Novello archives and possible stored parts

[pcc]

It has been a long time since I have been on this forum, but I wanted to ask about Novello's holdings on 19th century choral music. I expect the question of their archival holdings (if they exist at all) has been discussed before, but one thing I always note in the cheap choral editions is that although full scores were MS., and therefore for hire, most of them had orchestral parts for sale. I presume these would have been engraved parts, and possibly some music societies bought them, or perhaps sets ended up in regional choral libraries. My question is prompted by looking over Henry Smart's cantata The Bride of Dunkerron (Birmingham Festival, 1864), which at least one 1980s historian thought highly of and which looks to me as a vigorous and colourful work. I doubt Smart's autograph score still exists, but maybe something else does. Any thoughts or information I should know?

[minacciosa]

Very good question. One would hope that there may yet be extant parts to Coleridge-Taylor's The Atonement.

[pcc]

Found them both - they're in the Novello collection at the RCM in the "Additional Manuscripts" catalogue. I'm not sure what exactly is there on The Atonement but Coleridge-Taylor's autograph MS. is in the collection and two other shelf numbers - 4871, 4872, and 4873. Smart's The Bride of Dunkerron is 5172a and 5172b. Jeremy Dibble wrote a downright nasty piece in the Musical Times in 1983 about the acquisition of this collection, which is still rather unexplored (at least to my knowledge).

[Mark Thomas]

Welcome back pcc. I'm intrigued, in what way was Dibble's piece "nasty"?

[Martin Eastick]

I have been reliably informed that after Novello's had been taken over by the Music Sales Group, much of the orchestral and orchestral/choral hire catalogue was withdrawn, and subsequent requests for information about much unsung repertoire of a non-contemporary nature have been met with an almost total lack of knowledge and interest by the staff concerned. During the centenary year of Coleridge Taylor's death (2012), an acquaintance of mine was trying to obtain performance material for several of the orchestral works that Novello had published, and which were at one time in their hire library, but was constantly met with a brick wall of indifference and total incompetence. Fortunately, having influential contacts in the right places enabled him to gain access to the warehouse in Suffolk where much of such material had been moved, and fortunately he discovered that a large amount of orchestral material from the former Novello hire library was actually still in situ, rather than being destroyed as the powers-that-be were constantly trying to maintain!!!

So, perhaps, rather than just accept what this particular company was trying maintain, or offer in their catalogue, one certainly needs to be more than persistent. Total shame, though, on all such concerns, who in this current climate of incessantly dumbed-down mediocrity, seem to be predominantly staffed by pop-culture-obsessed morons, who naturally have precious little regard for our rich culture and heritage.

[Gareth Vaughan]

None of this is remotely surprising, Martin. My experience is that one must be very persistent. It can be rather depressing at times.

[minacciosa]

Thank you for all of this valuable info. I am contacting them presently.

[pcc]

I'm sorry it's taken so long for me to respond to your question about Dibble's article about the RCM Novello archive which I (perhaps unjustifiably) called "nasty" - I just found an air about it that put me off at the time.  This passage stood out, for instance:

"Many of the composers here have fallen into obscurity: for instance, Hamilton Clarke, represented by Pepin the Pippin (alarmingly, his op.345!), Percy Fletcher, who provides a large selection of turgid cantatas with such titles as The Enchanted Island and The Shafts of Cupid, and Alfred Gaul, creator of an even more lamentably extensive list of choral non-events. Nevertheless, among the dross, a series of highly interesting works tracing the progress of British composers (or prominent musicians living and working in this country) over several generations can be sifted out, providing an invaluable reference library for scholars of 19th- century music, particularly those needing to study full scores of works not published in that form."

Then again, this article was from 1983, and much has happened since then. I wouldn't ever call Hamilton Clarke a neglected genius, but I've performed his 3rd flute sonata with a colleague and it's quite inventive and charming, I and another pianist played through the piano duets of his overtures written for Henry Irving that were graciously provided by a member of this forum and I can say that IMHO they vary from negligible to seriously impressive, and those experiences make me want to study his "Sinfonia da camera" which is also in the Novello archive. As for Percy Fletcher, well, cantatas were perhaps a questionable use of his talents, but his orchestral music is extremely effective (especially in the sparkling late 1920s performances Columbia recorded with the Plaza Theatre Orchestra under Frank Tours).  Alfred Gaul? I'm still largely in the dark, but I don't like being told something's poor so dismissively until I study it myself.  So much music comes to life with committed performances, as we all know, so that unheard condemnation is a little hard for me to take. (And I admit that even then it still could turn out to be rubbish!)

There is some really intriguing stuff in that archive that is still unexplored - as I mentioned, besides Coleridge-Taylor's The Atonement (which I would also really want have brought into the light again) the score and parts to Henry Smart's The Bride of Dunkerron are there, and from the Novello vocal score (which has heavy instrumental indications) that piece has substantial stuffing to it and some vigorous drama, which you wouldn't associate with Smart's sacred and organ music.  That would be worthy of de-mothballing.  Choral works are a hard sell sometimes nowadays, but every American regional orchestra has a choir associated with it that is desperate for fresh material, especially if it has some zip to it, and the tradition still lingers in Britain to an extent. One maddening thing to me was that I found out that a college only forty miles from here resurrected Michael Costa's Eli in the late 1990s with full orchestra and I missed it; the conductor still has all the parts, but blast it, they didn't record it!!

Anyway, the Novello cache is available to study at the RCM, and the finding guide is online but a little hard to track down.  If I were there I'd be inhaling dust daily...and the story of Novello's Suffolk warehouse of parts is edifying, very typical, and more than a little scary.  Something should be done about that - somehow...