13 July 2020
Michael Tippett: love in the age of extremes
Danyel Gilgan, author of The Life Before: My Grandfather's Life Uncovered, writes about the artistic and personal relationship of Wilf Franks and Michael Tippett.
Having spent much of the last seven years researching the life of my late grandfather, the artist Wilf Franks, I discovered many musical links to his life. My new book The Life Before: My Grandfather's Life Uncovered explores his connections to figures such as Ralph Vaughan Williams and Sir John Eliot Gardiner. But it was the writings of another giant of 20th-century music which brought me to the Rare Books and Music Reading Room at the British Library. The figure in question is Sir Michael Tippett, and the Library’s collection of Tippett letters and musical scores provided an extraordinary reservoir of information about the youthful life of my grandfather.
Throughout much of the 1930s, the lives of Wilf Franks and Michael Tippett were intertwined, as together they staged musical and dramatic productions in diverse locations such as Battersea Town Hall and the East Cleveland mining village of Boosbeck in the North East of England. During these years of youthful experimentation, the two young men became involved in an intense and volatile love affair as they explored theories of pacifism and embraced the radical Marxist politics of Leon Trotsky. At this time they also shared a passion for traditional British folk music and the poetry of luminaries such as William Blake and Wilfred Owen.
Poetry
In one letter Tippett makes a powerful statement about Wilf Franks’ poetic influence on their relationship.
'… he spends an hour or so with me here on the Blake I am going to set, and with a surer instinct for poetry than mine tells me where to get off – in point of fact I am therefore only setting the ‘Song of Liberty’ from The Marriage [of Heaven and Hell]… Wilfred Owen he knows almost word for word and draws it out for me, its meanings, its divine pity and so on – that will stay as long as it means something to us both …[1]'
As well as this connection to Tippett’s setting of William Blake’s ‘A Song of Liberty’, the relationship is poetically linked to another of Tippett’s compositions. In 1935, Tippett completed his String Quartet no.1, a piece that is now considered the first official composition in his canon of works. He wrote the following of the piece:
'Meeting with Wilf was the deepest, most shattering experience of falling in love: and I am quite certain that it was a major factor underlying the discovery of my own individual musical ‘voice’… all that love flowed out in the slow movement of my First String Quartet…[2]'
The original manuscript of String Quartet no.1 is held in the Tippett collection at the British Library (Add MS 59808). On the first page of the document is the simple inscription, ‘To Wilfred Franks Quartet no I in A by Michael Tippett’. Opposite this dedication, Tippett wrote out the Wilfred Owen poem ‘Happiness’:
Ever again to breathe pure happiness,
The happiness our mother gave us, boys?
So smile at nothings, needing no caress?
Have we not laughed too often since with joys?
Have we not wrought too sick & sorrowful wrongs
For their hands’ pardoning? The sun may cleanse,
And time, & starlight Life will sing sweet songs,
And gods will show us pleasures more than men’s.
But the old Happiness is unreturning.
Boy’s griefs are not so grievous as youth’s yearning,
Boys have no sadness sadder than our hope.
We who have seen the gods’ kaleidoscope,
And played with human passions for our toys,
We knew men suffer chiefly by their joys.
The optimistic opening is in contrast to the darker second verse. Owen seems to be contrasting his happy youth to the hell of war, but the poem appears here as a poignant prediction of how the joy of Wilf and Tippett’s early relationship would end in sadness and disarray. Perhaps, even at this mid-point in the relationship, Tippett already knew the love affair would have a painful end.
Politics
Politics, too, played an important role in Wilf and Tippett’s relationship. From the early days of the affair both men had a passion for radical Marxist politics. By the mid-1930s they had embraced Leon Trotsky’s political thinking and were starting to involve themselves with London’s emerging Trotskyist movement. At this time Fascism was raising its ugly head across Britain, and Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF) was preaching hateful, anti-Semitic rhetoric on the streets of London. On Sunday 4 October 1936, Mosley planned to march his men along Cable Street in East London, right through the heart of the local Jewish Community. Thousands of left-wing anti-fascist protesters came to support the local Jewish community’s effort to block the fascist parade. Amongst the crowd were Wilf Franks and the composer Alan Bush. Appeals by the Jewish community to have the march banned fell on deaf ears and the Metropolitan Police were tasked with clearing a path for the fascists. As mounted police began baton charging the crowd, Wilf stood on a soap box shouting ‘Stand firm comrades, stand firm!’ He was grabbed from the crowd by the police and charged with assaulting a police officer, a charge which he always denied. As Wilf sat in a police cell with other arrested men, he would have heard the news that Mosley and the BUF were forced to turn away from the Jewish neighbourhood and march instead towards the west. It was a famous victory against British fascism. Three days later Tippett wrote to Alan Bush:
'Yes, Sunday was historic! Wilf is on remand for criminal assault – police perjury - & the family fortune has fallen heavily over a counsel for him. Thames Police Court Friday morning! So it goes. Love Michael.'
