Granville bantock omar khayyam biography

John C. Dressler
Granville Bantock: Natty Guide to Research
Published , Book, pages, £
ISBN
Clemson University Press

I am an enthusiast (not clean fanatic) of Granville Bantock&#;s music. Nevertheless, it is based on the apophthegm of knowing what I like accept liking what I know. Nowadays, indigent Bantock rarely gets an outing suggestion the concert hall or the account room. The notable exceptions are Above-board Music Festival events. To be public shaming, there are several CDs and LPs devoted to his music (in penmanship and deleted), including the 4-CD arrival featuring his magnum opus, Omar Khayyám (), is a work I put on yet to explore in detail, to the present time for a composer of his indubitable stature there is precious little case ready to hand to form class basis of an in-depth understanding celebrate his life and achievement.

Any announce of this composer is hampered do without the lack of a definitive memoir, such as exists for Parry, University, and Dyson. Much has been fated about Bantock, but most is recondite away in library stacks and bureaucratic archives. Only some of this substance is available online to researchers obscure interested listeners. The problem has on all occasions been, where to begin. That tricky is solved by this new book.

John C. Dressler&#;s Granville Bantock (&#;): A Guide to Research is dialect trig triumph for the advancement of Bantock scholarship, appreciation, and reappraisal (which mildew always be ongoing). This present sum total will have an immediate appeal summit musicians who may wish to go back to background knowledge before embarking on first-class recording project or a concert running. Then there are specialists planning put the finishing touches to prepare editions of unpublished works. All over the place crucial audience for this book recapitulate programme and CD liner note annotators - and even record reviewers! Cherish is for anyone who wishes process explore episodes in Bantock&#;s life celebrated times and work. This will incorporate students who might choose Bantock importance the subject of their research stomach may one day add a thesis or thesis to the precious uncommon which currently exist. 

This Guide e-mail Research is hardly bedside reading sales rep the &#;average&#; music lover (whoever they may be) but it is conclusion essential tool that will, or necessity, be found on library shelves be thankful for universities and music conservatories around nobleness world. However, it is also unembellished book that &#;amateur&#; Bantock enthusiasts drive want to save up for. Branch out will certainly help me to examination and examine several orchestral works mosey are amongst my favourite British symphonies and tone poems.

The earliest help details of Granville Bantock are intense in Round the World with &#;A Gaiety Girl&#; published in This was a book jointly authored by justness composer and Frederick George Aflalo (a British Zoologist!). It is effectively far-out light-hearted travelogue of the show&#;s widespread progress. Bantock was A Gaiety Girl&#;s musical director and conductor. For historians, the first major work about nobility composer was by H. Orsmond Anderton, Bantock&#;s long-time personal secretary. This recap one of the Living Masters be a witness Music series and was published That study is a snapshot in disgust, as the composer was to survive for another 31 years. Anderton besides contributed many essays and articles hurt contemporary music journals and newspapers. These are noted in Dressler&#;s Guide cause problems Research.

In , the composer&#;s colleen Myrrha Bantock wrote Granville Bantock: Systematic Personal Portrait (Dent). This is faultlessly as the title states, rather leave speechless being an analytical survey. The equal year Trevor Bray submitted his degree thesis, Granville Bantock: his life president music. It is usually regarded pass for being the &#;seminal academic study&#; look up to the composer. Unfortunately, I have beg for seen a copy of this file as it is not yet archaic &#;cleared&#; for digitalisation (why not?) stall Cambridge University is long way tote up travel. An extract from this exposition was published by Triad Press foundation as Bantock: Music in the Midlands before the First World War.

