Though this was the first symphony Prokofiev published, he had already completed two others, one in G major written for his teacher Gliere when he was just 11, another in E minor dating from 1908 when he was studying at conservatory in St Petersburg. By 1916 he was gaining a reputation as something of a tearaway futurist in other forms, especially with his Scythian Suite, ‘Ala and Lolly’; but already at conservatory he had learned to love and admire the works of Haydn and Mozart, and when he resolved to wean himself from his habit of composing at the piano he conceived the idea of doing so by writing something in a much simpler harmonic language. Instead of developing works he had on the stocks at the time such as his first violin concerto, the third and fourth piano sonatas and the Visions Fugitives, he went off for a complete change on a solitary country holiday in the summer of 1917 to a cottage where there was no piano, and wrote this symphony imagining (he said) what Haydn might have composed had he lived on into the 20th century. It was not an exercise in pastiche, but rather neoclassicism, such as Stravinsky, Hindemith and others were to cultivate some years later. But neither was it entirely pioneering in this respect, for a clear antecedent is Grieg's Holberg Suite. Its name was chosen, he said, “partly out of mischief, and in the secret hope that in the end I would be the winner if the symphony really did prove to be a classic.” His hope was of course fulfilled: the Classical Symphony was his first work to make an international success. He conducted its first performance in April 1918 in Petrograd, and the following month left for the USA, supposedly for just a few months, but in the end he moved from there to Paris in 1922 and did not see Russia again until 1927.

sources

A  Autograph score (1916–17), Stichvorlage for E, in the Library of Congress, Washington D.C.; a few details are Vers.I, e.g. I 206 Clars n.6 (sounding!) a2

E  First edition score, published in 1925 by Édition Russe de Musique

J  Putative corrected copy of E, which would have served both as Vorlage for P (below), and for the handwritten alterations made in ink by Astrov4 into several copies of E owned by the publisher

K  Copy of E containing Astrov's corrections in ink, examined (c.1991) in the hire library of Boosey & Hawkes

One fine summer morning in 1991 my telephone rang, and the voice announced itself as John de Lancie. I could hardly have been more astounded had it been Strauss himself. For this, 50 years later, was the man to whom we owe the existence of the Oboe Concerto. Since this is such a touching story, and especially since some of the details are not quite correct in my father Norman's generally authoritative biography of Strauss (1972:432, 437; for a start he was de Lancie, not de Lancy), it is worth setting the record straight. What follows is from the mouth of the man himself; I have a delightful photograph of him, together with his wife, in our garden in London.

The collapse of Germany had left Strauss penniless. In the first weeks after US forces reached the Bavarian Alps, his family received many American visitors at their villa at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, who would arrive with such valued gifts as coffee, tobacco and soap for the world's most famous living composer. One such regular guest was the teacher and musicologist Alfred Mann, who one day in Garmisch just after the end of World War II quite by chance bumped into de Lancie, who had been a fellow student of his at the Curtis Institute of Music, more recently solo oboist with the Pittsburgh Symphony, and took him along to meet the Strauss family. John de Lancie continues the story of his visits:

“I felt a very respectful awe for this man, and I was convinced I would not be able to contribute anything in conversation which could be of interest to the composer. But Strauss spoke excellent French, so I was able to speak directly to him, and I mustered all my courage and began to talk about the beautiful oboe melodies like those in Don Quixote, Don Juan, Sinfonia domestica and others. I wanted to know if he had a special affinity for this instrument. As I was well acquainted with his Horn Concerto [No.1] I asked him if he had ever considered writing a concerto for oboe, but his only answer was a simple ‘no’.”