Michael Tippett's postcard to Alan Bush. 7th October 1936. MS Mus. 499.
© The Sir Michael Tippett Will Trust. Reproduced with permission.
Tippett’s attempts to get Wilf freed failed when he was sentenced to 28 days hard labour. The composer spent more of his meagre financial resources on a failed appeal against the sentence, as a second letter to Alan Bush shows:
'My dear Alan, I was glad to hear from Wilf by phone that you were in touch with him… I have compromised myself so to speak for the whole amount & shall pay the remainder…[3]'
A Painful End
The love relationship between the two young men came to an end in August, 1938, when Wilf Franks told Tippett of his intention to marry. The news came as a bitter blow to the composer, ‘It was as if a whole dam had opened’[4] he wrote. Tippett was plunged into a personal crisis, and he sought healing in Jungian psychoanalysis. Despite the painful split, Wilf Franks and his new love Meg Masters continued to work with Tippett on creative events such as a 1939 Symphony of Youth in Brockwell Park, South London. At this time Tippett was working on the libretto for a new oratorio. The poetry of Owen and Blake, the anti-fascist, anti-imperialist politics which Franks and Tippett had embraced and the Jungian analysis in which Tippett sought healing, would all find their way into the libretto of the oratorio which became Tippett’s most famous work, A Child of Our Time.
By the time A Child of Our Time premiered in 1944, Wilf Franks and Michael Tippett were fully estranged. It would be some 40 years until the friendship was rekindled. A recently discovered letter sent from Tippett to Franks gives an interesting insight into the composer's feelings towards his old friend at the time of the reunion.[5] The composer wrote, 'As you have my phone no. now, will you keep it close to your heart', Tippett then adds, with a nod to the painful past and with a touch of humour, 'or even throw it once more into the dustbin'. He signs the letter 'Love Mike', the affectionate name that Wilf had always used. Although living at opposite ends of the country, the two men, who both lived into their 90s, remained friends for the rest of their lives.
Danyel Gilgan
References
[1] Schuttenhelm, Thomas, Selected Letters of Michael Tippett (Faber and Faber, 2005), page 233.
[2] Tippett, Michael, Those Twentieth-Century Blues: An Autobiography (Hutchinson, 1991), page 58.
[3] Tippett letter to Alan Bush. 20th October 1936. British Library Alan Bush Collection, MS Mus. 449.
[4] Tippett, Michael, Those Twentieth-Century Blues: An Autobiography (Hutchinson, 1991), page 62.
[5] The recently discovered letter from Michael Tippett to Wilfred Franks is held in the Franks family collection and is quoted here with permission from The Sir Michael Tippett Will Trust.
29 June 2020
Innovations in music notation in late medieval Syria: British Library manuscript Or. 13019
The Qatar Digital Library (QDL) is a collaboration between the British Library and the Qatar National Library, in which historical records from the former India Office are being catalogued and digitised, along with Arabic manuscripts on scientific topics from the British Library’s collection. Music theory has always been considered a scientific pursuit by Arabic scholars – as it had been by Plato and Pythagoras – on account of the mathematical nature of topics such as intervals, modes, rhythm, transposition, and tonal relationships.
Musical manuscripts digitised for the QDL so far include a copy of a commentary on an influential theoretical treatise, the Book of Cycles (Kitāb al-adwār) by Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Urmawī (d. 1294) (Add MS 7471, ff. 41v-92r), a work on the construction of musical instruments (Or. 9649), a cosmological treatise on music (Add MS 23494), and a recently-catalogued copy of the Kitāb al-inʻām bi-maʻrifat al-anghām (Book of Generosity on the Understanding of Melodies; Or. 13019) by the 16th-century music theorist Shams al-Dīn al-Ṣaydāwī. [Note that although this manuscript has been digitised it is not yet available to view on the Qatar Digital Library.]
The Kitāb al-inʻām is a short text in verse, remarkable for its presentation of an innovative and apparently unique system of music notation. It is also a feast for the eyes: both its text and its many diagrams are copied using a range of brightly-coloured inks which are not merely decorative, but rather an inherent aspect of this notation system. While several other copies of this text are known, the QDL’s high resolution, full-colour digitisation is a first, allowing its fundamental aesthetic and graphic features to be appreciated on an accessible digital platform for the first time.
Little is known about the author, although his name indicates origins in Ṣaydā (Sidon) in today’s Lebanon. His dates are uncertain, but he may have died in Damascus in 1506, which would mean that Or. 13019 – dated to 906 in the Islamic hijrī calendar (equivalent to 1501 CE) – was produced within his lifetime, as well as being the earliest known surviving copy. Ownership marks recorded on folio 1r indicate predominantly Syrian owners over the centuries. It was bought by the British Museum in 1966.