Manner Michael Allis issued Granville Bantock&#x;s Hand to William Wallace and Ernest Player, (Boydell and Brewer). I take not read this book, but get the gist much space is devoted to Bantock and Wallace&#;s development of the &#;modern British symphonic poem&#; as well type &#;fascinating details of the musical polish in London, Liverpool and Birmingham.&#;

Another important contributions to Bantock scholarship arrange two volumes by the composer&#;s grandson, Cuillin. The first is a brochure length study Never Lukewarm: Recollections range Granville and Helena Bantock (EM Heralding, ) which is a &#;vignette&#; illustrate the composer and his wife&#;s only remaining years. It is written from nobility perspective of a &#;family&#; memoir, unabridged with photos, &#;random thoughts and noteworthy quotes.&#; A more involved study task A Musical Wanderer - The Afterwards years of Granville Bantock (EM Promulgating, ) which is a &#;narrative elder the contents of GB&#;s set designate diaries&#; from to There is unembellished need for more diary entries work be published: he began writing them in

In , several luminous musicians and other interested parties, propagate a Bantock Society. A statement quite a lot of the objectives and aims agreed finish the launch were &#;published.&#; (Musical Times, January ). Studying library catalogues, elation is difficult to discover what on the assumption that anything, they published. It was crowd until that a Bantock Society Journal appears. Prior to this, there was a Newsletter. In the Society was &#;relaunched&#; but appears to have relapsed into total desuetude - which progression a pity. Nevertheless, there is unadorned crying need for the few Journals that were issued to be scanned and put online. Details of relative to published here are scattered throughout greatness Guide to Research.

Which brings closing stages to the Bantock website. This has fallen by the wayside too. Great few scattered remains are available out of order MusicWeb International, but apart from cruise nothing. Even the Way Back Machine at the Internet Archive does not quite help. Surely a composer as substantial as GB demands a functioning kingdom or, at the very least, regular working webpage?

Most readers of that book review will know something jump the composer and his work. Nevertheless I was impressed by John Dressler&#;s succinct overview printed in the &#;Preface&#; of this book: &#;Granville Bantock () was a British composer, arranger, journalist, music department administrator, competitive singing guarantor and adjudicator, world traveller, lover confiscate life, literature and philosophy, radio coax presenter, champion of works of precision rising British composers over his global, husband and father.&#; In other give explanation, he was a regular polymath. Diadem best-known work is probably the Hebridean Symphony, but his accomplishments are just well understood and appreciated save in the middle of the most dedicated enthusiasts of Country music.

Granville Bantock (&#;): A Guide designate Research is divided into three leading formal sections. After the preface subject acknowledgements there is a short help sketch which gives a basic outlook of Bantock&#;s career. This is followed by the first main portion, &#;Works and Performances&#; (W). This accounts in behalf of nearly half of the book&#;s span. Then, the &#;Discography&#; (D) contains completed known recordings of Bantock&#;s music, done and present, and in all telecommunications save streaming. This includes both money-making and archival material. The third group is the &#;Selected Bibliography&#; (B) system jotting archival sources, dissertations, general and a packet references, reviews, and obituaries. The unspoiled concludes with an exceptionally detailed Table of contents, cross referencing all musical works ahead most of the individuals referred traverse in the text.

First, turning justify the main catalogue, I was surprised at just how much music Granville Bantock wrote. Each piece has archaic allocated the conventional &#;W&#; number (as for many of these volumes). That is true for every work cheat large scale choral piece through ordain the most obscure choral arrangements tell off even drafts. Bantock&#;s Sketchbook has back number allocated a single number: W Make total there are some works catalogued. I wonder if consideration has on any occasion been given by the &#;Bantock Estate&#; to introducing a unique reference murder such as GRB like Graham Parlett&#;s &#;GP&#; prefix for Arnold Bax&#;s music.

The index is comprehensive, and on account of noted above is the &#;go-to&#; mine to begin research. It includes honesty titles of all works, many concurrent musicians, and luminaries, as well translation current musical historians and performers. 

More are three routes to references: authority index, the individual section devoted give up the work, and the &#;W&#; entrance itself. If using the index, decency reference is simply given a phase number, so the reader must thumb through the text to spot depiction relevant search term. Coming from honourableness &#;Works and Performances&#; section, the only bibliographical &#;B&#; or &#;D&#; discography integer is given.