But the seed was sown, and some months later de Lancie was astonished to read a news item in a US Armed Forces newspaper: “

When Borodin suddenly died in February 1887, Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov undertook to complete, orchestrate and see through the press all his unfinished and unpublished compositions. During the following winter Rimsky was working on Prince Igor, and it seems that he became inspired by the Oriental character of the Polovtsian scenes from that opera. He conceived the idea of writing a composition based on various episodes from The Arabian Nights, planned the overall form of the work, made some musical sketches, and Scheherazade was complete by the end of July 1888, receiving its first performance under the composer's direction in St Petersburg in October.

sources

A  Autograph score (1888), in the National Library of Russia, St Petersburg

E,P  First edition score and parts, published by Belaieff, Leipzig in 1889. As so often, E and P are independent of each other; sometimes one is correct, sometimes the other

F  Full score, published as Vol.13 of the complete Russian Symphonic Music edition, Moscow 1991. Some errors were corrected, but P was not consulted; this hardly rates as an Urtext edition. Unless otherwise stated, its text = E

SIMONDS D’EWES HAS less recognition as an early medievalist than Abraham Wheelock or William Somner, as none of his work saw publication. However, as a man of independent means, he was able to continue the endowment to Cambridge University that funded Wheelock's professorship and Somner's Dictionarium after the original sponsor, Henry Spelman, died. D’Ewes not only enabled the studies of other gifted scholars but read Old English himself and used that knowledge directly in the political debates of his day. A zealous Calvinist opposed to royal absolutism (although not to monarchy per se), he was an active member of the Long Parliament. He published proceedings of Elizabethan Parliaments that frequently supplied precedents for the Long Parliament's actions. He also spoke regularly in the House, often drawing on his knowledge of medieval legal and religious texts and history. His engagement with early medieval texts went beyond dabbling and became a crucial part of his self-concept as a godly Englishman. As he began to work on his own Old English dictionary (which he did not live to complete), he drew scholars from both sides of the political conflict together to reclaim England's past. D’Ewes's activities in the 1630s and 1640s show how medievalism operated in his self-fashioning and his participation in contemporary debates.

D’Ewes periodically used Old English in ownership inscriptions in his books. London, British Library Harley MS 483 is his private diary covering the period from January 1645/1646 to March 1646/1647. D’Ewes, in common with many of his fellow puritans, had already begun an autobiography that covered his life until the mid-1630s. His diaries were written with an eye to continuing that work, so they stand at a junction of public and private writing. His ownership inscriptions in Harley 483 share that status, addressing both an internal and an external audience (and as Jason Scott-Warren observes, early modern annotations in books often “do not make much sense unless we learn to think of [the book] as a quasi-public environment”). At the beginning of the manuscript, D’Ewes wrote his name, and then two inscriptions: “Moribus et vita nobilitatim homo” and “Mid hiht ic tolige.

This is one of two new symphonic works Schumann composed in the wake of the unexpectedly great success his ‘Spring’ Symphony had achieved at its first performance under Mendelssohn in 1841. The other eventually became the Fourth Symphony (see above); both works were premiered together in Leipzig in December, but their reception was less than encouraging, so Schumann withdrew them. The symphony had to wait ten years for its revision, but in 1845 he was able to attend to this three-movement work (there had never been a slow movement, so at one time he had thought of calling it Symphonette), completely rewriting the Finale. This time it fared better, and he was able to authorise its publication without further delay.

sources

A  Autograph score, in the Archiv der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna

P  First edition parts, published by Kistner, Leipzig in 1846

E  First edition score, published by Kistner in 1853, viewable online at IMSLP

Pe  Full score, published by C.F. Peters, Leipzig in 1887

Br  Full score and parts, published by Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig in 1887 (the parts may be as late as 1890); the Eulenburg miniature score has the same text

There are almost no problems in II and III, but in the Overture E suffers from inconsistencies of all kinds, which are solved in different ways by Pe and Br (e.g. 109/11/3, 238/40/2 Vl 2, Vla slur n.1–3 in Br, over to next bar in Pe). Br also contains a few significant editorial alterations (especially 58, 187 Vl 2, Vla pizz.), probably made by Clara and Brahms; the problem with these is that they may reasonably be judged improvements, but clearly it is a requirement of this report to restore what Schumann wrote.

