Britten

[LMcD]

Just stumbled upon this, which might or might not be of interest:

https://www.classical-music.com/feat...he-almost-died

Many thanks - definitely of interest!

[Pulcinella]

Many thanks - definitely of interest!

I've just dug out the score.
The vision of Lady Fermoy attempting the harp part on the piano is quite an amusing one.

[Pulcinella]

From Mum & Dad by Joanna Trollope (yes, I know, but it is an easy read and just borrowed from our local book exchange):

...Anna herself had gone to a special choir practice – singing in a charity concert performance of the Holy Sonnets of John Donne, music by Benjamin Britten, a part originally intended, she said, for the tenor voice of Britten's partner, Peter Pears.

So do we assume that Anna is taking the solo role?
What's the choir doing?

More importantly (and this could equally well be on the Grumble or the Pedant thread), why do authors think that it's clever to write like this?

[silvestrione]

Many thanks - definitely of interest!

What a wonderful piece! A side of the Queen and Queen Mother I did not know about (should have been as hour episode in The Crown! )

[smittims]

Hi, Pulcinella, I think novelists do a little research for their novels, but often not enough. It does sound as if Joanna thought it was a work for choir. One of my favourites is in Virginia Woolf's first novel The Voyage Out, where Rachel , who is supposed to be a very intellectual pianist, is practising 'Beethoven's opus 112' (sic).

One thinks , 'Ha! she means opus 111'. But the scene takes place on a liner on its way across the Atlantic, and opus 112 is the cantata 'Calm sea and Prosperous Voyage' (not to be confused with Mendelssohn's better-known overture of the same title). So who's right?

More serious is where there's a mistake in biographies of musicians. Here there's no excuse for inaccuracy . I've read that George Grove rediscovered the manuscripts of Schubert's Rodelinda (Rosamunde , of course). And, returning to Britten , in an otherwise superb biography* Paul Kildea claims that Alma Maher asked both Shostakovitch and Britten (separately) to finish the late composer's tenth symphony. That sounds quite incredible to me; I wonder where he got it from. No source s given .


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Benjamin Britten : A LIfe in the Twentieth Century: (Allen Lane , 2013): page 430.

[Pulcinella]

Hi, Pulcinella, I think novelists do a little research for their novels, but often not enough. It does sound as if Joanna thought it was a work for choir. One of my favourites is in Virginia Woolf's first novel The Voyage Out, where Rachel , who is supposed to be a very intellectual pianist, is practising 'Beethoven's opus 112' (sic).

One thinks , 'Ha! she means opus 111'. But the scene takes place on a liner on its way across the Atlantic, and opus 112 is the cantata 'Calm sea and Prosperous Voyage' (not to be confused with Mendelssohn's better-known overture of the same title). So who's right?

More serious is where there's a mistake in biographies of musicians. Here there's no excuse for inaccuracy . I've read that George Grove rediscovered the manuscripts of Schubert's Rodelinda (Rosamunde , of course). And, returning to Britten , in an otherwise superb biography* Paul Kildea claims that Alma Maher asked both Shostakovitch and Britten (separately) to finish the late composer's tenth symphony. That sounds quite incredible to me; I wonder where he got it from. No source s given .


----------------------------------------------------

Benjamin Britten : A LIfe in the Twentieth Century: (Allen Lane , 2013): page 430.

Maybe in this instance there was indeed a choir on board the liner, and Rachel was practising the piano part in the vocal score.

[vinteuil]

Hi, Pulcinella, I think novelists do a little research for their novels, but often not enough. One of my favourites is in Virginia Woolf's first novel The Voyage Out, where Rachel , who is supposed to be a very intellectual pianist, is practising 'Beethoven's opus 112' (sic).

One thinks , 'Ha! she means opus 111'. But the scene takes place on a liner on its way across the Atlantic, and opus 112 is the cantata 'Calm sea and Prosperous Voyage' (not to be confused with Mendelssohn's better-known overture of the same title). So who's right?

.

... it is erroneously 'op 112' in the first English edition [1915], corrected to 'op 111' in the first American edition. [1920].


Virginia Woolf's letter to Saxon Sydney-Turner of 25 January 1920 regarding the upcoming reprint of the novel has -
"once more tell me the number of the Beethoven sonata that Rachel plays in Voyage Out - I sent the copy I marked to America, and now they're bringing out a new edition here-I can't remember what you told me - I say op. 112 - It can't be that."

