{"id":417,"date":"2013-07-13T05:51:14","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T05:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.geraldgarcia.com\/wordpress\/?p=417"},"modified":"2013-07-13T09:53:06","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T09:53:06","slug":"free-mp3-of-recently-discovered-britten-unheard-since-1937","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/?p=417","title":{"rendered":"Free mp3 of recently discovered Britten, unheard since 1937"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roman Wall Blues<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0was written to be performed as part of W.H. Auden\u2019s radio play,\u00a0Hadrian\u2019s Wall, which was aired from Newcastle on 25 November 1937. The original broadcast, like much live radio at the time, does not survive, but the script does: It is a delightfully and unashamedly educational play about the history of the\u00a0 wall, framed by the device of a family\u2019s day trip to the fort at Housesteads. The broadcast went, reported Britten in his diary entry for the day, \u201cfearfully badly\u201d. But, he added: \u201cThere\u2019s good stuff in it I know.\u201d The critic of the Listener agreed, admiring the \u201cterrific vitality\u201d of the music. She also noted \u2013 the broadcast was of course live \u2013 \u201can uncomfortable pause during which an actor was told in several very audible whispers to turn to page three\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"RomanWallBlues_cover\"<\/p>\n

Britten\u2019s music was\u00a0<\/em>tho<\/em>ught lost, until 2005, when a handwritten copy of the vocal line turned up in the possession of a 99-year-old former employee of the Bank of England, who had been part of the local choir brought in to sing it. In the end, the choir wasn\u2019t used for\u00a0Roman Wall Blues\u00a0\u2013 at the last minute, a crooner from a Newcastle dance hall, whose voice was felt to be more appropriate to the material, was roped in. The music is very bluesy indeed: mournful, bitter-sweet, with shades of Gershwin\u2019s\u00a0It Ain\u2019t Necessarily So\u00a0(Porgy and Bess\u00a0hadn\u2019t yet had its British premiere, but Britten may have heard some of the songs on a 1935 RCA Victor recording). Composer Colin Matthews, who was Britten\u2019s assistant in the 1970s, has completed a piano accompaniment to the song
\n(Charlotte Higgins)
\n<\/em>
\nThis link<\/a> will ask for your email address to which it will then send a link to the download.<\/p>\n

NMC Recordings<\/b><\/a>\u00a0is a British recording label which specialises in recording works by living British composers. Quaintly, NMC stands for “New Music Cassettes”, which refers to the intended main means of packaging its recordings at the time. Its catalogue reads like a Who’s Who of contemporary British composers.
\n\"MusicGuitarists<\/span><\/span> should be acquainted with\u00a0<\/span>Antonis Hatzinikolaou’s\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>adventurous recording project on this label, <\/span>Music of Memory<\/a>\u00a0featuring Nicholas Maw’s<\/a> massive work of the same name and music by Fricker, Northcott, Taylor, Bray and McCabe – names to conjure with!<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/span>
\nOf course, this year is the centenary of Benjamin Britten’<\/a>s birth and we should expect to hear more from the recording labels.
\nGuitarists will no doubt be playing the Nocturnal and Songs from the Chinese (e.g. Xuefei’s Britten Songs<\/a>), and guitar groups, eager to join in the fray will be airing the Simple Symphony and Dances from Gloriana (e.g. NYGE at West Dean<\/a> and Vida Quartet<\/a>, who have been assiduously practising Simple Symphony in my shed!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Roman Wall Blues\u00a0\u00a0was written to be performed as part of W.H. Auden\u2019s radio play,\u00a0Hadrian\u2019s Wall, which was aired from Newcastle on 25 November 1937. The original broadcast, like much live radio at the time, does not survive, but the script … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":247767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,77],"tags":[124,115,132,130,133,126,127,116,128,129,131],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=417"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":423,"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417\/revisions\/423"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/247767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}