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).

Various titles from Add MS 37056

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”

Note from Robert Schumann requesting the safe keeping of the manuscript (Add MS 37056, f. 2r).

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.

Original version of the last movement, crossed through (Add MS 37056, f. 17v)

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.

From the first movement - f. 9, with a pasted on amendment at the bottom (Add MS 37056, f. 8).

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"

Note from Tobias Haslinger to the engraver (Add MS 37056, f. 2r).

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.

'Andantino de Clara Wieck', (Add MS 37056, f. 15r).

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.

Opening of the first movement, with the 'Clara theme' appearing in the first bar (Add MS 37056, f. 3r).

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.

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.

Muzio Clementi by Henry Richard Cook, after James Lonsdale stipple engraving, published 1833 NPG D9341 © National Portrait Gallery, London

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.

Title page of Muzio Clementi’s Six Progressive Sonatinas op.36. Shelfmark: g.132.(4.)

Page 1 of Muzio Clementi’s Six Progressive Sonatinas op.36. Shelfmark: g.132.(4.)

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.

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 31^st, he was, in his own matter-of-fact words, ‘discharged on account of my non-arian origin’. [2]

Extract from Dr. Ernst Roth’s Curriculum Vitae, 1938. (Temporary reference MS Mus. 1813, box BA23, file 69.3.). © Boosey & Hawkes. Reproduced with permission.

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.

‘It is urgent to get out from here!’ Letter of 13 August 1940 from Ernst Roth, interned in Prees Heath Camp, Shropshire, to Leslie Boosey. (MS Mus. 1813/2/1/279/1). © Boosey & Hawkes. Reproduced with permission.

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.

Copy letter of 11 October 1940 from Leslie Boosey to Ralph Vaughan Williams. Vaughan Williams was heavily involved in efforts to release foreign musicians who had been interned as ‘Enemy Aliens’. (MS Mus. 1813/2/1/281/6). © Boosey & Hawkes. Reproduced with permission.

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.

Dr. Ernst Roth in the late 1950s or early 1960s. (Mus. Dep. 2017/19). ©Fayer

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]

Circular to the Music Department of Boosey & Hawkes, 21 September 1961 (MS Mus. 1813/2/1/164/10.). ©Boosey & Hawkes. Reproduced with permission.

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.

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.

Singers at a cymanfa ganu. Photo reproduced with permission by The Van Wert Independent.

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 19^th 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/>

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.

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 250^th 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

https://blogs.bl.uk/music/2017/03/beethovens-tuning-fork.html?_ga=2.224909596.729229325.1584959491-1117972264.1579523071

Beethoven’s Violin Concerto op.61

https://blogs.bl.uk/music/2018/03/a-few-steps-and-mis-steps-in-the-early-years-of-beethovens-violin-concerto-beethovens-violin-concerto-in-d-op-61.html

Beethoven’s last laundry list

https://blogs.bl.uk/music/2016/08/wash-on-monday-iron-on-tuesday-mend-on-wednesday-churn-on-thursday-clean-on-friday-bake-on-saturday-rest-on-sunda.html

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 20^th century, with new content being added to it at regular intervals.

Leslie Boosey (1887-1979) was fortunate in possessing those great gifts of a businessman, the powers of persuasion and placation.  Letters in the Boosey & Hawkes archive (MS Mus. 1813) record the understatement and wry humour with which he answered the frequent broadsides sent zinging into 295 Regent Street by composers, conductors and the general public.  His eye is always atwinkle, even in print: 'I feel the only course to pursue for the present… is one of masterly inactivity'.  Or 'I should think we should very soon find ourselves in the land of copyright infringement if we had anything to do with it'.  Or (to Victor Bator, executor of Béla Bartók’s estate): 'I always open a letter from you rather gingerly as I am afraid that when I read it there may be some kind of an explosion, and your letter of November 7th was no exception'.

Leslie Boosey (1887–1979). © Boosey & Hawkes.

It is true that, in learning his trade, Boosey had been able to draw on a long tradition and deep reserves of wisdom and experience.  Boosey & Co. had passed into the hands of the fifth generation when, as ‘the heir to a rich and venerable music business that owned half of upper Regent Street’, he had inherited the chairmanship of the family firm in 1920. [1]  Ten years later he was to steer the firm into the merger with Hawkes & Son and beyond, exerting a calming and steadying influence on the new enterprise.  ‘He was the engine; I was the brakes’ was his own verdict of his partnership with Ralph Hawkes. [2]  He served as Chairman of Boosey & Hawkes almost continuously until 1964.  Helen Wallace, in her history of Boosey & Hawkes, describes him as ‘the very model of a Victorian gentleman, dignified, inscrutable, with a strong sense of family duty’. [3]

