Frankie Perry, who recently completed a PhD placement with Music Collections, introduces a newly-catalogued collection of Birtwistle manuscripts at the British Library.

The British Library’s collection of manuscripts by Sir Harrison Birtwistle (MS Mus. 1778) is now fully catalogued and searchable online. The modest collection was acquired in 2012, and comprises a miscellany of sketches, drafts, and papers given by the composer to his son in 1989. That same year, Birtwistle entered into an exclusive living archive agreement with the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel, which continues to acquire his manuscripts as they emerge. The British Library’s material is particularly important for the study of Birtwistle’s works from the 1940s to the late 1980s however, many of which are not represented in the Sacher archive. It is invaluable therefore in filling in many significant gaps in our knowledge of the genesis of many of his major, early works. In 2015, David Beard published a useful initial inventory of the British Library materials,^[1] but much extra detail (and a few additional discoveries) can now be perused in the Library’s handlist.

Birtwistle in 1973. Photographer unknown. MS Mus. 1778/5/1

Coinciding with the end of the first fully-staged production of Birtwistle's The Mask of Orpheus since its première in 1986, which ran at English National Opera in October and November this year, the rest of this blogpost gives an insight into material relating to this ‘world-defining’ collaboration between Birtwistle, Peter Zinovieff, and Barry Anderson.^[2] The premiere of The Mask of Orpheus in 1986 (also by ENO at the Coliseum) was ‘triumphantly successful’,^[3] but the work’s extreme narrative and logistical complexity has meant that, since then, most organisations have found the idea of putting it on to be ‘imponderable’.^[4] Despite a 33-year absence from the operatic stage, the sense of monumentality associated with the work has endured, and its position as a major landmark of modernist opera has been bolstered by the substantial scholarly attention it has already received, including a dedicated monograph by Jonathan Cross.^[5]

The Mask of Orpheus sketches

The Sacher Foundation holds most of the extant sketches for the opera (over 1100 folios), but the BL’s collection is also substantial, totalling over 550 relevant folios. Several sketches are dated, which is helpful for a work that had such a protracted gestation (famously, much of the work for Acts I and II took place in 1973-5, but progress was halted in the later 1970s and recommenced 1981-3.). It quickly becomes apparent that the material here is weighted towards the earlier stages of the collaborative and compositional process. Indeed, one major revelation of the BL’s Mask of Orpheus collection is that, contrary to Birtwistle’s recollections, some material for Act 3 was begun as early as March 1974 – it was previously assumed that the later music was planned and composed after the hiatus.^[6]

The majority of sketches are held across two A4 folders (unlike the BL’s extensive Gawain material, which is mostly on A2-sized paper). The first contains 193 folios of plans, sketches, and instructions, most of which have either been identified against the score, or contain written planning relating to particular aspects of composition. This includes:

• 27 ff. of detailed, continuous sketch work for the First Allegorical Flower of Reason (Act 1, Scene 2).
• 10 ff. of sketches for the electronic music in Act 3.
• 67 ff. of miscellaneous sketches and jottings relating to identifiable passages in the opera, including notes on phonetics for the invented language; material for Apollo’s interjections; text-setting sketches.
• 38 ff. of assorted written instructions and notes on instrumentation.
• 44 ff. of annotated rhythmic and structural planning for various sections, some of which is dated April 1974.

The material in the second A4 folder remains, for the most part, in the order in which it was received by the BL; however, papers have been grouped according to clear divisions of sketch type. Indeed, all the early stages of sketch typically undertaken by Birtwistle can be found here: extensive numerical workings and schemes, as well as separate sets of sketches showing pitch, rhythm, and structural work.^[7] There are also various documents showing Peter Zinovieff’s work on libretto, structure, and conceptual design, as well as brief correspondence between him and Birtwistle. Pictured here is part of a typescript fragment of an early version of the libretto, which looks much more like a conventional libretto than the beautiful graphic one eventually published by Universal Edition! A further A2 volume contains assorted sketches by Zinovieff and Birtwistle, including notes on dramatis personae and a 16-folio form scheme for Act 3.

For listeners delighted by the distinctive early-80s-IRCAM electronic music that flows through and punctuates The Mask of Orpheus, the extensive schemes and plans for this dimension of the opera may disappoint when seen on paper, so far short they fall in giving an impression of these passages’ sonic reality. They do, however, give a useful impression of what Birtwistle had on paper before Barry Anderson – the composer and electronic musician who realised these spine-tingling ‘electronic “magic harp’’’^[8] sounds – did his magic. Anderson’s own technical sketches have been examined in discussions of his work on the project, but Birtwistle’s structural blueprints help by providing a much fuller understanding of the basis for the pair’s experimentation at IRCAM (in Paris, 1981-2).^[9] Sketches are present for some of the mime episodes (Allegorical Flowers of Reason and Passing Clouds of Abandon); notations sketch out Apollo’s interjections; and doodled lines indicate the fading in and out of the Auras.

Part of a schematic sketch for the electronic interludes, MS Mus. 1778/1/1

Messy papers!

It is well known that Birtwistle has tended to store his sketches somewhat haphazardly, and this was reflected in the condition in which the collection arrived at the BL. While some acquisitions from composers need little intervention, the Birtwistle collection raised several questions about the extent to which we should preserve incongruencies in a received arrangement. For instance, amidst a pile of loose Orpheus sketches dated 1974 was an undated page with the instruction ‘a stylised sheep’s ‘baa”: the sheep belong to the “mechanical pastoral” chamber opera Yan Tan Tethera, which was premiered shortly after Orpheus in 1986 but begun much closer to that time. As such, there is no plausible creative reason for the odd page of Yan Tan Tethera to appear amongst this early Orpheus material; these anomalies speak more to messy storage than to anything worthy of archival preservation. (A note is made on the catalogue nonetheless!).