Following an introduction [fig. 1], al-Ṣaydāwī opens the treatise by outlining the four fundamental musical modes (called ‘uṣūl’) used in his time: Rāst, ʻIrāq, Zīrāfkand and Iṣfahān. Modes are constructed of sets of tetrachords which may be present within more than one of them, establishing complex familial relationships between them. From each of these four basic modes, two further ‘branch’ modes (furūʻ) are derived, which maintain a musical relationship with their ‘parents’. In addition to these groups of four and eight, al-Ṣaydāwī also enumerates six secondary modes called awāzāt, each of which is likewise related to two of the twelve fundamental and branch modes already outlined.
To present these modes and describe further aspects of their performance, al-Ṣaydāwī uses a stave-like diagram [fig. 2] of eight labelled parallel horizontal lines enclosed within a circular frame, representing the degrees of the scale (buḥūr). The lowest pitch is indicated on the bottom line, and the highest (an octave above) on the second-highest line (the uppermost line in each diagram is a framing device and not indicative of a note).
Al-Ṣaydāwī follows established convention in using Persian terms to describe these notes as yekgāh (first position), dūgāh (second position), etc. However, he innovates in additionally colour-coding each line, with the eighth line from the bottom the same colour as the lowest, as the notes represented are an octave apart (the uppermost line in the diagrams is only a frame). The specific colours are described in the introduction to the text [fig. 3].
Al-Ṣaydāwī goes on to outline a system for representing notes above and below the basic octave, independently of this graphic stave. To do this, a table [fig. 4] presents colour-coded Arabic alphanumeric abjad letters indicating microtonal intervals. These notes are paired with a ‘question’ and ‘response’ concept indicating further notes, at fixed intervals of separation totalling an octave, and allowing the total range of notation to be expanded.
The second unique aspect of al-Ṣaydāwī’s work is a notational system applied to the stave diagram which, in combination with instructions in the text, indicates aspects of the performance of the mode [fig. 5]. The letter mīm (م), standing for ma’khadh (مأخذ, meaning ‘place from which one takes something’) is written on the starting note/line of the mode and in the same colour, on the left of the diagram. The mode’s final note – often also its tonal centre – is indicated with the word rakz (with the sense of ‘setting, fixing’), written on the corresponding line, to the right.
The instruction iṣʻad (اصعد, ‘ascend’) in red, denotes a transition to a higher pitch. Conversely, a yellow letter hāʼ (ھ, from the root هبط, ‘descent’) indicates a transition to a lower pitch. These ascents or descents must be performed note-by-note (bi-al-tartīb) if the letter ‘tā’’ (ت, in red) is written next to the note towards which the pitch ascends or descends, whereas the player should jump directly to that pitch if iṣʻad or hāʼ is written with a long ‘tail’. Other abbreviations indicate additional aspects of performance such as prolongation, staccato articulation, and trill-like ornamentation.
This work presents difficulties of interpretation due to the poetic text and some ambiguity in terminology. For example, yekgāh, meaning the first note of the scale, also indicates the particular mode which starts on that note, i.e. rāst, while buḥūr also has variant meanings. Similarly, while the word maqām these days means ‘mode’ in general, in al-Ṣaydāwī’s time it still retained a more literal meaning of ‘placement’. Furthermore, the meaning of some of the notational abbreviations is unclear; some of the diagrams in the extant copies appear unlabelled and unfinished; and Or. 13019 lacks at least one folio (between the present folios 11v and 12r).
Al-Ṣaydāwī’s musical notation remains a fascinating and enigmatic theoretical experiment, unique of its time. While it permitted a wide range of notes to be succinctly conveyed, their relationships to each other expressed, and an unprecedented level of codified performance detail to be indicated, no later texts are known to have developed this system further.
Jenny Norton-Wright
Arabic Scientific Manuscripts Curator, British Library Qatar Project
References
Antar, Thérèse B. (translation and commentary), Exploitation de la couleur en musique: Livre de la connaissance des tons et leur explication. Mouhammad Chams al-Din al-Saydawi al-Dimachqi (Beirut: Presse Chemaly and Chemaly, 2001).
Ghrab, Anas, 'Livre de la générosite dans la connaisance des modes: Edition et traduction (Unpublished thesis submitted for the Diplôme d'études approfondies, Université Lumiere-Lyon, 2002).
Shiloah, A. and A. Berthier, 'A propos d’un "petit livre arabe de musique"', in Revue de musicologie, 71.1 (1985), pp. 164-77.
08 June 2020
Lockdown piano 2: a Robert Schumann manuscript online
In these socially distanced times, a concerto for one person alone could be just the thing…
“I think that your idea of a concerto is wonderfully in tune with the times (and one should always move with them), and I entirely approve… In my non-authoritative opinion as publisher, I should think that a short preface might be expedient, in which it would be made clear that this concerto was conceived for piano alone, if this cannot be expressed on the title page in a few words. The object is new, and should be seen as new and pace-setting.”