‘My dear John, I refuse to be ‘Mr. Boosey’ any longer’. Copy letter of 14 May 1941 from Leslie Boosey to John Ireland. MS Mus. 1813/2/1/276/3

In his letters, the bread and butter of everyday business dealings are enlivened by memorable chattiness: witty asides, commentary on current affairs or down-to-earth anecdotes.  Leaving Southampton for New York on business in April 1936, he saw the brand-new Cunard liner Queen Mary, then still being fitted out: ‘She didn’t look so big as I expected’, he told his assistant W. Paston. One letter of the mid-1950s preserves a vignette of his life at home in Brickendon (Hertfordshire) in a fond description of his grandson ‘who is very devoted to his little Kangaroo which goes to bed with him and also which is strapped on to his bicycle when he rides around the garden'. 

Letter of 15 April 1936 from Leslie Boosey, aboard the Cunard liner Berengaria, to his assistant W. Paston. MS Mus. 1813/2/1/208/7

He was profoundly dismayed by the outbreak of the Second World War.  'The picture of two civilized nations (!) engaged in a process of mutual destruction seems the most incredible madness one has ever imagined', he wrote to the conductor Adrian Boult.  His despair was surely sharpened by his experiences in the Great War: as he wrote elsewhere, ‘I lost a very large portion of my own relations in the last war and finished up as a prisoner myself’.  That last remark is another understatement.  It gives cause for reflection that, in all these letters, such a conversational man should make not a single reference to an incident during the First World War when, captured by the enemy, he refused to give away his information, and found himself up before an enemy firing-squad, looking death in the eye.  Only at the last minute had the German officer told him, ‘All right, you can go back – you’re a gentleman’. [4]

‘What a world we live in! After the terrible four years of 1914-18, I did so hope we had done with it, at least for my lifetime, but it was not to be’. Copy letter of 22 September 1939 from Leslie Boosey to Hugo Bryk. MS Mus. 1813/2/1/210/1

In peacetime this inner steel was seldom bared, but it was not altogether dormant: this was a man who would stand up for his family and company when necessary.  Once, during a round of golf with Ralph Hawkes, Robert Graves’ brother Charles asserted that his father had effectively been swindled by Boosey & Co. many years before.  When Leslie Boosey heard about this, his response was to write a letter informing Graves calmly but plainly that the allegation was slander, and that legal action would be taken if it was ever repeated.

Boosey’s thoughts about music make interesting reading.  E. J. Moeran, he thought, 'might be worth watching', and among British composers he seems to have thought highest of Ralph Vaughan Williams, William Walton and Benjamin Britten.  He considered Vaughan Williams ‘our greatest Composer, probably the greatest purely English Composer we have ever produced’, though Britten ‘can rank alongside V. W. and Willy at any time’.  He knew what he disliked, too: one piece that he 'found rather difficult to take’ was Aaron Copland's ‘very extreme’ Symphonic Ode, about which he made known his feelings on at least two occasions.  ‘I cannot believe it adds very much to musical composition and it certainly makes a terrible noise’, he declared.

Letter of 3 November 1936 from Leslie Boosey to Sverre Hagerup Bull. MS Mus. 1813/2/1/208/1

The tone of the entry for Leslie Boosey in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography chimes entirely with the character discernible in his papers: that of a public-spirited man and music-lover dedicated to the flourishing of music and composers in their own right, and not for commercial gain alone.  Boosey served as Chairman of the Performing Right Society from 1929 to 1954, and it was also he who, in 1944, secured the lease of the Royal Opera House just in time to prevent its transformation into a dance-hall. [5] The Royal Philharmonic Society’s prize for work done ‘behind the scenes’ of the musical world, which has been awarded biennially since 1980, is named after him. [6] Yet, having chronicled this distinguished career and long life of 92 years, the author of the Oxford Dictionary biography chose to devote the final paragraph to a remarkable assessment of Leslie Boosey’s character, a eulogy which is all the more powerful for the fitting understatement that pervades it.  There is no evidence in the archive to contradict its verdict.

Dominic Newman

Manuscripts Cataloguer

 

References

[1] Wallace, Helen.  Boosey & Hawkes: The publishing story (London: Boosey & Hawkes, 2007).

[2] Ibid., p. 2.

[3] Ibid., p. 1

[4] ‘Boosey, Leslie Arthur (1887–1979), music publisher.’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.  January 06, 2011. Oxford University Press. [accessed 14 February 2019], <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-30832>

[5] Ibid.

[6] ‘RPS Leslie Boosey Award’. Royal Philharmonic Society. [accessed 3 October 2019], <https://royalphilharmonicsociety.org.uk/awards/leslie-boosey>

Gradually a catalogue is beginning to take shape for parts of the enormous and complex Boosey & Hawkes archive (MS Mus. 1813). The first series of the business archive, the Directors’ files (MS Mus. 1813/2/1) is now fully catalogued and available to readers. Manuscripts Cataloguers Ceri Humphries and Dominic Newman write about two of the interesting characters they have met in the collections.