Pristine manuscript notebooks containing sketches for 'Gawain', MS Mus. 1778/1/3

Sometimes, of course, folders or books containing material relating to multiple pieces shed light upon previously unknown connections and timelines. Two manuscript notebooks (pictured) catalogued under Gawain are particularly interesting in this regard. Here, between pages containing detailed sketches of Morgan le Fay’s lines that open Gawain, we find pages clearly relating to Four Songs of Autumn, 4 Poems of Jaan Kaplinski, and an abandoned chamber orchestration of Deowa, in such close proximity as to confound accepted chronologies of these works’ commencement.^[10]

However, the preservation of such creative intermingling afforded by spiral binding is a rare luxury in the Birtwistle collection. More often, the chaotic presentation of much of the material – replete with illogically-grouped sheaves of loose papers crammed into disintegrating folders – required tricky archival decisions to be made in order to tease out a coherent cataloguing strategy. The collection does include one notebook full of Orpheus material, dating from Birtwistle’s time as a Visiting Professor at Swarthmore College in 1973-4, but this has problems of its own. Unlike the refreshingly pristine Gawain notebooks pictured left, the pink specimen below had to be quarantined at the BL because of its perturbing smell.[11] Fortunately, the mould and rust damage does not obscure much of the sketch material, which comprises complex numerical and rhythmic schemes typical of Birtwistle’s early-stage compositional process.

Mouldy notebook (prior to conservation treatment), containing sketches for 'The Mask of Orpheus', MS Mus. 1778/1/1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inside the mouldy notebook

 

Other myths and landscapes

Finally, it’s worth giving a brief overview of items elsewhere in the collection which might be considered pre-histories of aspects of Birtwistle’s work on The Mask of Orpheus. As mentioned previously, the bulk of archive materials reside in Basel, and most individual compositions are at best patchily represented in the BL. For instance, the most direct topical predecessor for The Mask of Orpheus is the Birtwistle/Zinovieff collaboration Nenia: The Death of Orpheus (for soprano, 3 bass clarinets, crotales and piano, premiered by Jane Manning and Matrix in 1970), and for this piece the BL holds just one single musical sketch. It’s a good one, though: a folded piece of A3 graph paper shows the name ‘Euridice’ split into syllables across the page, encapsulating neatly the bold fragmentation of voice and language – and the ritualization of names and naming – that pervades the finished score.

Robert Adlington has pointed to Down by the Greenwood Side and Bow Down as examples of projects prior to and contemporary with The Mask of Orpheus in which the matter – and manner – of (re)telling tales is itself thematised.^[12] In these cases, traditional ballads are presented in multiple forms. Bow Down (1977) is among the theatre music present in the BL’s collection dating from Birtwistle’s time working with directors Tony Harrison, Peter Hall, Harold Pinter, mask designer Jocelyn Herbert, and others at the National Theatre – these projects occupied much of his time during the late 1970s while work on The Mask of Orpheus was on pause, and had a considerable impact on his music-theatrical style. Elsewhere in the collection are scores, sketches, and doodles dating from Birtwistle’s time teaching music at Wardour Castle and Cranbourne Chase schools (1960-65), include scores for school plays that used stock characters like ‘The Good One’ and ‘The Green Man’. Such figures, in their continual adaptability and appeal, are clear precursors for much of Birtwistle’s later work, not least in his operatic oeuvre.

Of course, myth and landscape – pastoral and violent – have long been central to Birtwistle’s creative imagination. It is worth mentioning the extensive sketches at the BL for Earth Dances, which was premiered the same year as The Mask of Orpheus and might be considered a wordless apotheosis of some of its themes. Looking further back, the earliest pieces in the BL’s collection demonstrate that even as a teenager, he was writing music inspired by natural landmarks steeped in folklore. Drafts of his ‘Dance of the Pendle Witches’ and ‘Pendle Mystery’, both dated 1949, evoke the looming Pendle Hill of his native Lancashire, much like Silbury Air of 1977 conjures Silbury Hill, the ancient mound in the Wiltshire countryside that Birtwistle would later call home.

Birtwistle's hills: Pendle Hill, Lancashire ('Dance of the Pendle Witches' and 'Pendle Mystery', 1949). Photo by Charles Rawding. CC BY-SA 2.0.

 

Silbury Hill in Wiltshire ('Silbury Air', 1977). Photo by Greg O'Beirne. CC BY-SA 3.0.

There is so much more to say about this collection that won’t fit into this blog post – you’ll have to explore it for yourself!

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Frankie Perry is completing a PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London. In 2018-19, she undertook a PhD Placement at the British Library, primarily working on the collections of Harrison Birtwistle, Elisabeth Lutyens, and Cornelius Cardew. She tweets at @Frankles23.

 

References

^[1] David Beard, ‘Appendix: A selected inventory of Birtwistle manuscripts acquired by the British Library in 2013’, in Beard, Kenneth Gloag, and Nicholas Jones, eds., Harrison Birtwistle Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 304-309.

^[2] John Rockwell, review in The New York Times (22 May 1986).

