orchestral performance practice revealed in a conservatoire's historic collections

ORCHESTRAL PERFORMANCE PRACTICE REVEALED IN A CONSERVATOIRE'S HISTORICCOLLECTIONSAuthor(s): Angela EscottSource: Fontes Artis Musicae, Vol. 55, No. 3 (July-September 2008), pp. 484-494Published by: International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres(IAML)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23512499 .

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ORCHESTRAL PERFORMANCE PRACTICE REVEALED IN A CONSERVATOIRE'S HISTORIC COLLECTIONS

Angela Escott1

English Abstract The Royal College of Music Library holds a significant collection of orchestral scores and parts from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. This overview of the collection looks at the value of

contemporary orchestral parts and how they can inform performers, editors, and musicologists

about performance practice, conductor's habits, and performance norms over the last 3 centuries.

French Abstract

La bibliothèque du Royal College of Music de Londres possède une collection significative de partitions d'orchestre avec leurs parties allant du 18e au 20e siècle. Ce tour d'horizon de la

collection pointe du doigt la valeur des parties d'orchestre dans leurs époques respectives et ce

qu'elles peuvent apporter aux interprètes, éditeurs et musicologue en termes de règles

d'exécution, usage des chefs d'orchestre, et normes d'interprétation au cours des trois derniers

siècles.

German Abstract

Die Bibliothek des Royal College of Music besitzt einen bedeutenden Bestand an Partituren und

Orchesterstimmen aus der Zeit des 18. bis 20. Jahrhunderts. Dieser Überblick über die

Sammlung lenkt den Blick auf den Wert dieser historischen Aufführungsmaterialien und die

Informationen, die diese den Aufführenden, Herausgebern und Musikwissenschaftlern zur

Aufführungspraxis der vergangenen drei Jahrhunderte liefern können.

'A veritable treasure trove', wrote the Editor of the new Bärenreiter edition of Beethoven's

symphonies, when he consulted the set of first edition parts in the Royal College of Music

library.2 These parts are bound in large volumes for each instrument, along with early edi tion parts of orchestral works by Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, and Spohr. In the course of re

vealing the diversity of the 'treasure trove' of collections of orchestral parts in the Royal College library, this article will discuss the importance of this performing material both to editors of authoritative new editions, and as the most fruitful source of information about performance practices.

1. Angela Escott is Assistant Librarian at the Royal College of Music Library, London, England. This paper was first presented at the 2007 LAML Conference in Sydney, Australia.

2. Jonathan Del Mar, 'A New Discovery Made in the RCM Library', Royal College of Music Magazine, Summer Term (1994), 26-29, 29.

484



ORCHESTRAL PERFORMANCE PRACTICE REVEALED 485

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Illustration 1 Handwritten index to the volume of first edition orchestral parts of Beethoven

and Mozart works in RCM library. Used with permission of the Royal College of Music Library.

Our Walsh editions of Corelli, Handel, and Boyce are the same as those used by King's Music to publish the facsimile editions of parts currently used by period orchestras such as the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. These show as much about eighteenth century performances as the cuts and hand-written parts for additional instruments in Sir Malcolm Sargent's library of orchestral sets reveal about the confidence of conductors to make their own changes to great classics of the orchestral repertoire in the mid twentieth

century. My article is written from the point of view of an orchestral librarian, dealing with the

day-to-day supply of performing materials for orchestras, although I touch upon matters of concern to the music editor and the musicologist. As I researched this article, and also as we moved our library's entire collection of performing sets in preparation for new

shelving, I wondered how future performers, editors, and scholars might interpret the

photocopied bumper parts for horns, trumpets, and trombones, or the numbers of parts in our sets of Corelli facsimile editions, or the number of matching bowed parts in our

Brandenburg Concerto sets. What would all these things tell future generations about

performances of these works in the early twenty-first century and is it the same thing that



486 FONTES ARTIS MUSICAE 55/3

we read from the parts in our historic collections when we ask them about performance

practice in the past? We have not discovered in our vaults, as did the Royal Opera House Covent Garden li

brary, parts with melted candle wax on them, as was the case with the only set of available

parts of Rossini's Semiramide, which was needed for a London Symphony Orchestra

recording of the work.3 Neither do we have an old Breitkopf set of parts of Brahms Sym

phony No. 1 with blackened edges and holes made by players smoking cigarettes at

rehearsal, as was found in the London Symphony Orchestra library.4 But we boast a 'trea

sure trove' of orchestral parts in our own collections at the Royal College.

The RCM Library collections

The special collections of the Royal College of Music library are an amalgamation of a

number of the libraries of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century concert societies, one of

which, the library of the Concert of Ancient Music, was donated by Queen Victoria. To these were added the libraries of Sir George Grove and the Musical Union, over 200 vol

umes of duplicates from the British Museum, and bequests from Arthur Sullivan, Ivor

Novello, and many other individual donors.5 The significant donors of orchestral parts were the societies of the Concert of Ancient Music and The Musical Union, and Philip Joseph Salomons. The Concert of Ancient Music was an aristocratic concert society founded in 1776, whose 'tons of scores and parts' were removed to Buckingham Palace on the demise of the society in 1848.6 Its object was the preservation, by means of regular performances, of the great works of earlier composers, which might otherwise fall into oblivion. No work less than 20 years old could be played at the concerts, which consisted

mainly of the works of Handel, with occasional performances of music by Purcell, J. S. Bach, Hasse, Gluck, Corelli, Geminiani, and Sammartini.7 The Musical Union, from which we also inherited a number of significant sets of parts, was founded in 1845 by John Ella. According to Christina Bashford, this was 'a socially élite concert society (with the Duke of Cambridge as its president) devoted to high-quality performance and serious

contemplation of chamber music; many subscribers were women.'8 Foreign artists such as Vieuxtemps, Piatti and Clara Schumann were engaged by the society.