-- Publisher Tobias Haslinger to Robert Schumann, 13 June 18361
Having mastered the pedagogical piano works of Muzio Clementi featured in our last blog post, you might now be looking for a new pianistic challenge. Among the latest batch of digitised manuscripts to be made available online is the autograph manuscript of Robert Schumann’s Piano Sonata in F minor, Op. 14 (Add MS 37056) – first published in 1836 as a Concert sans Orchestre (‘Concerto without orchestra’).
Actually, Schumann seems to have initially intended to give the piece the rather less novel title of ‘Sonata’. That word appears, crossed out, three times throughout the manuscript: once at the beginning (f. 3r), replaced by ‘Concert’, once in the middle of the last movement (f. 21r) and once (almost illegible) on the back of a frustratingly cropped slip of paper (f. 20r).
Bound at the beginning of the volume (f. 1r) is a title slip in Schumann’s hand that describes a ‘concerto for piano alone’ – a subtly different emphasis to the final published title (a concerto for piano alone, or a concerto without orchestra?). It is an interesting sub-genre, with other examples from J. S. Bach’s Italian Concerto and Charles Valentin Alkan’s 1857 Concerto for Solo Piano on one hand, through to 20th-century offerings by Kaikhosru Sorabji and Michael Finnissy on the other. Some of these attempt to evoke the effect of orchestra and soloist on a single instrument, while others give more a sense of a concerto through the grand, virtuosic rhetoric of the piano writing – which is perhaps the approach in this piece.
But Schumann’s title didn’t stick anyway. Ignaz Moscheles, dedicatee of the first edition, was dismissive of the concerto idea and when the piece was published again in 1853, in a heavily revised second edition, it reverted to being a ‘Grande Sonate’. (Incidentally, an autograph book that belonged to Moscheles is also in the British Library’s collections – Zweig MS 215 – it includes entries from both Robert and Clara Schumann).
“The composer requests the safekeeping of the manuscript, which also contains other pieces”
The title is just one of several puzzles encapsulated in the manuscript. The ‘other pieces’ referred to by Schumann in his note above are two extra movements that would have been included in the original idea of the piece as a five-movement sonata. Those two movements, along with two variations from the middle movement, and the first page of a different last movement are crossed through in this manuscript, all dropped for the first edition. One of those two completed movements was reinstated in the second edition; the other was not published until 1866, after Schumann’s death.
Subsequent editors, and indeed performers of the work, have had to tackle the question of what exactly is the definitive form of the piece. Linda Correll Roesner undertook an almost archaeological study of the manuscript in 19752, using paper and ink colour as evidence of the convoluted chronology, not just of the bigger changes such as the withdrawn movements, but also of the smaller-scale (but nonetheless significant) additions, subtractions, changes and alterations of details. Some of these made it into the first edition, others into the second, while others again did not appear in either! Most the corrections are added in different ink, but some are found on other parts of the page, some are in the form of notes to the engraver and some completely revised passages are on pasted-over slips of paper.
You might notice as you browse through the images on Digitised Manuscripts that there sometimes appear to be duplicates, despite being labelled with different folio numbers. This usually happens when extra bits of paper have been pasted onto the main folio, often where a composer is correcting or amending a passage (such as folio 8 in the image above, stuck onto the bottom of the page). Elsewhere in this manuscript the paste-overs have been separated, allowing us to see Schumann’s original intentions underneath (folio 20 for example, which was originally glued to the edge of folio 19v).
“Mr Schönwälder, proceed immediately with this concerto"
Another layer of annotation on the manuscript relates to more prosaic activities. The note above is from publisher Tobias Haslinger to the engraver ‘Mr Schönwälder’ asking him to make a start on work on 17 June 1836. Markings in pencil throughout show Mr Schönwälder at work, including a note of the planned plate number for the edition and intended line and page breaks.
“... I wrote a concerto for you – and if this does not make clear my love for you, this one sole cry of the heart for you in which, incidentally you did not even realise how many guises your theme assumed (forgive me, it is the composer speaking) – truly you have much to make up for and will have to love me even more in the future!”
-- extract of a letter from Robert Schumann to Clara Wieck, 12 February 18383.
Finally, from the material to the poetic. The piece, like much of Schumann’s music, comes with various aspects of autobiography almost encoded into it. Its composition coincided with a period in which Robert was forcibly separated from the love of his life and future wife, Clara Wieck. The theme he refers to appears in full in the slow movement (and can be seen in the image above), although it has not yet been identified from any of Clara’s known compositions. It could be seen as a very public declaration of the connection between the two musicians who continued to inspire each other in the years to come. The five descending notes of the theme went on to become something of an obsession for both Robert and, later, Johannes Brahms, and versions of this idea appear in a number of other compositions by them.4 The theme, or suggestions of it, appears throughout this piece too though, including as the dramatic opening gesture of the whole work – a launch pad into the turbulent and passionate first movement.