^[3] Robert Samuels, ‘The Mask of Orpheus’, Tempo, 158 (1986), 41-44: 41.

^[4] Jonathan Cross interview. Cross also notes the consideration of agent Andrew Rosner that it was Peter Hall’s particularly ‘elaborate’ conception of the opera’s production that led to its reputation as being prohibitively expensive to stage. See p. 35, FN 72.

^[5] Cross, Harrison Birtwistle: The Mask of Orpheus (Farnham; Burlington: Ashgate, 2009); David Beard incorporated sketches from the Silas Birtwistle collection in his extended discussion in Harrison Birtwistle’s Operas and Music Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). See also Robert Adlington, The Music of Harrison Birtwistle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), and other literature cited in this blog post.

^[6] Beard picked up on this in Harrison Birtwistle’s Operas and Music Theatre, 84-85.

^[7] Beard has studied Birtwistle’s sketches and working process extensively. For an introduction, see Beard, “The life of my music’: What the sketches tell us’, in Harrison Birtwistle Studies, 120-174.

^[8] Birtwistle in conversation with Tom Hall, 2013. Cited in Hall, ‘Before The Mask: Birtwistle’s electronic music collaborations with Peter Zinovieff’, in Beard, Gloag, and Jones, eds., Harrison Birtwistle Studies, 63-94: 89.

^[9] On Anderson’s work, see Robert Samuels, ‘The Mask of Orpheus’ (1986); Nigel Osborne, ‘Orpheus in Paris’, in the programme booklet for The Mask of Orpheus at English National Opera (1986), as well as commentary in Cross (2009), Beard (2012), and Hall (2015).

^[10] For sure, order of pages in a notebook does not necessarily imply chronology of work; however, the strong similarities in handwriting, pencil weight, and sketch type in this case strongly suggest consecutive attention to three or more works.

^[11] Poor paper condition is not unique to the BL’s Birtwistle collection: Jonathan Cross points out a mouldy shadow on a Sacher Foundation photocopy reproduced in his book: ‘a consequence of the fact that the composer used to store his materials in a damp cellar’. See Harrison Birtwistle: The Mask of Orpheus, 48.

^[12] Adlington, The Music of Harrison Birtwistle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 15.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The archive of Boosey & Hawkes at the British Library represents, by volume, probably the largest distinct addition ever made to the Music Collections, comprising almost a century’s worth of historical records of one of Britain’s foremost music publishing firms.  The ongoing cataloguing of this substantial collection is a correspondingly sizeable undertaking, but a significant milestone has just been reached: the first major series of business files, the Directors’ papers (MS Mus.  1813/2/1), is now fully catalogued and available to Readers.

Material from the archive of Boosey & Hawkes, MS Mus. 1813

Boosey & Hawkes was formed in October 1930 by a merger between Boosey & Co. and Hawkes & Son, both established London family firms engaged in the publication of sheet music and the manufacture of musical instruments.  Boosey & Co. had been founded as a bookshop by Thomas Boosey in the late eighteenth century, achieved prominence in the late Victorian age as publishers of popular ballads and organisers of the London Ballad Concerts, developed a line in manufacturing woodwind instruments and cultivated a speciality in educational music.  Hawkes & Son, meanwhile, had, since its establishment in 1865, built up a reputation in music for military and brass band, as well as in the manufacture of brass and reed instruments.

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

An element of more direct competition emerged over the course of the 1920s, during which Hawkes in particular began an expansion into serious, or art music (as distinct from popular and band music).  Board meetings of the Performing Right Society gave each of the companies’ respective chairmen, Leslie Boosey (1887–1979) and Ralph Hawkes (1898–1950), the opportunity to observe the other closely, first as a competitor, and then as a potential fellow in partnership.  They evidently realised that their rather different characters complemented each other: Hawkes, a keen yachtsman, was bold and impulsive, whereas Boosey was the steadier and more diplomatic of the pair.  ‘He was the engine, I was the brakes’, Boosey recalled of his colleague. [1]

Ralph Hawkes (1898–1950). © Boosey & Hawkes.

The expansion into serious music lost no momentum after the merger.  It bore fruit not only in contracts with prominent British composers such as Benjamin Britten, Gustav Holst, Cecil Armstrong Gibbs and Gerald Finzi, but also in the acquisition of publishing rights for major international composers including Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Aaron Copland, Zoltán Kodály and Béla Bartók.  In 1938, Boosey & Hawkes secured the publishing expertise of Ernst Roth, Erwin Stein and Alfred Kalmus when the Nazi Anschluss eliminated their positions at the Universal Edition publishing house in Vienna, and in 1943 acquired the rights to much of the catalogue of the Fürstner house, including the operas and ballets of Richard Strauss.

Correspondingly, the firm cultivated growth overseas.  From the American agency already shared by the two old firms a new subsidiary, Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., was founded.  Hawkes’ outpost in Paris was also developed and expanded, while branches were established in Canada, South Africa, Australia and Germany, and agencies set up in various South American cities.  There were even contracts involving Communist Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union: just before the Cold War set in entirely, Alfred Kalmus oversaw the formation of the Anglo-Soviet Music Press, a subsidiary company with the right to distribute English-language editions of new Soviet music.  By the mid-twentieth century, Boosey & Hawkes was an international name.