SIR ROGER TWYSDEN cared deeply about his trees. In a manuscript notebook of advice to his sons, now London, British Library Additional MS 34164, he writes, “My sonns have a great care of your woods for as there is not a more honorable thing then wood and Tymber in an Estate and especyally about your howse or seat, so is it of great profit if well preserved.” He goes on in this vein for most of the page, explaining how many trees to take and save each year to promote growth and maintain the forest. In case his sons are unimpressed with the importance of this resource, he goes on to elucidate which wood is best for various uses. His concern for his woodlands runs through his journals and correspondence, and the circumstances of his life certainly gave him cause. As a constitutional royalist, Twysden was opposed to Charles I's extra-legal taxes and distressed by the Personal Rule. However, when the Long Parliament took a similarly high-handed approach to taxation and to law enforcement, he opposed it as well. Parties mattered less to him than constitutional principles. Twysden was incarcerated in London and then Lambeth by order of Parliament for much of the 1640s. During this time, his estate at Roydon Hall in Kent was sequestered and managed by the Kent County Committee, whose chair was a bitter enemy of Twysden's family. Under this management, Roydon Hall's forests were badly over-timbered, and Twysden could do nothing to stop it.

Twysden's letters during this time reveal his deep anguish over the felling of his woods, a feature that Twysden's biographer Frank Jessup feels needs some explanation:

This overture, composed in 1890 when Elgar was 33, was his first orchestral score of any size and importance to be performed and published; previously he had written a succession of small salon pieces, but nothing of any consequence. The inspiration to tackle a work of this stature came as a result of a commission from the Worcester branch of the Three Choirs Festival, and this commission stood him in good stead when Novello decided to take a chance on condition that the young Elgar agreed to assign the copyright to the publishers without payment. Elgar's own recording, made of course many years later, is a particularly impressive one, Sir Thomas Beecham's recently formed London Philharmonic Orchestra making a fine showing compared with some of Elgar's earlier and sometimes rougher discs.

As so often in this collection of textual reports, the published parts give a significantly different text from that in the score; the most surprising error in the score is one entire bar (3–2Z) where 2.Cor plays, but in the score is entirely tacet.

sources

A  Autograph score of final version, in the Elgar Birthplace Museum

E  Full score, published by Novello in 1901 (Pl. No.11191)

P  Orchestral parts (Novello); the string parts were published already in 1890 (Pl. No.9031), but the wind only in 1901 (Pl. No.11184). P exhibits many differences from E; the two sources have been carefully collated for the present report

R  Elgar's recording with the LPO (1933)

Ue  Urtext edition, edited by Sarah Thompson and published by the Elgar Society in 2013 in one volume together with Cockaigne and In the South. Both A and P were consulted in order to correct most errors in E, but P was not rated authentic, so many readings in P are given only in editorial brackets, others omitted without mention. In an attempt to strive for complete consistency huge quantities of editorial markings are added; the result is overfussy, and seems unlikely to be what Elgar intended

Since there are 24 bars between rehearsal letters T and V, a new letter U, at a tempo 11V, is suggested and used in the following report.

This cheerful and inventive symphony is one of six (Nos. 99–104) which Haydn composed for his second visit to London in 1794–5 on the invitation of the London impresario Johann Peter Salomon. Having heard in 1791 that Haydn's employer Prince Nikolaus had died, Salomon immediately travelled to Vienna in order to secure Haydn's services, hoping that this time he would be free to accept, and indeed a long trip of a year and a half, for which Haydn composed Nos. 93–98, went ahead in 1791–2 and was hugely successful, so he must have been looking forward to this second trip of a similar duration. For it might seem improbable that the symphonies he would compose for this second trip could exceed in quality and originality those of the first, but exactly this proved to be the case: the enthusiastic welcome he had received, and the high standard of the orchestral playing that he experienced, now inspired him to write the finest and most inventive orchestral music of his life.

