Preserving Berkeley’s work at the British Library

Music librarian and Berkeley scholar Joan Redding presents to the British Library a significant collection of Berkeley manuscripts and scores

1. Holograph of pp. 3 and 4 of an article by Berkeley about communicating through music. This could be the piece he wrote for the series ‘A Composer Speaks’ published in Composer No 43 (Spring 1972), pp 17-19.

2. Magnificat – full score, Chester hire copy, with many performance annotations in pencil. Joan Redding thinks these may be the composer’s own, dating from the first performance which he conducted at St Paul’s Cathedral on 8 July 1968. But some may be by another hand, as there is a receipt from Birmingham where the work had a subsequent performance.

3. Symphony No 2 – a bound photocopy of the full score, possibly the original version of 1958, with some annotations.

4. Castaway – copy of full score; binding in poor condition. First page has the title written in the composer’s own hand, in pencil, and there are extensive holograph overlays.

5. Miniature score of Nocturne for Orchestra (1945-6), with a pencilled note on the front, in the composer’s hand, ‘I talk regaining’, possibly dating from Berkeley’s final, confused years.

6. Piano arrangement by August Stradal of an organ concerto by W. F. Bach, with autograph annotations (possibly by Nadia Boulanger?), and an autograph overlay which may be in Berkeley’s hand.

7. Printed score of A Dinner Engagement, with copious annotations, possibly from the première conducted by Vilem Tausky at Aldeburgh on 17 June 1954.

Sir Lennox Berkeley, at home at 8 Warwick Avenue, London, late 1970s (Photography Clive Barda). A print of this excellent and rarely-seen portrait study has been kindly presented to the Berkeley family archive by the violinist Peter Sheppard Skaerved, who, as an undergraduate, gave a performance of Berkeley’s Violin Concerto in London on the occasion of the composer’s 85th birthday in 1988.
Sir Lennox Berkeley, at home at 8 Warwick Avenue, London, late 1970s (Photography Clive Barda). A print of this excellent and rarely-seen portrait study has been kindly presented to the Berkeley family archive by the violinist Peter Sheppard Skaerved, who, as an undergraduate, gave a performance of Berkeley’s Violin Concerto in London on the occasion of the composer’s 85th birthday in 1988.

8. Two matching blue-grey Manuscript Books:

i) Marked (in pencil) ‘Clefs (2) L.-M. d’Eppinghoven’ [Lennox’s cousin Louise-Marie-Alexandrine baronne d’Eppinghoven (‘Lison’), born in 1894, the daughter of an illegitimate son of King Leopold I of the Belgians, and goddaughter of King Ferdinand of Bulgaria, died 1966]. As Joan Redding notes, most of the pieces are student exercises in the style of classical composers, in a variety of forms, with Lison’s name written at the top of each, and dates ranging from ‘Menton Mars 1917’ to ‘St. Sébastien décembre 1918’. All are in pencil, except Prélude, dated ‘Menton Avril 1917’ and entitled ‘Le bateau qui passe’, and another, on a separate sheet, marked ‘moderato’; on the reverse of this last work is a piece called Berceuse with the composer’s name given at the top as ‘C. Braïloï’ [possibly Ravel’s school friend, Constantin Brăiloiu].

ii) Marked (in pencil), ‘Compositions (piano)’. Again all are in pencil, and these too seem to be student exercises – probably by Lison d’Eppinghoven herself, ‘although’, Joan Redding observes, ‘the last one, Berceuse, has some interesting experimental harmonies which might be by Berkeley’. If Lison is the composer – and chronologically it is possible, for she would have been in her mid-twenties at the time of the pieces bearing dates – then it is interesting to speculate the extent to which she might have encouraged, even influenced, Lennox in his own early forays into composition. He would have seen Lison’s work, and discussed it with her, during their shared childhood in the South of France. Both Manuscript Books probably came into Lennox’s possession, along with some of Lison’s books and other belongings, following her death in Belgium in 1966.

9. Open Flat Manuscript Book, containing a piano reduction by Christopher Slater, in pencil, of the Concertino [corrected inside as Concerto] for Guitar and Chamber Orchestra.

10. Yellow Manuscript Book containing pencilled scraps of music; hand undetectable.

11. First proof of Chester’s score of Quartet for Oboe, Violin, Viola and Cello, corrected by ‘J.C.’

12. Holograph, in blue ink, of Toccata (1925), dedicated to J. F. Waterhouse.

13. Holograph, in black ink, of Lay your sleeping head my love (words by W. H. Auden), dedicated ‘To Benjamin’, with copious overlays, suggesting considerable changes of mind. This is the manuscript described by Stewart Craggs (Lennox Berkeley – A source book, Ashgate, 2000, p. 194) as ‘Present location: Private collection [of Joan Redding herself, as she researched her Berkeley publications] but due to go to the British Library as LOAN 101.92j’.

14. Fragment of piano score of Berkeley’s last, and uncompleted opera, Faldon Park, in pencil.

15. Fragment, on a single sheet of manuscript, in pencil, of song with words, ‘Look stranger’.

16. Holograph, in blue ink, with autograph annotations in pencil (and some by another hand), of Salve Regina. Again Craggs (p. 238) writes, ‘Present location: Private collection [see note in Item 13] but due to go to the British Library as LOAN 101.95m’.

17. Fragment, in black ink on a single sheet marked ‘5’, of a work for chamber orchestra, but ‘6’ is ruled up for a larger orchestra.