Amid all this, though, the firm’s spiritual home remained the London headquarters at 295, Regent Street.   It was mainly here that the present archive was accumulated.  The newly-catalogued Directors’ papers record the activities of various directors of Boosey & Hawkes, and of the firm more generally.  They include the files of Dr. Ernst Roth (1896–1971) Managing Director from 1945 to 1964, and of Leslie Boosey himself , some dating from before the 1930 merger.  Internal and external correspondence, memoranda and reports concern all aspects of the printing, publishing and performance of music.  There is correspondence with the general public, schools, musical groups and orchestras (both amateur and professional), festivals, broadcasters, other publishing houses in Britain and abroad, and Boosey & Hawkes' own overseas branches: the correspondents range from the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra to the Horlicks Amateur Dramatic Society.

Dr. Ernst Roth, Managing Director 1945–1964. © Boosey & Hawkes.

As might be expected, the archive also contains extensive correspondence with a great number of composers and musicians: the names Eric Coates, Benjamin Britten, Ivor Novello, Igor Stravinsky, Adrian Boult, Imogen Holst, Elizabeth Poston, Bohuslav Martinů, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Ethel Smyth, Cyril Scott and Andrzej Panufnik are barely representative of the whole list.  The letters often allow great insight into the relationship between composer and publisher – often, too, the tact and grace sometimes required to maintain it – and the various happenings and topics of conversation that require the publisher’s attention: timpani for Khachaturian, Stravinsky’s Cadillac, John Ireland’s dentist, and the ‘7,550 Cigarettes’, ‘17 bottles of Gin’ and ‘29 bottles of Whisky’ ordered as Christmas gifts for the Music Department in 1964.  As a whole, the Boosey & Hawkes archive preserves a copious and detailed and record of ‘the Business of Music’, as Ernst Roth called it: the ever-changing work of the music publisher at the strange intersection between intangible art and hard commerce.

[1] Wallace, Helen, Boosey & Hawkes: the publishing story (London: Boosey & Hawkes, 2007), p. 2.

Dominic Newman

Manuscripts Cataloguer

We are holding two events in November to celebrate Elgar’s music and the rich collections of his works at the Library.

On Friday 8 November there will be an evening concert with pianist Iain Farrington, featuring works by Elgar that are represented in the Library’s collection, throwing light on the composer’s creative process and unearthing some surprises! 

To find out more details and to book a place please visit the British Library website here:

https://www.bl.uk/events/edward-elgar-from-manuscript-to-performance

On Monday 25 November there will be a study day focussing on the sources of Elgar’s works.

Edward Elgar. Photo by May Grafton

Elgar’s sources, ranging from manuscript sketches and scores, printed music, letters and recordings, reveal important information about his compositional practices and the origin of some of his most famous works, such as the Enigma variations, his concertos, symphonies, and oratorios. They also tell us important stories about his personal and professional life, his close family relationships and friendships, as well as his remarkable personality. Speakers specialising in the music of Elgar and Music curators will discuss his compositional practices and aspects of his life and reception.

Programme

10.00-10.20: Registration 

10.20-10.30: Welcome and Introduction to the day – Richard Chesser (Head of Music, British Library)

10.30-11.15: Keynote – Julian Rushton (Professor Emeritus, University of Leeds)

11.15-11.45: The Elgar Birthplace Museum – Michael Messenger

11.45-12.00: Comfort break 

12.00-12.45: The Elgar Sources: an overview – Professor Dan Grimley (University of Oxford)

12.45-14.00 – Lunch [not provided]

14.00-14.40: Elgar recordings – Jonathan Summers (British Library)

14.40-15.30: Discoveries in Elgar Sources – Speakers: John Norris, David Lloyd-Jones

15.30-15.50: Comfort break 

15.50-16.30: Biographical Issues in Elgar Scholarship – Chair: Dr Jo Bullivant (University of Oxford)

Speakers: Jo Bullivant, Dr Sophie Fuller (Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance), Dr Nalini Ghuman (Mills College), Julian Rushton

16.30-17.00: Future plans on the Elgar sources at the British Library – Richard Chesser and Chris Scobie (British Library)

To book a place please visit the British Library website here:

https://www.bl.uk/events/celebrating-elgar

We hope to see you there!

 

We recently published additional content on our Discovering Music: early 20^th century space:

Articles

Three additional articles are now featured on the space: Shadow and light in war and peace: Michael Tippett’s A Child of Our Time written by Oliver Soden, Holst and India written by Nalini Ghuman and Promoting New Music in Britain written by Annika Forkert.

Collection items

Nine additional collection items have been created to accompany the newly published articles and three further ones have been added to the existing articles on British Composers in the early 20^th century, The Second Viennese School and Music and the Creative Process: Elgar’s Third Symphony. The collection items feature autograph manuscripts and letters by Michael Tippett, Gustav Holst, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Edward Elgar.

Alban Berg: Wozzeck. Vocal score. Shelfmark: H.3455.d. © Public domain.

 

Gustav Holst: Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda. Shelfmark: Add MS 57873, f.2r. © Public domain.

People pages

An additional People page has been added to the space for the composer Michael Tippett.

About Discovering Music

Discovering Music: early 20th century is a free online learning resource that provides unprecedented access to the Library’s music collections.

This phase of the project features over 100 20th-century treasures from the British Library’s collection including sketches, first editions, letters, concert programmes, sound recordings and photographs. 

