MS 31749
String Quartet in D minor (K. 173), movement IV only: Zweig MS 52
String Quartet in G major (K. 387): Add MS 37763, ff. 1r-13v
String Quartet in D minor (K. 421): Add MS 37763, ff. 14r-22r
String Quartet in E flat major (K. 428): Add MS 37763, ff. 34r-44r
String Quartet in B flat major Hunt (K. 458): Add MS 37763, ff. 23r-32v
String Quartet in A major (K. 464): Add MS 37763, ff. 45r-56r
String Quartet in C major Dissonance (K. 465): Add MS 37763, ff. 57r-68r
String Quartet in D major (K. 499), Hoffmeister: Add MS 37764
String Quintet in C minor (K. 516b): Add MS 31748
String Quartet in D major (K. 575): Add MS 37765, ff. 1r-14v
String Quartet in B flat major (K. 589): Add MS 37765, ff. 29r-44v
String Quartet in D minor (K. 590): Add MS 37765, ff. 15r-28v
String Quintet in E flat (K. 614): Zweig MS 60
Adagio and Rondo in C minor/major for armonica, flute, oboe, viola and cello (K. 617): Zweig MS 61
Keyboard music (with or without accompaniment)
Minuet no. 3 and trio no. 6 of a set of dances for orchestra, arranged for piano (K. 176): Add MS 14396, f. 13r-13v
Sonata in B flat for piano duet (K. 358/186c): Add MS 14396, ff. 21v-29v
Sonata for violin and piano in F (K. 377/374e): Zweig MS 53
Rondo for keyboard and orchestra in A (K. 386), fragment: Add MS 32181, ff. 250-252
Leaf containing bar 65 to the end of the first movement of the Piano Sonata in B flat (K. 570): Add MS 47861a, ff. 13-13v
Orchestral music
March for orchestra in C (K. 408, no. 1/383e): Zweig MS 54
Concerto for horn and orchestra in E flat (K. 447): Zweig MS 55
Fugue in C minor (K. 546), in an arrangement for string orchestra: Add MS 28966
Five contredanses for flute, strings (2 violins, cello and bass) and drum (K. 609): Zweig MS 59
Vocal music
Chorus, 'God is our Refuge', K. 20: K.10.a.17.(3.)
Song ‘Das Veilchen’, for voice and piano (K. 476): Zweig MS 56
Aria ‘Non so più cosa son’ from Le nozze di Figaro (K. 492, no. 6), draft: Zweig MS 57
‘Difficile lectu mihi Mars’, three-part vocal canon (K. 559): Zweig MS 58
'O du eselhafter Peierl’, four-part vocal canon (K. 560a/559a): Zweig MS 58
Duettino ‘Deh prendi un dolce amplesso’ from La clemenza di Tito (K. 621, no. 3): Zweig MS 62
Cadenza to the second movement (Andante) of a Keyboard Concerto by Ignaz von Beecke (K. 626a, Anh. K): MS Mus. 1040, f. 10r (upper portion of divided leaf: presented here with the lower portion, Add MS 47861a)
Cadenza to the first movement (Allegro maestoso) of the Keyboard Concerto K. 40, arranged from sonata movements by Honauer, Eckard and C.P.E. Bach: Add MS 47861a, f. 10r (lower portion of divided leaf)
Recitative and aria, "Giunse alfin il momento" and "Al desio di chi t'avora" from Le nozze di Figaro (K. 492): Add MS 14396, ff. 15r-21v (copyist's score, with autograph cadenza on f. 21v)
Copies in Mozart’s hand
Georg Reutter, ‘De Profundis’, in four parts, with organ accompaniment, in score, copied by Mozart, K. 93 / Anh. A 22: Add MS 31748, f. 1
Johann Michael Haydn, Ave Maria in F (for Advent or the Annunciation), for 4 voices with basso continuo and violins (KV3 Anh. 109VI, no. 14, KV6 Anh. A 14): Add MS 41633, f. 60-63
Documents
Thematic catalogue, 'Verzeichnüss aller meine Werke vom Monath febrario 1784 . . .': Zweig MS 63
Letter to Maria Anna Thekla Mozart, 5 November 1777: Zweig MS 64
Letter to Maria Anna Thekla Mozart, 28 February 1778: Zweig MS 65
Letter to Maria Anna Thekla Mozart, 23 December 1778: Zweig MS 66
Letter to Maria Anna Thekla Mozart, 10 May [1779]: Zweig MS 67
Letter to Anton Klein; Vienna, 21 May 1785: Zweig MS 68
Contract of marriage between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Constanze Weber, 3 August 1782: Zweig MS 69
07 April 2014
A Big Data History of Music
We are delighted to announce that the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) has awarded Royal Holloway, University of London and the British Library just over £79,000 towards a research project exploring centuries' worth of documentation of printed and manuscript music. This collaboration between Royal Holloway and the British Library is bringing together for the first time the world's biggest datasets about published sheet music, music manuscripts and classical concerts (in excess of 5 million records) for statistical analysis, manipulation and visualisation and will, it is to be hoped, provide a paradigm shift in how music history is researched.