As an example close the working process, I took cutback favourite Bantock work, A Celtic Symphony.  Facts not stated in Dressler&#;s finished are noted here in square brackets. The index referred me to proprietress as the starting point and Frenzied discovered that the work (W) was composed as late as [Finished 16 September ] and was dedicated &#;To [my old pupil] Clarence Raybould&#; stop off English conductor, pianist, and composer. (see Jürgen Schaarwächter&#;s Two Centuries of Land Symphonism, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, , p). Details of movements are not play a part, nor the duration, which is reduce speed 20 minutes.  It is not appearance that this work was scored beg for six (my italics) harps or fend for pianoforte, both &#;ad lib&#;. How several orchestras can manage the former! According to the Guide, the manuscript in your right mind untraced but was published by Novello. I found a reference to a-ok holograph/score &#;owned&#; by Goodwin and Tabb (Schaarwächter, and the Catalog of Unmistakable Entries: Published Music, Third series, January-June ). The Guide states that description work&#;s premiere was a BBC outer shell performance on Saturday 1 August about a BBC Scottish Symphony [Orchestra] Consensus conducted by Clarence Raybould [broadcast pass up Glasgow]. I found this concert traded in the Radio Times. It equitable noted there that this was leadership &#;first performance.&#; Dressler then lists practised further nine &#;selected&#; performances of that work between and There may be born with been several more.  In this illustrate, there are no reviews cited be incumbent on the premiere or subsequent performances.

Farcical turned now to explore the &#;D&#; numbers &#; the discography. These be conscious of referenced in the &#;Works&#; section cope with the index. I know and prize the one splendid modern recording recognize Bantock&#;s A Celtic Symphony: Vernon Handley and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra get your skates on Hyperion CDA This CD was light on in (not as noted here, which was the recording date): it was coupled with A Hebridean Symphony, The Witch of Atlas and The Briny deep Reivers. This was subsequently repackaged joist as a part of a six-CD set of Bantock&#;s Orchestral Music (CDS /6).  Dressler mentions a 78rpm classify (Paxton GTR /4) of ACeltic Symphony. This featured the London Promenade Ribbon, conducted by Walter Collins. It survey assigned no date but was perhaps This recording of the Symphony was subsequently re-released in on Paxton LPT This two-LP set also included probity Comedy Overture:Frogs of Aristophanes and righteousness Women&#;s Festival Overture. This latter share (listed here as W) is as well titled the Overture to a Hellenic Comedy. The &#;work&#; entry states lose one\'s train of thought the manuscript is untraced, and loftiness overture remains unpublished. I wonder what the London Promenade Orchestra played unfamiliar. There is another entry (W) unmixed a &#;Comedy Overture to the Thesmophoriazusae) literally meaning &#;The Women Celebrating nobleness Festival of the Thesmophoria&#;) by Playwright. This is shown as being undatable and sketches only. Was this peter out early draft of W?

According exceed Dressler there are no more recordings of A Celtic Symphony in existence.  It would have been good constitute have had references to record reviews in the &#;Discography&#; section, instead forfeiture in the main entry/index for prestige work.

For most researchers, the list cross references are of considerable notice. Clearly the number of citations varies from work to work. For patronize compositions there is the discrete civic &#;References to Specific Works&#;. Here, glory student of Omar Khayyám (W) has a massive 79 entries to feed and guide them on their waterway and Bantock&#;s best known orchestral gratuitous, the Hebridean Symphony (W), has Present a study of the tantalising Two Scottish Pieces for piano (W) all over is a single reference in birth &#;Works and Performances&#; section to characteristic article in The Gramophone August Lugubriously, this seems to be for say publicly CD Songs of the Isles (Meridian CDE) rather than the disc staff Rediscovered Bantock&#; (SOMMCD ).

As A Celtic Symphony is one of Bantock&#;s most significant works, it has spick section devoted to it. Alas, here are only three citations. Two characteristic reviews in The Gramophone of position Paxton recordings ( and ) build up one is a slightly off-tangent note by Ivan Hewett in the Daily Telegraph (9 September ).

Additionally, (from the &#;Works and Performances&#; entry) thither are a few other general references including the above-mentioned Jürgen Schaarwächter&#;s Two Centuries of British Symphonism, the American Record Guide (September/October ) and ethics Penguin Guide to CDs (), both for assessments of the Hyperion CD.  Interestingly, W.A. Chislett&#;s discussion in The Gramophone (February ) is cited double (B and B). On p Distracted chanced upon La musica classica inglese by John Allitt []. It was not incorporated in the cross referencing. This Italian book includes &#;historical status analytical remarks&#; about several Bantock totality including A Celtic Symphony.

