Arthur Herbert Jackson 1851-1881

[cypressdome]

Hi Robert. I just wanted to thank you for the offer of scanning the parts in the library's possession. I've added the (somewhat rough looking) vocal score from the Library of Congress to IMSLP and would like to encourage you to add the orchestra parts to the Lord Ullin's Daughter's workpage.  Perhaps these will be the first steps from saving Jackson from the complete oblivion he's been consigned to for the past century.

[Gareth Vaughan]

I have contacted the Britten / Pears Foundation and they have promised to let me know what MSS of Jackson's they possess in the LB Collection. Their main librarian is currently away, and her assistant could find only a Full Score of the Andante and Allegro giocoso for piano and orchestra, among orchestral scores.

[Robert Johnson]

I have just obtained a book by Tony Scotland called "Lennox and Freda" which documents the relationship between Lennox Berkeley and Freda Bernstein. On page 28 it quotes from Jackson's obituary in the Musical Times: 'The death of Mr Arthur Herbert Jackson has thrown quite a gloom over the Royal Academy of Music ... Mr Jackson was more than a student of promise, for he had already given to the world some important compositions ... He had, shortly before his death, finished a cantata called "Jason and the Golden Fleece" and ... we need scarcely say how bright a future has been suddenly blighted. Mr Jackson was held in high estimation by all who knew him [who] can amply attest how modestly and unassumingly he received the many proofs of success which he had so fairly won.'

The book also confirms something I had previously found mentioned in www.thepeerage.com – that Jackson had a daughter, Sybil Dean, born in 1878. As she isn't mentioned in the article in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, I wondered if she had died in infancy. However, the book describes her as "Lennox Berkeley's godmother and step-cousin", and the last mention of her is at the funeral of her stepfather, Randal 8th Earl of Berkeley, in January 1942.

I haven't yet found the time to scan the orchestral parts for "Lord Ullin's Daughter" and upload them to IMSLP, but will certainly do so as soon as possible. If this should prove to be the only surviving set, we would be happy to donate it to the British Library or any other suitable institution.

I would be very interested to learn of the discovery of any other scores by Jackson, particularly the full score of the piano concerto. Of course I haven't had an opportunity to examine the two-piano reduction, but it seems likely to have been a work of quality, given the high standing of the soloist at its premiere and the fact that the two-piano reduction at least was subsequently published by Stanley Lucas, Weber & Co.

[Berkleyan]

Far from dying in infancy, my friend Sybil Deane (sic) Jackson died in 1976 at the age of 98. Up to a few months before her death she was playing the piano every day and continuing to learn new repertoire. She herself had been a singer, as her step-father's DNB entry records, and she was coached at one time by Edouard de Reszke. After her stepfather's re-marriage, she returned to live in Oxford and took a part each summer in Hugh Allen's Mozart opera productions. During one of our regular two-piano duet sessions we played two or three salon pieces by her father. In the absence of recordings, these will have been the only compositions by him that she can have known.