Data from seven existing databases and catalogues is being used as the basis of this project. These datasets (two of which are not currently available online) include: the British Library's catalogues of printed and manuscript music; the bibliographies created by Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM) that list European music printed 1500-1800 and music manuscripts in European libraries; and the RISM UK Music Manuscripts Database and the Concert Programmes Project database. These catalogues and databases are already essential finding tools for researchers of music history and musicology, plus many scholars of performance studies and cultural history. However, until now it has not been possible to analyse these rich collections of data for large-scale trends in the dissemination of music, the popularity of specific composers, or the development of musical taste.
Our project will align and combine the seven datasets so that they can be analysed as big data. Key areas of the British Library data are being enriched and cleaned in order that they can be successfully aligned with the other datasets. The project team will then pilot ways in which the combined dataset can be analysed with approaches taken from the study of big data. By analysing the frequency, spread and distribution of specific compositions and composers' outputs, the project will challenge current thinking about how music was transmitted across borders, how musical taste developed, and how certain composers or repertories were canonised as carrying aesthetic value. The results of this research will be disseminated via a symposium held at the British Library, to which academics and non-academics will be invited. Finally, the data will be made available as an open dataset for researchers to undertake big data research across multiple disciplines.
The project is being funded under the £4 million ‘Digital Transformations in the Arts and Humanities: Big Data Research’ funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council with support from the Economic and Social Research Council. It is being led by Dr Stephen Rose, Senior Lecturer in Music at Royal Holloway, with Dr Sandra Tuppen, Curator of Music Manuscripts at the British Library, as Co-Investigator, and is due to be completed by the end of March 2015. For further information, please contact [email protected].
03 April 2014
Keeping Tracks - a one day symposium on music and archives in the digital age
Since October 2013 the British Library has been engaged in a six-month project investigating ways in which we can work with the fast-moving digital music supply chain, improve its relationship with the music industry and to help develop a Library-wide transition to acquisition of digital materials as part of its long-term Content Strategy. As part of this work a one-day symposium took place.
Keeping Tracks was devised as an opportunity for the British Library to talk about its collections and how we collect, preserve, conserve and give access to them, be they a 100-year-old wax cylinder or a newly minted digital file. It was also a great chance to gather different sectors of the industry – tech, labels, metadata, and archives – in one room to talk about an area that usually gets overlooked in traditional music industry conferences.
In the early spring sunshine of Friday 21 March delegates gathered from all corners of the globe and descended into the Conference Centre auditorium to be greeted by Curator of Popular Music, Andy Linehan. Andy set the scene and offered some historical context about where the British Library’s archives of recorded material had come from and handed over to colleagues Adam Tovell and Alex Wilson to talk about where they are going.
AV scoping analyst Adam Tovell proceeded to discuss the study he has been engaged with for the last 12 months. Tovell and his team have been counting, quantifying and assessing the collections, analysing international standards and devising schedules to define best practice in the long-term audio-visual preservation of the Library’s 1.5 million recordings – before it’s too late. The recording of his fascinating address can be found below
Adam Tovell - On shelves and clouds
Alex Wilson - Download into the BL
From the preservation of acetate and shellac, CDR and cassette to the collecting of digital sound and music Alex Wilson, Curator of Digital Music Recordings soon took to the lectern amidst a riot of noise and national anthems. This cacophonic audio clip was designed to illustrate the uphill challenge the British Library faces in 2014. Online sound and music is everywhere. It is the Library’s job as guardians of the nation’s audio memory to make sense of this. Wilson proceeded to show the first stages of a new collaboration that will improve the way we collect born-digital music and highlight other projects being investigated. The Q&A included some interesting questions surrounding Legal Deposit for recorded music and concerns of metadata ownership. Views from the floor regretted that this valuable material was without the benefits of statutory archiving and preservation that other material enjoyed.