Reflecting a period of intense musical development, the site reveals the ways in which key musicians of the period captured the world around them by rejecting inherited traditions and experimenting with new forms and themes. The site includes fascinating manuscripts by, among others, Benjamin Britten, Edward Elgar, Frederick Delius, Maurice Ravel, Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern. Users can also browse articles, information on specific musical works, and teachers’ notes designed to support the study of music at GCSE and A Level. With this material the Library hopes to illuminate the social, political and cultural context in which this music was written.

The word ‘stamp’ certainly brings music to a Philatelist’s ear, yet they are also literally a musical medium for the masses!  Postal authorities worldwide have issued countless postage stamps incorporating reproductions from musical manuscripts, or notations into their designs. Including other stamps depicting instruments, composers and famous musicians, the British Library’s Philatelic Collections are an invaluable resource for cultural historians, manuscript specialists and musicologists.

In  ‘Banal Nationalism’ (Sage, London 1996) Michael Billig argues that an underlying, non-extremist, endemic type of national identity is formed by everyday encounters with representations of authority on official and consumable objects including coins, stamps, paper money and flags. This phenomenon stems from their mechanical mass reproduction, widespread dissemination and consumption making stamps an excellent meme-complex for transmitting multiple memes or units of cultural expression from one person or group to another. National anthems are a popular way for nations to eulogise their history, traditions and struggles musically since the nineteenth century, a period coinciding with the ‘invention’ of adhesive postage stamps. Consequently, it should come as no surprise to learn that anthems form a very popular design theme on stamps.

Many designs juxtapose the music and lyrics alongside a range of national symbols to create a multi-tiered symbolic identity. On 6 June 1983, the People’s Republic of China issued a 20f stamp commemorating the Sixth National People’s Congress designed by Wan Weisheng depicting music and Chinese text by Tian Han and Nie Er for the national anthem, ‘Yìyǒngjūn Jìnxíngqǔ’ below the national flag (Figure 1). Taiwan adopted a similar format for its $2.50 stamp commemorating the country’s 60th National Day issued on 10 October 1971. Designed by Yen Ki Shih and printed by the Government Printing Works in Tokyo, it depicts the music and lyrics for Taiwan’s national anthem, ‘Zhōnghuá Mínguó guógē’ beside the national flag overlaying a map of the island overlaid by the music and text (Figure 2).

Figure 1. Henke Collection. China.

Figure 2. Universal Postal Union (UPU) Collection: Taiwan.

Uruguay issued a 15p stamp designed by A. Medina on 19 May 1971 to commemorate the National Anthem depicting a few bars of music by Francisco Jose Deballi with Francisco Acuna de Figueroa’s lyrics beside the nation’s armorial bearings. The stamp’s selected colour scheme is identical to those adopted upon Uruguay’s flag (Figure 3).

Figure 3. UPU Collection: Uruguay.

On 25 October 1980, Costa Rica issued two stamps commemorating the national anthem. On this occasion, each design incorporates a portrait to embed the artist and music into the national symbolic and ritual narrative. The 1c stamp depicts a portrait of lyric writer, Jose Maria Zweledon Brenes (Figure 4) whilst the 10c stamp depicts the composer Manuel Maria Gutierrez whom President General Juan Rafael Mora allegedly imprisoned until he had completed the anthem score (Figures 5)!

Figure 4. UPU Collection: Costa Rica.

Figure 5. UPU Collection: Costa Rica.

Liberia issued a 6c stamp commemorating the inauguration of the Antoinette Tubman Child Welfare Foundation on 25 November 1957, depicting a group of children singing in the foreground, symbolising the nation’s future. Behind them is a song-sheet with Olmsted Luca’s music for the national anthem, juxtaposed next to a depiction of the Foundation’s headquarters (Figure 6). 

Figure 6. UPU Collection: Liberia.

K. K. Karmacharya’s designs for Nepal’s 18 February 1974 National Day Issue incorporate elements of the national anthem. The 25p stamp illustrates the Devanagari script for the old national anthem ‘Rastriya Gaan’ (Figure 7), whilst the 1r stamp depicts the musical score overlaying a Nepalese instrument, possibly a Sarangi (Figure 8). The anthem changed in 2006 following political unrest culminating in the abolishment of the monarchy consequently stamps depicting the old anthem are very political.

Figure 7. UPU Collection: Nepal.

Figure 8. UPU Collection: Nepal.

On 1 December 1976, Barbados issued a set of four stamps celebrating the 10th Anniversary of Independence, all designed by PAD Studios. The 25c value depicts the anthem’s musical score and text with a range of wind and percussion instruments indicating the music should be performed (Figure 9). The $1 stamp design portrays musicians at the Independence Day Parade where the national anthem would have been part of the performance, demonstrating how anthems are an established component of state performance and ritual (Figure 10).

Figure 9. UPU Collection: Barbados.

Figure 10. UPU Collection: Barbados.

On 16 May 1972, Venezuela released a 5b stamp as part of their ‘Venezuela in the Americas’ Issue. It illustrates the anthem’s music overlaying flags for every nation in the Americas and Caribbean (Figure 11). The design uses the anthem’s music to reinforce national identity whilst forming part of a wider international community. Some national stamps incorporate music in their designs recognising regional identities. On 28 April 1981, Spain issued a 12p stamp commemorating Galician Autonomy, depicting the music from the ‘Himno Galego’ overlaying a map of the region above Galicia’s armorial bearings (Figure 12).

Figure 11. UPU Collection: Venezuela.

Figure 12. UPU Collection: Spain.