There is a lot in this manuscript, both in the notation and beyond, in layers of evidence and ambiguity. Like many of Robert Schumann's manuscripts (see his later set of piano pieces, for example his Waldszenen in the BnF collections) it is like a graphic realisation of the romantic idea of the wild, turbulent moments of inspiration and creation – whilst at the same time being tempered by reminders of a more prosaic reality.
Chris Scobie
Lead Curator, Music Manuscripts
References
1. Quoted in the preface to the edition by Ernst Herttrich, published by G. Henle Verlag (2008).
2. Linda Correll Roesner, ‘The Autograph of Schumann’s Piano Sonata in F Minor, Opus 14’, in The Musical Quarterly, 61/1. Jan 1975, pp. 98-130.
3. Quoted in Herttrich, preface.
4. Judith Chernaik, 'Brahms's Clara themes revisited', in The Musical Times, Winter 2019.
27 May 2020
Lockdown piano: the pedagogical works of Muzio Clementi
A piano-playing theme is emerging from the Coronavirus lockdown, with several famous names playing online, or mentioning that they are learning to play, including actor Anthony Hopkins, footballer Nathan Aké, and rugby union player Tom Curry. For anyone with time for a little extra practice, this seems a good time to visit the pedagogical works of the pianist and composer Muzio Clementi.
Clementi was born in Rome in 1752. Moving to England at the age of 14, he spent the rest of his life either in London or travelling extensively in France, Germany and Russia. A simple list of his professional activities does not convey the significance of his achievement in each area. As a publisher, he was the first to publish the works of Beethoven in England, including some first editions; as a teacher, he influenced many important pianists of the next generation; his piano manufacturing firm introduced technical innovations, and his compositions, although overshadowed by those of more famous composers, are still played and admired 200 years on.
As a composer, Clementi had most success with his keyboard music, writing sonatas, variations, suites, preludes and fugues and technical piano studies, and his best known publication Gradus ad Parnassum (1817, 1819, 1826) is a large compilation of these works.
His periods of travel were spent in promoting the Clementi firm’s pianos, making contacts with composers for his publishing business, and teaching. Both in England and abroad, he had professional pupils like J.B. Cramer, John Field, Ludwig Berger (later Mendelssohn’s teacher), Carl Zeuner and Frédéric Kalkbrenner (later briefly a teacher of Chopin). He also taught amateur players, and it was for this market that his educational works were written. In London he was in great demand as a piano teacher in the early 1790s, despite the lapse in his performing career caused by the great popularity of the music of the new arrival, Haydn.
His 1801 piano method, Introduction to the art of playing on the piano forte (British Library g.303.(3.), is one of the first instruction books specifically for the piano, which, as a relatively new instrument, was just beginning to supersede the harpsichord. It contains extracts from the works of other composers such as Handel, Corelli, Mozart and Beethoven, graded in difficulty, as well as instructional text. It begins with the basics (with a hint to the note-learning beginner to ignore the ‘short notes’ of the keyboard except as guides to the eye) and moves on to detailed information about theory, technique, style and expression for the more difficult pieces. The instructions are addressed directly to the pupil, with a serious and uncompromising assumption of a high level of understanding and application. For example, at the foot of one fingering study is the comment ‘Most of the passages fingered for the right hand, may, by the ingenuity and industry of the pupil, become models for the left.’ There is certainly no ‘dumbing down’ here!
Introduction to the art of playing on the piano forte quickly appeared in French and German translations. Publications aimed at intermediate and advanced students followed, and Clementi’s educational music became well known.
Among these pedagogical works are the easy Six progressive sonatinas op. 36, first published in 1797, which are still in use as teaching pieces, with a new edition appearing as recently as 2017.
The respectful attitude to the learner observable in the Introduction to the art of playing on the piano forte is also in evidence in the quality of the musical construction of these mini-sonatas; they are pieces which are not just possible but also satisfying for elementary pianists to play. Recommended for lockdown pianists everywhere!
Caroline Shaw
Printed & Manuscript Music Processing & Cataloguing Team Manager
References:
Leon Plantinga: ‘Clementi, Muzio’. Grove Music Online. https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.40033, accessed 14 May 2020.
Margaret Cranmer and Peter Ward Jones: ‘Clementi’. Grove Music Online. https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.05937, accessed 14 May 2020
Clementi Society: http://www.clementisociety.com/, accessed 15 May 2020.
14 May 2020
Ernst Roth and the ‘Business of Music’
Ernst Roth (1896–1971) might never have worked for Boosey & Hawkes, nor even have lived in Britain at all, had it not been for the foresight of Leslie Boosey and Ralph Hawkes amid the falling darkness of the late 1930s. Papers in the Boosey & Hawkes archive (MS Mus. 1813) record the tale.