Symphony No.99, and the minuets of Nos. 100 and 101, were written in Vienna; all the remainder were written in London. The subsequent history of manuscript sets of parts (of which two out of three are lost) and printed editions (of which we cannot be certain which came first, but the answer may be an arrangement for piano trio) is immensely complex; those relevant to the present survey are listed below.

Many of the nicknames nowadays applied to Haydn's symphonies are of course not authentic, but this one, ‘Military’, can be traced to the programme announcements of the Haydn-Salomon concerts themselves, and appears already immediately after the first performance, so presumably had Haydn's approval.

sources

A  Autograph (1794), in the National Széchényi Library, Budapest; the 2nd movement, and the percussion parts of IV, are missing

(PS  Manuscript parts owned by Salomon, lost)

PX  Manuscript parts by Elssler, copied from A but with revisions in Haydn's hand; this is the primary surviving source for II

See Symphony No.100 above for the background to this masterly set of six symphonies. Though the name ‘Military’ may be deemed authentic, here ‘London’ is somewhat meaningless and dates from the 19th century, possibly reflecting the degree to which this symphony, especially, became popular already from its first performance in 1795. Indeed it possesses a seriousness and sophistication which sets it apart, in terms of stature, from its bedfellows.

sources

A  Autograph (1795), in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin; a facsimile was published by the VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig in 1983

(PS  Manuscript parts owned by Salomon, lost)

PX  Manuscript parts by Elssler, probably copied from A

P  Printed parts by Robert Birchall, London (c.1810, but based on PS, hence authentic); only VcB is missing

Uh  Urtext edition edited by Hubert Unverricht and published in 1963 by G. Henle, München, also issued with Bärenreiter covers; this is a similarly ‘pure’ Urtext to that of No.100 (see above)

Url  Urtext edition by HCRL, published in full score and parts in 1967 by Universal Edition, Vienna, also in their miniature Philharmonia series; this is (like No.100 above) the only edition worth considering for performance

Where both these agree, their combined reading is coded Ur.

In 1954, Douglas Moore (1893–1969) and John Latouche (1914–1956) began working on an opera about the infamous “gold digger” and “homewrecker” Elizabeth “Baby Doe” Tabor (1854–1935). Two years later, the Central City Opera premiered the result, The Ballad of Baby Doe, a work wedded to the age-old binary of the virgin or the whore. The second wife of Colorado silver king Horace Tabor (1830–1899), Baby Doe was known for her beauty and for her ability to wrest Tabor away from his first wife, the devoted and long-suffering Augusta Pierce Tabor (1833–1895). At the outset of The Ballad of Baby Doe, Augusta appears as the respectable woman (the virgin), and Baby Doe as the sexualized other (the whore). Yet as Moore asserted in 1958, The Ballad of Baby Doe is “unusual” because “the golddigger who should be the villain is not”; over the course of the opera, Baby Doe “grows from a little nitwit into a wonderful woman.” Baby Doe transforms, impossible as it may seem, from a whore into a virgin.

The Ballad of Baby Doe has proven Moore's most enduring work. According to Opera America, it is currently the eighth most-performed American opera. The Ballad of Baby Doe also remains closely associated with the voice and career of Beverly Sills (1929–2007), the soprano who helped to popularize the opera and who made the title role her own. When I first began listening to The Ballad of Baby Doe and to Sills, I could not help but wonder from my vantage point in the twenty-first century what had drawn Sills to the title role. Was this soprano, who would go on to have a sensational career, as both an opera singer and administrator, all while raising a family, really so attached to such simplistic narratives of women's experiences and identities? Did Moore's music somehow make up for or gloss over the opera's narrative? To both questions, I think the answer is no. Sills was clearly drawn to Moore's music, but a close examination of her perspective on Baby Doe reveals how she sought to dismantle the dualistic paradigm embedded in The Ballad of Baby Doe. Sills identified with Baby Doe, and she worked, as she put it, to turn her back into “a real woman.”

This was no easy task.