Keeping Tracks then opened its doors to the working music industry during a perceptive Q&A with Lesley Bleakley of the Beggars Group and Rory Gibb of music magazine, The Quietus. With over twenty years of experience in the music industry and representing a record label that is regarded as a leading light in digital delivery and archiving, Lesley Bleakley was perfectly placed to offer a fascinating insight. Moreover, she touched on the burgeoning relationship between Beggars and British Library Sound and Vision itself; the last year for instance has witnessed a mutual sharing of advice and guidance and music culminating in the delivery of the entire Beggars digital back catalogue in early 2014.
Lesley Bleakley and Rory Gibb - Beggars Archive
Post-lunch the discussion became truly international in scope as we invited representatives from peer organisation the National Library of Norway to take the stage. Whilst Norway shares many of the same archiving principles with British Library Sound and Vision it is differentiated in one crucial respect. Norway’s legalisation declares that all music recordings must be legally deposited at its National Library. Lars Gaustad and Trond Valberg discussed this and showed the auditorium their innovative new donation portal allowing users to deposit recordings online.
Trond Valberg and Lars Gaustad - Norway
Keeping Tracks then hosted a dynamic presentation from another peer institution. Creative Director at BBC Future Media, Sacha Sedriks shared his understanding of the guiding principles around music and metadata, the semantic web and the ecosystem that underlies their nascent BBC Playlister service. Through absorbing statistics and images Sedriks shone light on a pioneering new platform that only hints at how the truly immersive and interactive BBC Radio and Television offering of tomorrow will look like.
Sacha Sedriks - BBC Playlister
Metadata underpins much of what we do here at British Library Sound and Vision and was a recurrent theme across the Keeping Tracks day. Hence it seemed only right to ask a leading music metadata supplier to the stand. Decibel Music Systems served up a talk in three parts: metadata from a market, data and technical perspective. Metadata is the glue that binds many systems together across the industry. As a result the Decibel presentation was followed by a lively and passionate Q&A which showed how important data is to making things (and people) click.
Decibel Music Systems - Dataphile
Whilst refreshments were guzzled, the auditorium was being tuned to a trans-Atlantic frequency. For the most ambitious strand of the Keeping Tracks we had invited UK based Music Tech Fest to share their keynote panel live via Skype from Microsoft Research Labs in Cambridge, MA, USA. The subject: developers, APIs and the music archive. Watched through the Skype-fuzz an energetic session ensued, moderated by Music Tech Fest head Andrew Dubber in the States and former Soundcloud man Dave Haynes here in the UK. Particular note should go to Microsoft researcher Jonathan Sterne who delivered an impassioned reflection on the nature of archiving and the internet which drew a round of applause in the London space.
Music Tech Fest - Posterity Hacking
The end was nearly upon us. The final official session of Keeping Tracks was a panel chaired by Jennifer Lucy Allan of the WIRE magazine, stimulating discussion amongst a trio of label owners who specialise in lost music, records and reissues. Jonny Trunk (Trunk Records), Roger Armstrong (Ace Records) and Spencer Hickman (Death Waltz Recordings) proceeded to entertain the delegates with an informal, humorous, inspiring and sobering account in the wonderful art of releasing beautiful old music. Anecdotes, asides, controversies and reflections filled the hour and one suspects we could have talked well into the night.
Panel Discussion - Archives and music
Before the close of the day we invited respected author, journalist and Goldsmiths lecturer Mark Fisher to deliver his own personal take on what had gone before. Whilst it may have polarised some of the audience, Fisher’s lucid account of the 2014 digital space, music, memory, innovation and consumption sounded a stark clarion call to ring us toward the close.
The British Library would like to thank all those who presented, spoke, attended and asked questions at this inaugural Keeping Tracks symposium. We have been delighted with the feedback so far and would welcome any further suggestions, recommendations and donations for the future. If nothing else Keeping Tracks felt like a genuinely unique event (up) lifting the lid on a usually ignored, diverse set of issues and investigations about music and archiving in the 21st century. Long may these discussions continue...