Roth had studied law, philosophy and music in his home city of Prague, and after earning his doctorate he moved to Vienna in 1922, joining the publishers Universal Edition. Here, having found his vocation as a music publisher, he might have expected to spend his whole career. But then came the Nazi Anschluss of 1938. On March 12th that year, Austria was annexed and subjugated by Hitler’s regime. With breathtaking speed a ‘commissar’ was appointed to ‘control’ Universal Edition: that is, to Nazify it. [1] Roth, along with his colleagues Alfred Kalmus and Erwin Stein, being Jewish, were immediate targets. Not three weeks later, on March 31st, he was, in his own matter-of-fact words, ‘discharged on account of my non-arian origin’. [2]
In London, Ralph Hawkes and Leslie Boosey were already swinging into action, planning a piece of shrewd businessmanship that also served as a bold rescue operation. Boosey went to Vienna and, with the blessing of Jella Hertzka, the widow of the founder of Universal Edition, secured the services of Roth and Stein for Universal Edition's London branch (which Kalmus had already established in 1936). Boosey also bought up all the shares in that subsidiary firm and obtained rights for most of Universal Edition’s catalogue. Roth, Stein and Kalmus were given permission to take up residence in Britain, and in September started work in their new positions: Nazi Vienna’s loss was London’s gain.
Even on British soil their troubles were not over, however. In July 1941, in common with many other overseas nationals, the three men found themselves interned as ‘Enemy Aliens’, being separated from their families and sent to camps in Shropshire or on the Isle of Man. Letters in the archive tell of the lengths to which the firm – Leslie Boosey in particular – had to go in order to have them released. At one point Boosey even asked the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams for help in pleading Roth’s case with the Home Office. [3] All three were eventually released after nearly six months’ internment.
Once settled, though, Roth committed the rest of his career to Boosey & Hawkes, remaining in continuous service until his retirement in 1964. Rising to the position of Managing Director, he took charge of correspondence with composers and members of the public, scanned the horizon for infringements of copyright, and superintended the Music Department’s various divisions with a hawk’s eye. Helen Wallace, in her history of Boosey & Hawkes, describes a ‘ruthlessly commercial’ man with ‘a razor sharp mind and the old-world charm to bring the grandest composers to heel’. [4] With Rufina Ampenoff (originally his assistant and later head of the Symphonic and Operatic department) he formed a formidable double-act.
Without fear or favour he defended his company’s interests in the world of music. ‘I am afraid copyright is a matter which does not admit sentimental considerations’, he wrote to the organisers of the Edinburgh Festival in May 1960, informing them that the Leningrad Symphony Orchestra’s own instrumental parts, being unauthorised, could not be used during their forthcoming appearance in Britain: ‘Even Russian visitors owe obedience to the law in this country’. [5] He was keenly aware of the commercial value of music and its fickle fluctuations: in the 1960s Benjamin Lees was told that there was ‘very little that can be done’ with string quartets, regardless of their quality. And within the company, too, Roth ran a tight ship: ‘In the last few months the general discipline has markedly declined’, reads an internal memorandum from September 1961; ‘[…] I like to believe that discipline among adults is a matter of self-respect and need not be enforced. However, I would have no alternative but to enforce it if this request […] remains without the expected response’. [6]
Outwardly, the man himself may have appeared no more inclined to ‘admit sentimental considerations’ than the principles of copyright. But he was no philistine, and he knew his own mind when it came to musical judgement. He placed Britten’s War Requiem ‘among the most outstanding works ever written at any time’, [7] and his memoirs, published after his retirement in 1964, reveal that his long years in ‘The Business of Music’ had not extinguished his love of music for its own sake, nor his belief in its value to humanity: ‘Although I am at home in serious music I have a deep respect for music as a harbinger of joy. Let no one rob it of this precious gift!’ [8]
Dominic Newman
Manuscripts Cataloguer
References
[1] MS Mus. 1813/2/1/215/3.
[2] Business Affairs series (currently uncatalogued). Temporary reference MS Mus. 1813, box BA23, file 69.3.
[3] MS Mus. 1813/2/1/281/6.
[4] Wallace, Helen, Boosey & Hawkes: the publishing story (London: Boosey & Hawkes, 2007), p. 20.
[5] MS Mus. 1813/2/1/121/8.
[6] MS Mus. 1813/2/1/164/10.
[7] MS Mus. 1813/2/2/6/4.
[8] Roth, Ernst. The Business of Music (London: Cassel, 1969), p. 244.
29 April 2020
Welsh hymn festivals – ‘singing from the heart’
From the last decade of the 19th century until the 1980s, the British Library steadily acquired, through a mixture of purchase, donation and legal deposit, a collection of about a hundred programmes relating to the cymanfa ganu (plural cymanfaoedd canu) or Welsh hymn singing festival. Due to lack of cataloguing resources through the years, information about these has never been publicly available. However, they have now been catalogued and will be made available for consultation.