Thomas Conway Brown

‘Publishers do like to have perfect editions’: Thomas Conway Brown’s reliable and meticulous approach to work led to a longstanding relationship with Hawkes & Son, and subsequently Boosey & Hawkes. Publishing under both his own name and the pseudonym Roger North, his distinctive handwriting can be spotted in military band scores throughout the Boosey & Hawkes music archive.

Music manuscripts and letters by Thomas Conway Brown in the Boosey & Hawkes archive. MS Mus. 1813/1/2/72/9 and MS Mus. 1813/2.

Hawkes & Son, one of the two companies that merged in 1930 to form Boosey & Hawkes, was built on a strong tradition of military music. Founder William Henry Hawkes had served as State trumpeter to Queen Victoria and, alongside the music publishing business, an instrument manufacturing arm produced brass and reed instruments.¹ Regular publications such as the Military Band Journal provided repertoire for players and ensembles of all levels, in response to the demand of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Thomas Conway Brown, or Tommy Brown to close colleagues, submitted his first arrangement to Oliver Hawkes around 1890, starting a working relationship that would continue for over 50 years. In 1946, Brown recalled to Ralph Hawkes: ‘Many years ago your father told me that a fortune awaited the man who could bring out something new in the march line – I’ve been trying ever since’.

Brown was a military musician, serving as a sergeant in the Royal Artillery Mounted Band and organist of the All Saints Garrison Church in Aldershot. The popularity of military marches in the early 20th century brought success, and his judgement and attention to detail were clearly valued by Boosey & Hawkes. Aside from the many scores – arrangements and original works – that feature Brown’s handwriting in the archive, letters from the final years of Brown’s career show that he was regularly called upon to assess, and correct, the work of other composers and arrangers.

By 1947, with popularity waning, publication of military band music began to slow. Brown, into his 80s and suffering from gradually failing eyesight, submitted his final arrangement to Ralph Hawkes in 1949.

^1. While Boosey & Hawkes continued to manufacture instruments, the publishing and manufacturing arms of the business were later separated. The archive held by the British Library is that of the publishing company only.

Ceri Humphries

Manuscripts Cataloguer

Arthur Henry Behrend (1853-1935)

One cataloguing conundrum in the Boosey & Hawkes archive arose from occasional letters to Leslie Boosey signed only, enigmatically, ‘Daddy’.  Boosey’s own father had died in 1920, so the replies – all beginning ‘Dear Daddy...’ – would have been just as puzzling, had they not given away a vital clue in the postal address.  These referred to an ‘A. H. Behrend’ of Pollock Road, Walworth, London.

John Arthur Henry Behrend – who may have been born Johann Arthur Heinrich in Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland) – was a composer of songs and ballads, some of which had been published by Boosey & Co. and met with success in the late Victorian era.  He collaborated with such lyricists as Frederic Weatherly, the author of the words to ‘Danny Boy’, and was a grandson of the Irish composer Michael Balfe.  And a song named ‘Daddy’ – a setting of Mary Mark Lemon’s lullaby for a widowed father, sung as if by his only child – was one of his best-known.  Behrend adopted the name for his own correspondence: ‘Daddy’ was literally his signature tune.

1953 edition of the song ‘Daddy’ by A. H. Behrend. MS Mus. 1813.

But fickle fashion knows no compunction.  By the mid-1930s, there was no market for music in Behrend’s style, and Leslie Boosey, in his kindly way, had to turn down one submission after another.  Still ‘Daddy’ was undeterred, sending in letters varying in tone between breeziness and despondence.  In 1934 he announced, ‘I’ve been listening in to the Radio, and have written these two pieces.  If taken up by the “Savoy” “Metropol” & Alfredo Campoli’s band I think they would be successful’.  Elsewhere, with an edge of defiance, he lists ‘the only five pieces of my music I don’t want lost’.

He was also given to reminiscence.  'I was at Haileybury with young Hoskyns, cheeky little brat’, he recalled. ‘He is now an Archdeacon at some Cathedral’.  One wonders how the Venerable Benedict George Hoskyns MA (1856-1935), Archdeacon of Chichester, might have responded to this pithy assessment of his character.

Although Behrend’s letters often suggest a man in the evening of his life, creative power still burned in him.  ‘You know although over 80, I think I can compose still.  If I had a good libretto I’d sit down & write a grand or light opera.’ He was still submitting new compositions only months before his death, at the age of 82, in November 1935.

Dominic Newman

Manuscripts Cataloguer