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All full presentations streaming here
All presentation slides displayed here
A follow up interview by Digital Music Trends is here
11 March 2014
Plainsong and Medieval Music Study Day at the British Library
The British Library is delighted to host this year's Annual Study Day of the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society, on Saturday 29 March 2014.
Open to all with free admission, this day will provide a major showcase of some of the important and exciting work currently being undertaken on the British Library's important collections of medieval and Renaissance music manuscripts.
The first session of the morning, starting at 10.30, will be devoted to Tudor manuscripts. David Fallows will present some of the exciting new discoveries he has recently made about the famous Henry VIII Book (Add. MS 31922, shown above). Thomas Neal will talk about Royal MS 8 G.vii, A Burgundian manuscript in early Tudor England, and Louise McInnes will speak about the Windsor carol book (Egerton MS 3307).
Before lunch, four speakers from the Old Hispanic Office Project at the University of Bristol will discuss various aspects of the liturgy and chant of the Iberian Peninsula in the early medieval period. Surprisingly, one of the largest collections of early Spanish chant manuscripts is found in the British Library, and this presentation by Emma Hornby, Elsa De Luca, Raquel Rojo Carrillo and Kati Ihnat will centre on some of these manuscripts.
In the afternoon, William Flynn will talk about an important but little-studied British Library manuscript of Hildegard of Bingen's writings, and two leading liturgical experts, Magnus Williamson and Matthew Cheung Salisbury, will give presentations about some of the sources of the Sarum Rite to be found in the Library's collections.
The day will conclude with an opportunity to see some of the manuscripts under discussion earlier in the day. Doors open at 10 for a prompt 10.30 start, and the event will finish by 4.30. The Study Day will take place in the Foyle Suite at the British Library Centre for Conservation, towards the back of the main Library building at 96 Euston Road. Lunch will be available in the Library's restaurant and café.
Attendance is limited to 60 people, and anyone wishing to attend is asked to register your intention to attend here: http://doodle.com/2que4gxew7rzhv6e.
For further details, and to download the programme for the day, please visit the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society website at www.plainsong.org.uk. Founded in 1888, the PMMS exists to promote the performance and study of liturgical chant and medieval polyphony, through the publication of editions, facsimiles and scholarly articles, and through educational and liaison events. This Study Day will also include the Annual General Meeting of the Society. New members are always welcome, and can join on the day. Membership includes a subscription to the Society’s twice-yearly journal and discounts on many of the Society's publications.
10 March 2014
The Decca Record Company: PhD studentship
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Collaborative Doctoral Studentship
‘The Decca Record Company of the 1960s and 1970s: the legacy of Christopher Raeburn’
The Music Department at the University of Sheffield and the British Library are pleased to announce a three-year PhD Studentship under the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) Scheme, to commence 1 October 2014. The successful applicant will receive full funding (tuition fees; maintenance payment of £15,863 for 2014/15, increasing annually), plus associated expenses (£550 yearly maintenance payment from AHRC; up to £1,000 per annum from the British Library to cover travel and related costs).
The subject of this studentship will be the Christopher Raeburn papers, recently acquired by the British Library. Christopher Raeburn pursued a lengthy career as a record producer, initially with the Decca Record Company, working globally as a member of the Decca production team with conductors and orchestras of the highest calibre, and then as a freelance producer, in which capacity he masterminded the careers of several of the finest of today’s musicians.
The archive of his papers held by the British Library covers the whole of his career and is extremely detailed, enabling a large range of subjects to be considered for primary research by candidates. Applicants for this studentship are welcome to shape the precise proposal according to their own interests, skills and initiative. Points of enquiry may include amongst much else:
- the professional career of Christopher Raeburn
- the role of the classical music producer at Decca, taking into account the classical music production team of which he was a member from the late 1950s onwards, under firstly John Culshaw and then Ray Minshull
- a history of Decca in the post-War period and its significance in the development of the international classical music recording industry.