The programmes are essentially collections of hymns, psalms and anthems, to be sung at annual festivals. They are ephemeral publications, designed to be used on a particular occasion; the next year’s gathering would have a new booklet with a new selection of hymns. They are chiefly in tonic sol-fa notation, or in a mixture of sol-fa and staff notation. On the front is printed the date, time and place of the gathering, its sponsoring body (generally a choral union of the religious denomination concerned), and details of the musical director, organist, adjudicators and secretary. There may also be instructions regarding times of rehearsals, attendance requirements and behaviour at rehearsals, a syllabus of topics on which children are to be examined, and statements of accounts relating to the previous year’s event.
So what was, or is, a cymanfa ganu? It is a gathering for the singing of hymns, traditional in Welsh Nonconformist churches, in which the whole congregation participates, singing in four-part harmony. Beginning in the mid-19th century with a desire to improve standards in congregational singing, the tradition continues to the present day in Wales and as a marker of Welsh identity in other countries where Welsh people have settled, notably the U.S.A., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina. The singing is directed by a conductor and is whole-hearted; the style is described variously by hearers as ‘devotional’, ‘majestic’, ‘grand’. Participants describe the gathering as being characterised by hwyl (emotional or religious fervour within the singing). If the communal mood demands, the end of a hymn will be repeated several times, heightening the emotional and spiritual intensity of the experience.
Essentially the assembly is an act of worship. However, it has also always had a social aspect. In an oral history account, described by Helen Barlow[1], Gwen Davies (born 1896) remembers the cymanfa ganu of her childhood as a significant and exciting religious and social event, for which everyone made sure they had new clothes! Pre-First World War newspapers carry detailed reports on cymanfaoedd canu as social occurrences: for example, The Welshman reports on the 28th October 1910 that at the annual cymanfa ganu of Welsh Congregationalists of Carmarthen and district, the children’s and adult choirs numbered jointly 1000 voices; there was a string band, including trumpeters, and the children, after being catechised, ‘sat down to a sumptuous tea!’[2]
Images of a cymanfa ganu associated with the National Eisteddfod of 1963. The National Library of Wales.
Permalink: http://hdl.handle.net/10107/1504351
The cymanfa ganu also in earlier times often included lectures on musical topics and examinations in music for children and adults. It was therefore a gathering which combined social, educational and religious purposes.
Its origin can be traced in the work of itinerant singing teachers in the 18th century, who laid the foundations for Yr Ysgol Gân (the weekly singing school). In the early 19th century, precentors were appointed by churches keen to improve the quality of congregational singing. Godfrey Wyn Williams[1] gives the example of the Baptist chapel at Penycae, which appointed Owen y Cantwr its codwr canu or precentor in 1826. He introduced week-night practices so that the congregation which had previously sung in unison could learn to sing in parts. This involved the precentor in hours of note-copying (pricio), due to the prohibitive cost of printed music at that time. Not everyone was enthusiastic, however, about such advances. Some older Calvinistic Methodist chapel members were apparently annoyed by three- and four-part singing, believing that ‘such activity encouraged the young to become too frivolous and materialistic’ (Williams, p. 59).
An important figure in the development of church music was Ieuan Gwyllt (1822-1877), who published a collection of hymn tunes strongly influenced by German chorales, Llyfr Tonau Cynulleidfaol, in 1859. Gwyllt believed that everyone should sing, and everyone should sing in harmony. This hymnal, and the assembly which he organised to mark its publication, aided the development of the four-part congregational singing which became a feature of the Welsh musical tradition.
The Llyfr Tonau Cynulleidfaol by Ieuan Gwyllt (1859). The National Library of Wales.
Permalink: http://hdl.handle.net/10107/4814268
Another vital contribution was the success of the Tonic Sol-fa system of music notation (created by John Curwen in about 1842). Liverpool-based musician Eleazar Roberts promoted the system in Wales in the 1860s and it quickly became an accepted teaching method in schools and chapels. The text-based notation was cheap to print, and its availability fostered widespread sight-singing ability and enthusiasm. Cymanfaoedd canu then became occasions for the examination of candidates for the certificate of the Tonic Sol-fa College.
Not all of this musical activity was so inclusive, and the noble aim of focus on worship was often not present. Inter-denominational choral competitions were fiercely contested, and deplored by some writers. From the 1870s, however, congregational singing, ‘singing from the heart’, grew in popularity under the influence of the religious revival campaign of American evangelists Moody and Sankey and the approachable melodies they introduced.
The cymanfa ganu remained popular up until the First World War, but its story after that is not so easy to trace. These British Library holdings are evidence of the continuation of the hymn festival phenomenon, its development, context and repertoire, throughout the 20th century.
