England's Greatest Symphonist - so shamefully and sadly neglected

[salymap]

Bax of delights. Thank you. All I have is my memories and these boards drag things outof my subconscious somehow. Wish I could find the thread on the old boards about the 'Daffodil Maiden' a soapy biography of Harriet.
Hercule I'm sure now that I've heard Tommy B holding forth on Holbrooke,either on the radio or at a rehearsal. I have several Beecham books. I'll see if Ican find anything. RPO website might help.

[salymap]

Apparently Holbrooke was thought worthy of an invitation from the august Royal Philharmonic Society of London to have a work played at one of their concerts between 1900-1912, no details given.
AsI thought he would 'A Mingled Chime' by Beecham himself contains three or four hilarious encounters with JH's music and one visit to Paris to see Delius, his friend, accompanied by JH who was looking for a soussaphone [sp]. Beecham's biography by Alan Jefferson contains references but do beg, borrow or,well get 'A Mingled Chime'. which gives wonderful examples of trying to stage Holbrooke's operas as only Tommy can.

[Freddie Campbell]

...So why did I immediately think of Havergil Brian?

[Alain Maréchal]

From the murky depths of my memory I dredge the fact that when Gwydion Brooke retired from the Philharmonia he was offered as a leaving gift a performance of the work of his choice. So however unlikely it may seem Riccardo Muti duly conducted the overture to "Bronwen".

[Alf-Prufrock]

As Salymap states, Beecham's 'A MIngled Chime' contains a hilarious account of a performance of 'Apollo and the Seaman', which was an audio-visual event with a magic lantern throwing images onto a large screen. It was a sarrusophone and sarrusophonist that were brought from Paris to play in the symphony, though Beecham averred that the sarrusophonist was made too drunk by the British players to be able to perform properly so that his efforts, such as they were, could never be detected.
At the beginning of the performance, the room was darkened and a low drone was emitted by the bass instruments which went on for a long time because the projectionist was not ready and could not get the first image on screen in time. The audience were made very edgy by the weird sound in the darkness and then jumped mightily when suddenly the first image flashed up. They then found relief in laughter.
If I remember correctly, the sarrusophonist was given an award by the French government when he returned to Paris in acknowledgement of his contribution to cultural enlightenment across the Anglo-French Pond.

[salymap]

Thanks Alf-Prufrock. Three or four good Beecham stories about poor Holbrooke. Iknew my 'soussaphone' wasn't right. A marvellous book, I'm going to read it again from cover to cover!

[3rd Viennese School]

Looks like Berg.

(Picture on message 1)

What am I on about! Looks like Webern.

[BBMmk2]

.....and a certain GM

[Roehre]

...and Alexander (von) Zemlinsky, btw. (Alma Mahler's Gnome :)))

[Tristan Klingsor]

string's (as a plural)

I'm fascinated by the ungrammatical 'string's'. I've seen this on 18th century English scores so perhaps it's not so ungrammatical. Or are we after all "a nation of greengrocer's"?

[Sydney Grew]

I'm fascinated by the ungrammatical 'string's'. I've seen this on 18th century English scores so perhaps it's not so ungrammatical. Or are we after all "a nation of greengrocer's"?

It does look suspiciously like an apostrophe Mr. Klingsor, but upon closer inspection

we are inclined to doubt that explanation of the mark's being. The reason is, that when we look at two examples of true apostrophes from the same page

we see that they occupy a significant space between the letters, whereas the case in question does not.

The mark is therefore probably just an early twentieth-century fly-speck, or even one particle of that cloud of interplanetary dust which enveloped the Earth in the summer of 1908 and caused much of humanity to lose its senses. The dust-cloud in question arose from the impact of the presumed comet at Tunguska on June the thirtieth of that year - please consult the works of Professors Hoyle and Wickramasinghe for further information thereon.

Members may be interested to learn that the scores of many compositions by Holbrooke, including this Illuminated Symphony, are now available "on-line" at the Petrucci Music Library.

Holbrooke's idea of "keeping the orchestra and chorus as far as possible invisible, behind a screen of plants, palms, or foliage - or thin, extremely lofty, decoratively hung festoons and columns of dark, richly-coloured veilings designed not to destroy the sound" is an excellent one is it not. It should we think be retained in the concert performances of to-day. The sight of physical exertion is not conducive to the enjoyment of Art.

Of course to-day - as has been the case for the past five years or so - there is no longer any requirement for an orchestra at all. Orchestral music can now be performed in an entirely satisfactory way by computers equipped with vast arrays of sound samples. This is already done in many instances of "film music" and it is only a matter of time before the increasingly old-fashioned idea of "players in a hall" dies out altogether.

[Dave2002]

I question the thread title, but nevertheless I found this http://open.spotify.com/album/3qVHWvGttkYk8KOwBfD8aX worth a listen.

[Sydney Grew]

"To open this link you need Spotify." . . .

"Get Spotify.". . .

". . . for the time being, we’re not able to launch in every country. We’re really sorry about this . . ."

(That "time being" has been being for as long as we can remember. Is the concept "country" a suitable base upon which to erect discrimination? And do we believe them, even?)

[Alain Maréchal]

"England's Greatest Symphonist" was the epithet bestowed in Holbrooke by Edward Elgar, no less, when invited to inaugurate the Abbey Road Studios. Elgar was so enthusiastic that he insisted a work by Holbrooke be the first work recorded there, conducted by Holbrooke himself. The latter however had little experience with the baton and preferred that Sir George Henschel conduct. Eventually after much wrangling and several pints of Alice Elgar's favourite tipple, Newcastle Brown Ale, it was agreed that Elgar would conduct. Unfortunately on the morning of the rehearsal (and recording - Fred Gaisberg was a notoriously tight, in more ways than one, burglar) it was discovered that the orchestral parts had already been mailed to Paris for a projected cycle of Holbrooke symphonies by the Orchestre Pasdeloup. It was only later noticed , when they arrived, that the parcel contained a postcard saying "quick - do something with these-AE". Holbrooke was forever grateful for this attempt to help him gain international recognition. The only way of salvaging the recording session was for Elgar to conduct one of his own works, which he had previously rescored to include a quotation in tribute to Holbrooke. It is thought that right up until the start of recording Elgar thought he was going to conduct a work by Holbrooke, as the microphones clearly caught him saying to the orchestra "let's play something you've never heard before". Nevertheless Holbrooke's reputation as England's Greatest Symphonist was sealed.