Finally, in 1973 the Kingdom of Bhutan issued a set of seven ‘talking stamps,’ which are playable miniature records comprising the national anthem, folk music and historic narratives. Predominantly designed for the collecting community, this issue provides an excellent example of how manufacturing technologies are able to incorporate audio recordings into stamp design (Figure 13).

Figure 13. UPU Collection: Bhutan.

Postage stamps are therefore an important research resource illustrating the cultural transmission of national anthems across the national and international stage.  The design elements also incorporate a range of visual and mnemonic techniques to represent sound, music and national identity. The majority of them are musically accurate, leading one to query whether developments with MEI, OMR, TEI, Geo-Referencing and cataloguing technologies can be utilised on stamps to generate big data to support such a thesis. One hopes specialists reading this blog will be stimulated enough to develop these ideas further.

Richard Scott Morel

Curator, British Library’s Philatelic Collections

On Monday 1 July, the British Library held the study day Digital Musicology and Libraries: Challenges and Opportunities. The aim of the study day was to present different perspectives on Digital Musicology projects, developments and needs, and explore ways Librarians, Musicologists and Digital Musicologists can work together to support each other. The day also intended to inspire attendees to consider collaborating with the British Library on future research projects.

Digital Musicology study day. Photo by Amelie Roper

The keynote lecture was given by Dr Kevin Page, Senior Researcher, Oxford e-Research Centre. In an overview of the methods, temptations and experiences of digital musicology, he emphasised the importance of knowing your sources, knowing your methods, and recognising that there is information that will not be retrieved because of the limitations of these. He urged us to "embrace imperfect data"! The desire for perfect data is a temptation, but the perfect dataset does not exist. Instead we should use what exists, being wise to its limitations, and embrace simultaneous perspectives and encodings, rather than expecting one approach to give all the answers.

Digital Musicology study day. Photo by Amelie Roper

Throughout the day speakers introduced their specific projects or general approaches to working with different types of digital musicological data.

The Libraries’ perspective session opened with Richard Chesser, Head of Music at the British Library, who gave an overview of projects that the British Library has been involved with in Digital Musicology, including Early Music Online, A Big Data History of Music, The Delius Catalogue of Works and Discovering Music, as well as content the Library is making available through digitisation and other routes that can be used in Digital Musicology research.

Dr Andrew Hankinson, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford talked about Digital Musicology activities at the University of Oxford and specifically about the advantages of the IIIF technology (International Image Interoperability Framework) for conducting research with digitised images of Libraries’ collection items.

Digital Musicology study day. Photo by Amelie Roper

Dr Christopher Hilton of the Britten-Pears Foundation described the archival cataloguing system used by the Archive & Library, which includes work-level information, and the plans to open this up to a wider audience by making archival descriptions available as linked data. He gave interesting insights into the kind of information held: for example, the financial records of Britten and Pears, usually the dullest part of a personal archive, are revealing about how carefully and creatively the financial affairs of a gay couple had to be managed in the era before the de-criminalisation of homosexuality.

Digital Musicology study day. Photo by Amelie Roper

Katharine Hogg, of the Gerald Coke Handel Collection, The Foundling Museum, gave an overview of digital activities undertaken, and of planned collaborations. One type of material which the Gerald Coke Handel Collection is keen to acquire is datasets and preparatory material brought together for PhDs and publications; valuable research data which tends to disappear once the work based on it has been published.

Digital Musicology study day. Photo by Amelie Roper

The Academic Partners’ perspective session included presentations by Dr Emmanouil Benetos (Queen Mary, University of London), Dr Joanna Bullivant (University of Oxford), Professor Stephen Rose (Royal Holloway, University of London), and Professor Tim Crawford (Goldsmiths, University of London). Speakers talked about Digital Musicology projects they undertook in collaboration with the British Library (Digital Music Lab, Digital Delius, A Big Data History of Music, and F-Tempo respectively), and gave their perspective on the challenges and benefits of collaborative projects.

The session on Digital Archives explored challenges and opportunities around born-digital archives, as well as the Library’s digitised sound archives. Music Curators discussed recent steps that the department has undertaken to acquire born-digital archives of composers, whilst Jonathan Pledge, Curator, Contemporary Archives, Politics and Public Life at the British Library, described the methods recently developed in the Library for acquiring and making available personal digital archives of writers and scientists. Born-digital files are acquired and processed via a six-stage workflow[1].

Amelie Roper, Research Development Manager at the British Library talked about the British Library’s annual research report and the ways academics and researchers can collaborate through outlining the Library’s research collaboration process.

Some themes emerged from the day. Recurring challenges were rights clearance, sustainability of projects, differing priorities and expectations of libraries, researchers and funding bodies, technical and institutional challenges (for example difficulty in hosting non-standard software), and staff skills gaps and time constraints.

It was inspiring, however, to hear from projects exploiting opportunities. For example, IIIF technology can bring images and datasets together, so a digital copy of a manuscript can be viewed side by side with an interpretation or commentary coming from a completely different source. MEI (Music Encoding Initiative) and OMR (Optical Music Recognition) techniques can be used to enable semantically meaningful full-text analysis of certain types of digitised music, for example 16^th-century lute and vocal music, resulting in new work identifications. Other opportunities arise from combining the researchers' ability to focus on a single project with libraries' expertise in the curation of metadata.

Anecdotal evidence was that libraries and researchers can work positively together to overcome challenges, and unlock new musical knowledge.