Caroline Shaw
Printed & Manuscript Music Processing & Cataloguing Team Manager
References
[1] Williams, Godfrey Wyn (2011). Praise and performance. Congregational and choral music in the Nonconformist chapels of North-east Wales and Liverpool during the 19th century. PhD Thesis, Bangor University.
[1] Barlow, Helen (2019). ‘Praise the Lord! We are a musical nation’: the Welsh working classes and religious singing. Nineteenth-Century Music Review (In Press).
[2] ‘Cymanfa ganu at Carmarthen’. The Welshman, 28 October 1910. [accessed 7 April 2020], <https://newspapers.library.wales/view/4360278/4360285/46/>
16 April 2020
Digitised music collections online
Following our blog post on accessing our online printed and manuscript music collections, we have put together some further links to digitised music content that can be freely accessed online, both from other collection areas in the British Library as well as external sources.
- The Digital Resources for Musicology (DRM) website, created by the Centre for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities, an affiliate of the Packard Humanities Institute at Stanford University, is a wonderful inventory of digitised music content freely accessible online. The website provides links to resources grouped by composer, library collection, repertory and genre, and includes a brief description of each resource.
- RISM (Répertoire International des Sources Musicales) is an international catalogue of printed and manuscript musical sources, up to about 1800, held in libraries and archives across the world, with links to digitised sources where these are available.
- RIdIM (Répertoire International d’Iconographie Musicale) is an international database of visual sources of music, dance, theatre and opera, listing paintings, engravings, illustrations and other, that depict composers and musicians, musical instruments, musical scenes, etc. with an online gallery of digitised content.
- The British Library Sounds website gives access to unique sound recordings, including recordings of classical, pop, world and traditional music, as well as interviews, talks, plays, and wonderful nature sounds!
- The EThOS (Electronic Theses Online Service) website lists UK PhD theses and gives free access to those that have been digitised.
- The Endangered Archives Programme (EAP) at the British Library facilitates the digitisation of archives around the world that are in danger of destruction, neglect or physical deterioration. The web-pages are full of stories relating to particular projects, a number of which are music related: from Chilean scores and recordings, Serbian choral societies, to North Indian classical music.
These links are not exhaustive but we hope they can provide a useful start to users who are looking to access digitised music collections online, especially during this time.
26 March 2020
Accessing our online Music Collections
Following the closure of our physical sites in London and Boston Spa last week we have put together a list of our online Music collections that can still be accessed remotely on our website for research as well as enjoyment.
Digitised Music Manuscripts
Our digitised music manuscripts can be accessed via the Digitised Manuscripts website. You can search this website by a manuscript’s shelfmark or by keyword, such as a composer’s name. You can also browse this collection by downloading the spreadsheet below which lists all music manuscripts currently available on Digitised Manuscripts.
Download: list of British Library digitised music manuscripts online
Digitised Printed Music
Our digitised printed music collections can be accessed via the Explore the British Library catalogue. These consists of scores as well as books digitised as part of collaborative projects, such as Google books, Microsoft Books and Early Music Online. In order to browse content within these collections please use the search terms ‘blgooglebooks’ or ‘blmsd’ or ‘Early Music Online’ using the advanced search option. You can also perform a more specific search within these collections by adding a particular composer or publisher’s name, or other keyword in the search options.
You can also carry out an advanced search for the material you are looking for across our digitised printed music collections by selecting 'Scores' or ‘Books’ in the 'Material Type' field and then limit the results to items that can be viewed online using the 'Online' filter under 'Access options'. Click on ‘Digitised content’ in the ‘I want this’ tab to view the content.
The Google and Microsoft digitised printed music is available for view and download via the Library’s IIIF standard enabled Universal Viewer.
Help with accessing digitised Music collections
If you need help with searching our online Music collections our Music Reference Team can be contacted via the Ask the Reference Enquiry Team page; follow the 'Ask the Music Reference Team' link to send them an email. The team is also still able to answer general Music enquiries regarding the use of our online catalogues and reference services.
Highlights from our Music blog
As well as posting new content on our Music blog in the coming weeks we will be selecting highlights of previously published blog posts. Below is a selection of articles relating to our Beethoven collection items. 2020 marks the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth and the Library is currently preparing an exhibition to mark this anniversary. More details to follow!
Beethoven’s tuning fork
https://blogs.bl.uk/music/2016/10/son-of-an-african-prince.html
Beethoven’s Violin Concerto op.61
Beethoven’s last laundry list
Last by not least, our online Music exhibition Discovering Music contains 22 articles and over 100 collection items on music topics covering the first half of the 20th century, with new content being added to it at regular intervals.
Music blog recent posts
- The Paul Hirsch Music Collection
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- Highlights from the Royal Philharmonic Society Archive
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- Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and the practicalities of performance
- Min’yō: a cultural heritage of sweat, toil, and joy
- Harriet Cohen and Astra Desmond: introducing two newly catalogued archives
- Celebrating Women Musicians, past and present
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