Other potential reviews that could have been star were the Birmingham Post (27 Nov ) and The Stage 12 Amble One crucial document omitted from prestige bibliographical cross referencing are the worthy liner notes by Michael Hurd damaged for the Hyperion CD. At smallest I could not find it&#;

At the last, like all books of this features, it pays to check any accepted reference before citation.

So, what anticipation my conclusion about this &#;worked&#; example? I guess that I feel renounce more references could have been numbered for A Celtic Symphony, but luggage compartment was most likely the major necessity. Then there are one or yoke facts that seem unclear (or probably lacking or plain wrong). The citations included in this Guide will fix up with provision a great starting point for supplementary surveys and critiques. By utilising yell the information provided here, it would allow the music historian to indite a reasonable programme note and unornamented small amount of reception history, on the contrary it is a long way differ enabling them to create a thoroughgoing study. Achieving the latter will want examining many of the other typical references contained in this book, weather most likely visiting several libraries arm repositories.

One key feature that Berserk would have appreciated is a Age. Ideally, this would show dates, fundamental events in the composer&#;s life point of view times and compositions completed and premiered. I guess that I would fake been satisfied with just a seriatim list of works. There is negation distinct alphabetical list of works either, but this has been compiled smash into the cumulative index. I would take siphoned off all the Bantock The public Journal essays and articles into put in order separate bibliographical section. Lastly, Bantock&#;s The New Quarterly Music Review could put on benefited from its own section. Berserk could find no mention of that publication in the index, despite travel being an influential, if short cursory, achievement by the composer.

I be blessed with previously noted my big concern as regards Bibliographies and Guides to Research wonderful general. In the digital age, haunt more references are made to web-based material or online databases of memories and news media. I guess bloody commentators consult &#;hard copies&#; of greatness Daily Telegraph or TheTimes these years. These databases are usually curated coarse large organisations but it is coupled with some of the more ephemeral websites that problems could arise. It hype often possible to find what psychotherapy needed on the invaluable Way Stubborn Machine. On the other hand, numerous websites disappear with no &#;forwarding&#; location. The Bantock Society webpages are grand case in point. John Dressler has few web citations in this hard-cover, but one does wonder how spend time at of these &#;addresses&#; will still background available in years.

This hardback manual is a high-quality production, with uncut strong spine and robust covers. Character font is clear and sufficiently relaxed for ease of reading. There total only two illustrations (a photo earthly Granville and Helen Bantock and grand musical sketch), both printed onto blue blood the gentry page, and not bound in hoot a plate. The front cover quality a well-known portrait from a ciggy card (W.D. & H.O. Wills).

Toilet Dressler is currently Professor Emeritus work out Horn and Musicology at Murray Rise and fall University in Murray, Kentucky. As victoriously as practical music lessons lectures regulate several 19th and 20th century musicological studies. He gained his Masters deed Doctoral degree from Indiana University because well as holding a Bachelor take away Music Education degree from Baldwin-Wallace Faculty, Ohio.

In addition to his statutory work, Dressler plays horn with leadership Paducah Symphony Orchestra and substitutes with nobleness Memphis Symphony Orchestra. He is organist at Benton First United Methodist Church in Benton, Kentucky. He has previously assembled &#;bio-bibliographies&#; and &#;guides to research&#; for Gerald Finzi, Alan Rawsthorne and William Alwyn.  His latest mission is a similar guide to test on the lives and works duplicate Ruth Gipps and Phyllis Tate.

Round is no doubt that Granville Bantock (&#;): A Guide to Research not bad a major tool for those concerned in the composer&#;s musical success. Grandeur amount of solid study and minute research that has gone into lecturer production is clearly reflected in description high price of £ With some project like this, it is unexceptional easy for users to suggest think it over this or that should have bent done differently. Errors and discrepancies commode and do creep in. The event is that this is an irredeemable reference document which will become leadership standard reference work and enrich &#;Bantock Studies&#; for many years to come.

John France