Caroline Shaw, British Library

[1] Further information in: Jonathan Pledge and Eleanor Dickens (2018): ‘Process and progress: working with born-digital material in the Wendy Cope Archive at the British Library’, Archives and Manuscripts Volume 46, Issue. 1, pages. 59-69.

The archive of Susan Bradshaw (1931-2005) is now catalogued and available for consultation in the Library’s Rare Books and Music Reading Room. Proceeds from the British Library's purchase of the archive went towards the Royal Philharmonic Society's establishment of the Susan Bradshaw Composers’ Fund, as arranged by Brian Elias, composer and Bradshaw's close friend.

Susan Bradshaw, London, September 1971. © Unknown photographer
(BL MS Mus. 1755/6/1, f. 30)

Susan Bradshaw pianist, teacher and writer on music, was born in Monmouth on 8 September 1931. After spending time in India and Egypt during her childhood, where her father’s work in the army had taken their family, Bradshaw embarked on learning piano and violin. She later studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Harold Craxton (piano) and Howard Ferguson (composition). Then, in 1957, Bradshaw seized the chance to expand her musical world, taking up a French Government Scholarship to study composition with modernist figurehead, Pierre Boulez, and Max Deutsch in Paris.

One of Susan Bradshaw’s student ID cards for her French Government Scholarship year
(BL MS Mus. 1755/4/3, f. 259)

That year in France proved a catalyst for melding musical partnerships and alliances. Bradshaw formed a piano duo with her close friend Richard Rodney Bennett, and the Mabillon Trio with Philip Jones (oboe) and William Bennett (flute). However, the year in France signalled the decline of her activity as a composer, and on her return to the UK, Bradshaw moved her energy to accompaniment and performance.

Bradshaw was an ardent advocate of new music. She helped contemporary composers by including them in ensemble programming, promoting new works with first performances and using broadcasts to share what she recognised as important and progressive about such music. Concert ephemera, cuttings from radio show advertisements and draft programme scripts in her papers record her efforts and enthusiasm.

The Composers’ Guild of Great Britain presented Susan Bradshaw with a special award of Instrumentalist of the Year, for her services to the music of living British composers. (BL MS Mus. 1755/4/4, f. 209)

Inside Bradshaw’s Archive

Bradshaw’s archive reflects the breadth of her own musical experience and contains:

• Draft scores of over thirty of Bradshaw’s compositions, largely from the period 1951-1958
• Drafts of her writings on music, on individual composers/works/musical aesthetics
• A collection of printed materials compiled by Bradshaw into composer information files
• Scrapbooks and collected programmes, tracing Bradshaw’s musical career
• Select correspondence from composers and friends
• A box of 60th birthday tributes: musical compositions, letters and cards
• Publicity photographs and documents relating to her wider musical involvements.

The Mabillon Trio, drawn by Milein Cosman (Susan Bradshaw, piano; Philip Jones, oboe; William Bennet, flute). (BL MS Mus. 1755/4/3, f. 3: Mabillon Trio programme)

Related Resources at the British Library

Many items in the British Library Sound Archive complement and enhance the vibrant resource of Bradshaw’s paper archive. Examples include:

• A recording of Bradshaw’s Eight Hungarian Folksongs, broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 1978. Catalogue reference: M7663.
• Susan Bradshaw’s talk with recorded illustrations, In search of Pierre Boulez, given at the National Sound Archive in their Spring Lectures, 1985. Catalogue reference: B627/1.
• A recording of an event dedicated to the music and literary work of Lord Berners, Lord Berners: an entertainment in words and music, 1972. Susan Bradshaw and John Betjeman both performed at this. Catalogue reference: T706, M5087.
• William Bennett and Susan Bradshaw performing Boulez’s Sonatine for flute and piano. Catalogue reference: 2LP0048923; 1LP0073897.

Translating the ‘Shapes and Sounds’ of Composers’ Imaginings ^[1]

Bradshaw was well-positioned to act as a mediator between composers and audiences. She had a deep understanding of musical composition, performance and analysis, and used her knowledge of all three to interpret the works she encountered and to bring composers’ imaginings to life. Bradshaw believed that these three strands of musical endeavour were inter-related, and mutually nourishing. She appreciated that each was essential for advanced musical understanding, and furthermore, that the true product of this understanding was the communication of meaning. Whether that communication was musical (in performance), linguistic (for example, in academic writing), or pedagogical, Bradshaw saw the need to balance emotional experience with enquiry:

Passionate involvement precedes – must precede – cool appraisal; but when narcissistic pleasure starts to cancel out enquiry, when the sense of striving to understand and to reveal ceases to be the outcome of delight, when wonder becomes complacency, then great art becomes commonplace in the mind of the beholder and creation and recreation lapse into mere repetition. [2]

Bradshaw’s influence on the musical world can be seen in the archive. To trace it, one might begin with her scrapbook programmes (signalling, for example, her involvement with the Darmstadt International Summer Courses) and move to the exchange of ideas with fellow musicians in her correspondence, before visiting the vividly-expressed opinions in her writings.

New Ways of Hearing: “Untuning the Tempered Scale” ^[3]

The catastrophic destruction brought about by two world wars permeated all aspects of social existence; many composers felt that the old musical systems were inadequate for the development of the art. In a parallel to the destruction of societal structures through war, it was as if the hierarchies of the diatonic tonal system had to be broken down also. Composers looked to expand the resources available to them – the boundaries between music and noise blurred, and the number of notes in the conventional system increased with experiments in microtonality.