Her letter to RC Trevelyan of 30 January 1920 has "... I am altering op 112, to 111"

Other scholars have indeed continued to argue in favour of "Op 112" -

"Even though the “facts” of the text’s printing history cannot deny the actual reference to “Op. III” in the first American edition, for DeSalvo, they are undeniable proof of the “legitimate” existence of Op. 112 in Woolf’s novel. Further, DeSalvo argues, Op. 112 is composed according to two poems by Goethe, Meeresstille und Glückliche Fahrt (Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage), and the “death-like stillness” of the sea (especially in the part of Meeresstille) corresponds with “the corpse-like Bride” in Tristan und Isolde (which Rachel is reading just before she is thinking of Beethoven’s music in the text), even though Rachel’s voyage (which ends with death) is not a “prosperous” one (pp.9-10)."

I am unpersuaded.

.

[smittims]

Thanks , vinteuil. I was unaware of those letters. I'm now convinced she meant op.111. The 1970s Penguin Modern Classics print, (probably from the Hogarth Press reprint of the original Duckworth) still said 'op.112'.

[LMcD]

Britten's birthplace is up for sale with an asking price of £795,000.

[oliver sudden]

Paul Kildea claims that Alma Maher asked both Shostakovitch and Britten (separately) to finish the late composer's tenth symphony. That sounds quite incredible to me; I wonder where he got it from. No source s given .


----------------------------------------------------

Benjamin Britten : A LIfe in the Twentieth Century: (Allen Lane , 2013): page 430.

I’m not sure where specifically Paul got it from but he certainly didn’t invent it: my googlings have brought up many, alas similarly unsourced, articles saying that Jack Diether approached not only Britten but Shostakovich and Schoenberg. None of them refer to Diether acting on Alma Mahler’s authority. It seems unlikely he would have randomly approached the most eminent Mahlerian composers of the age without having any authority to do so, but I would hate to add yet another layer of speculation! If I find anything specific in my Britten library I shall certainly post it here.

[smittims]

Thanks, Oliver. My scepticism stems from Coln Matthews' account of Deryck Cooke's work on the symphony printed in the booklet to the Testament CDs of the Goldschmidt performances . When Cooke had produced a radio talk and play-through of the existing sketches he approached Alma for permission to proceed with producing a performable version of the whole symphony, and she was persuaded to refuse by , among others, Bruno Walter. However, when she heard a tape of Cooke's progamme she was so moved that she changed her mind and agreed to allow Cooke to carry on. Therefore I think it highly unlikey that she had wanted the symphony 'completed' before this. I can, however, imagine Jack Diether making such approaches.

[Petrushka]

I’m not sure where specifically Paul got it from but he certainly didn’t invent it: my googlings have brought up many, alas similarly unsourced, articles saying that Jack Diether approached not only Britten but Shostakovich and Schoenberg. None of them refer to Diether acting on Alma Mahler’s authority. It seems unlikely he would have randomly approached the most eminent Mahlerian composers of the age without having any authority to do so, but I would hate to add yet another layer of speculation! If I find anything specific in my Britten library I shall certainly post it here.

I understood that Alma approached Schoenberg and Ernst Krenek to complete the Mahler 10. Britten seems very unlikely to me and I've never seen his name mentioned in connection with it.

My further understanding is that Schoenberg refused and Krenek edited the first movement but wouldnt go any further.

I can't provide any sources, just memory of what I've read elsewhere.

[smittims]

An interesting 2010 essay by Mark W,Kluge, published with the Music and Arts CD reissue of F Charles Adler's recording of the Adagio and Purgatorio at a Vienna Symphony orchestra concert on 8 April 1953, lists a number of possible hands involved in the editing of these two movements, including Zemlinsky, Franz Schalk and Alma herself.

[Serial_Apologist]

Britten's birthplace is up for sale with an asking price of £795,000.

If Britten was as culturally Now as David Bowie, let's say, any purchaser would probably pay for the place by flogging off the blue plaque at Sotheby's!

[Maclintick]

I understood that Alma approached Schoenberg and Ernst Krenek to complete the Mahler 10. Britten seems very unlikely to me and I've never seen his name mentioned in connection with it.

My further understanding is that Schoenberg refused and Krenek edited the first movement but wouldnt go any further.

I can't provide any sources, just memory of what I've read elsewhere.

Alma seems to have been dilatory in releasing Mahler's short scores of all five movements to those who were best able to attempt a completion, probably because of comments inserted by the composer at a time of great personal angst during her dalliance with Gropius. According to Michael Kennedy, for the 1924 performance of the Adagio and Purgatorio GM's short scores were edited by Krenek with some help from Alban Berg & possibly others (Alma & Zemlinsky ?). In 1940 Shostakovich was approached to attempt a completion, presumably by Alma or an emissary, but refused, as did Schoenberg in 1949..

Like you, Petrushka, I've never heard Britten's name mentioned in connection with a completion of GM10, but of course he was in New York in 1940, and knew Alma, to whom he dedicated his Nocturne some years later.