This Partnership offers a collaborative supervisory team that brings together Sheffield University’s Dr Dominic McHugh and Dr David Patmore, both of the University’s Department of Music, and, from the British Library, Dr Nicolas Bell, the Curator of Music Collections and Jonathan Summers, the Curator of the Classical Music Sound Archive. This will be the third collaborative partnership in the field of the history of the recording industry between the British Library and the University of Sheffield.
The successful candidate will profit from the academic and practical resources of both partner institutions, becoming a full participant in the vibrant research community at the University of Sheffield while also having the opportunity to gain first hand professional experience of curatorial work at the British Library in London, including cataloguing, digitization, conservation and exhibitions work. The student will be allocated office space in the British Library and will be able to access the British Library’s Sound Archive, as well as its extensive collection of printed materials including books, journals and magazines relevant to the subject. In addition they will be able to participate in the Library's rich programme of public events, study days and student seminars and to disseminate research findings to academic and non-academic audiences. The student will be expected to contribute to the re-cataloguing of the Raeburn papers, on the basis of 60 days per year for three years, work which in the past has proved to be invaluable in gaining deep and relevant archival knowledge. In the longer term, the blend of academic research and curatorial work should considerably enhance employment-related skills while simultaneously informing the project with great potential for knowledge exchange and public impact.
The deadline for receipt of applications (including two references) is 31 March 2014.
For further information, and details of how to apply, see: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/music/prospective_pg/ahrcstudentship
08 March 2014
Female pipings in Eden: Ethel Smyth's fight for women's rights
As today is International Women’s Day, it seems a good time to mention the British Library’s newly acquired letters of Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944), English composer, writer and indefatigable feminist campaigner.
Despite her father’s disapproval, Ethel Smyth set her heart on a career as a professional composer. She studied in Germany, where she got to know Brahms, Grieg and Clara Schumann, and on her return to England focused her energies on composing operas. But Smyth struggled to get her operas performed in Britain, at a time when it was unusual for women to take up composition as a career, and when women who did compose tended to produce small-scale pieces, such as songs for performance at home. Smyth had rather more success in Germany, where she had three operas premiered, including her most famous stage work, The Wreckers, a tale of 18th-century Cornish villagers luring ships onto rocks to plunder their cargo.
Throughout her life, Ethel Smyth fought for the rights of women. She met the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst in 1910 and joined the campaign to gain women the vote. (Smyth’s song The March of the Women became an anthem for the suffrage movement.) She also campaigned for women to be allowed to play in professional orchestras. As late as 1933, in a book called Female Pipings in Eden, Smyth could report that in the ranks of the London Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonic Orchestra, and Manchester’s Hallé Orchestra the only female to be seen was the occasional second harpist. At the BBC, which did admit women players, female cellists were banned. This, Smyth surmised, was because grasping a cello between the knees was considered unseemly.
Smyth made no secret of the fact that she was a lesbian, and she formed passionate relationships with several women. The letters newly acquired by the British Library were written to another professional woman, Agnes Ethel Conway, and to Agnes’s father, Martin Conway. Agnes Conway was an archaeologist and historian who undertook extensive research in the Middle East. She also travelled in Greece and Turkey and in 1917 published an illustrated book about her travels entitled A ride through the Balkans, on classic ground with a camera.
Smyth wrote about her own travels in 1925 in A Three-Legged Tour in Greece. Two years later, Martin Conway, an art historian and mountaineer, sent Smyth a copy of his daughter’s book, and Smyth wrote a series of enthusiastic letters to the Conways. Corresponding first with Martin Conway, Smyth revealed how enthralled she was with the book - despite being ‘in a bad knot of work’ and not having much time for reading. She then began writing to Agnes Conway, and in these letters there are some glimpses of Ethel Smyth’s strong personality.
In the first letter, Smyth reports that she would have loved to have been an archaeologist, despite having made gibes at the profession as represented by men! There is also a note of asperity: she emphatically points out that a view of the sea described in Conway’s book would really not have been possible from that particular spot. Later there are references to Smyth’s ill-health (she started losing her hearing in her fifties); she writes of taking a cure in Breconshire, and of time wasted on her ‘vile body’. Plans were made for Smyth and Conway to meet, though Smyth writes in haste on 1 Nov 1927 of trying to finish a ‘job o’work’ – probably her concerto for violin and horn. Oh, and she continued to dispute the veracity of Conway’s description of that sea view.
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