As musical modernism turned from the tradition of western diatonic tonality, it wrenched audiences from their familiar sound worlds. To the modernist composers, the rules and patterns of diatonic harmony represented predictability and constraint. Bradshaw’s broadcasting demonstrates her use of radio as a medium to promote modern music but also to challenge audiences to question the nature of listening: Why do we listen to music? What function does it have in our lives? She strove to help listeners navigate contemporary music, pointing out features and techniques, and highlighting composers’ search for truth in music.

As an individual whose influence and reach in the contemporary classical music scene was extensive, and well-evidenced in her archive, it is fitting for her papers to sit alongside those of many composers and musicians who so appreciated her support, here at the British Library.

 

Sarah Ellis, Archivist and Cataloguer of the Susan Bradshaw Papers (MS Mus. 1755)

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[1] Susan Bradshaw, untitled (London, British Library, MS Mus. 1755/2/3, f. 152, undated).

[2] Susan Bradshaw, draft letter to the editor of Music Analysis journal (London, British Library, MS Mus 1755/2/3 ff. 45-46, undated).

[3] Susan Bradshaw, untitled (London, British Library, MS Mus. 1755/2/3, f. 152, undated).

This is music for a scratch orchestra - this is Scratch Music!

On Tuesday 9 July we are holding an event exploring some of the musical scores created for and by The Scratch Orchestra. We are very pleased indeed to welcome several of the founding members of the ensemble, Michael Parsons, Howard Skempton and Carole Finer. They will be sharing some of their insights, and personal experiences of composing and performing in the group with Late Junction’s Max Reinhardt. Before that, Dr Jane Alden will introduce examples of the scores, and help us understand them in the context of experimental music making in the 1960s and 70s. What's more, there will also be plenty of opportunity to hear the sounds they represent, as pieces are performed in the foyer of the Knowledge Centre by the Vocal Constructivisits before, during and after the event - you will even have a chance to try things out for yourself!

Compositions and Scratch Music

 

It’s 50 years this year since the Scratch Orchestra was founded, initiated in part by a rather ostentatious ‘draft constitution’ published by Cornelius Cardew in the pages of The Musical Times (the June 1969 issue). In that he set out a vision for an ensemble that would pool the resources (not necessarily, or even primarily, musical) of a large number of enthusiasts: “assembling for action (music-making, performance, edification)”. It grew out of the experimental music class that Cardew taught at Morley College, and it aimed for a democratic approach to music making, where trained musicians and people from non-musical backgrounds could take part in performances on an equal footing. The idea certainly attracted people from a range of different backgrounds, including visual artists, dancers and writers. Indeed many of the scores are striking as visual art works in their own right; some even create musical pieces that don’t involve sound!

 

Part of Carole Finer's 'Magic Carpet', 1971.

 

Much of this built on movements in experimental music at the time, especially the work of John Cage, Christian Wolff, Karlheinz Stockhausen (at least in part - his text score for Aus den Sieben Tagen, for example) and the cross-disciplinary, performance-art work of the Fluxus community. But it was perhaps the democratic, communal and slightly anarchic element in the Scratch that made it distinctive, especially in the context of Britain at the time. They appeared (thanks to Victor Schonfeld’s ‘Music Now’ concert series) at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, and even at the Proms in 1972, but they also visited village halls, arts centres and civic buildings up and down the country. They received a call from the police (and perhaps more significantly the local press) in Newcastle, who were reacting to and, presumably inadvertently, realising Greg Bright’s Sweet FA which instructed performers to “act as obscenely as you can until the authorities arrive” - this eventually grew into a Scratch Orchestra opera, also called Sweet FA, that told the story of those events.

Ultimately the Scratch Orchestra was relatively short-lived, but its influence and something of its ethos have lived on into the present day. Several of the scores and pieces are now iconic examples of their kind – not least Cardew’s own The Great Learning, but also Howard Skempton’s Drum No. 1 and John White’s Drinking and Hooting Machine. The list of names involved with the group at different times is equally impressive: from Cardew himself, to Howard Skempton, Michael Nyman, Brian Eno, Gavin Bryars, John Tilbury, and Tom Phillips.  

 

Part of 'Ode Machine 2' from The Great Learning, by Cornelius Cardew

 

Knowledge of the Scratch Orchestra will live on in the form of the archive it leaves behind - albeit in a way that is missing the crucial lived experience of what it was like to be there and take part. Here at the British Library we have an extensive collection of material relating to Cornelius Cardew in particular, including:

• 48 volumes of manuscript scores from all periods in his life (Add MS 70727-70774)
• sketches for some of the ‘Ode Machines’ that formed part of The Great Learning (Add MS 59799)
• five notebooks and some loose manuscript leaves (MS Mus. 1741)

We also have a substantial set of papers currently being catalogued as MS Mus. 1817 (an update on that to follow soon…). This includes correspondence from throughout Cardew’s life, but especially around the time of the Scratch Orchestra.

In addition to all that, the Sound & Vision collections here have a number of interviews with former members of the Scratch Orchestra, all full of fascinating insights into the realities of the group.

In the end questions about the nature of these scores - how they convey musical ideas, and how they are interpreted - also raise more, even more fundamental, considerations about what it means to compose music, what a musical work is, and what parameters can be ‘fixed’ and conveyed for others to interpret. The Scratch’s democratic approach to communicating ideas, and empowering everyone to explore sound, seems to get to the heart of this ideas.

So, come along on the 9^th July to find out more!