Among the historic sets of parts we possess from these two societies are:

• Beethoven Symphonies 1-8 • Beethoven Overtures: Leonora (3), Egmont, Coriolan, Prometheus • Mozart Overture: Don Giovanni

3. Thanks to Michael Skinner, former Principal Percussion player of the Royal Opera House Orchestra for

his contribution to this paper. 4. Thanks to Nicholas Hunka, former Contrabassoon player of the London Symphony Orchestra, for this

information.

5. 'Preface' to W. M. Barclay Squire, Catalogue of Printed Music in the Library of the Royal College of Music,

London, London: Novello and Co., 1909.

6. Guy Warrack, Royal College of Music: The First Eighty-Five Years, 1883-1968 (c.1975, unpublished man

uscript), p. 59.

7. Henry Raynor, 'Concert of Ancient [Antient] Music', London, VI, 4: Concert life—Organizations', The

New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie, London: Macmillan, 1980, vol. 11, p. 194.

8. Christina Bashford, 'John Ella', Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed 5 November 2007).




• Mozart Symphonies: including the G minor, K. 183 (Breitkopf no. 25), the G major, K. 199 (no. 27), K. 385 (Haffner), K. 425 (Linz), K. 550 (no. 40), and K. 551 (Jupiter)

• Spohr Overtures, op. 12 and op. 15

The first edition parts of Beethoven overtures and symphonies were used by Jonathan Del Mar for his new Bärenreiter edition of the symphonies. Some wind and brass parts— piccolo, horn 3 and 4, and trombones—are missing from the RCM sets. The extant parts are bound with a bookplate inside the cover indicating the owner's name: Philip Joseph Salomons. Other early editions of Beethoven and Mozart orchestral parts are more lav

ishly bound, with Salomons' name in gold lettering to a leather label on the front of the volume.

Philip Joseph Salomons was an amateur double-bass player, and a pupil of the double bass virtuoso Domenico Dragonetti. The wealthy London banker and amateur cellist, Sir David Salomons, possibly Philip Joseph Salomons' father, commissioned Gioachino Rossini to write the Duetto in D major for cello and double bass in 1824. The double-bass

part was written for Philip Joseph.9 The autograph of the bass part is in the Royal College of Music Library, with the inscription on the title page: 'Duet for cello and bass composed for Mr Philip Joseph Salomons'.10

Included in the volumes with the Beethoven Symphonies are Mozart Overtures and

Symphonies, and Spohr Overtures. Other volumes include Haydn Symphonies and Schubert Overtures. Our eighteenth-century editions (many first editions, published by Walsh or Longman) include:

• J. C. Bach: 3 Symphonies • Dittersdorf: Symphonies • Stamitz: Symphonies or Overtures • Myslivecek: : 6 Overtures • C. Abel: 6 Symphonies • Arne: 8 Overtures • Boyce: 8 Symphonies (published in London, by Welker, Walsh or Longman)

as well as parts of Boyce, already mentioned, Geminiani, Handel, Sammartini, Stamitz, John Stanley, Tartini, Viotti, Vivaldi, and Wassenaer. The Boyce, Wassenaer, and Corelli are identical editions to those used by the publisher King's Music, who publish facsimile and Urtext editions of early music. More recent sets of historic interest include out

of-print or manuscript sets of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British

composers—Hubert Parry, Charles Villiers Stanford, Samuel Coleridge Taylor, William

Hurlstone, Stanley Bate, and R.O. Morris. Works by these latter composers are being

revived, and recordings are beginning to be made.

In addition to these historic sets of orchestral parts, the college possesses a collection

of 2000 performance sets in current use.

Sir Malcolm Sargent's library was given to the college following his death in 1967.

Sargent is perhaps best known as conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1950

to 1957 , and was chief conductor of the Promenade Concerts between 1948 and 1967.11

9. Fiona M. Palmer, Domenico Dragonetti in England (1794-1846): The Career of a Double Bass Virtuoso,

Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997, p. 103.

10. RCM MS 1010.

11. Richard Aldous, Tunes of Glory: The Life of Malcolm Sargent, London: Hutchinson, 2001, pp. xiii-xiv.




Illustration 2 Leather label showing ownership of Philip Joseph Salomons on eighteenth- and

early nineteenth-century orchestral parts in RCM library. Used with permission of the Royal

College of Music Library.

He was particularly successful with large choirs, and is remembered for his performances of large choral works. He conducted the Royal Choral Society and Huddersfield Choral

Society, two of the United Kingdom's best-known large choruses. The singers admired

his charm, film-star looks, and immaculate style, but orchestral players were not so im

pressed with him, giving him the perforative nickname of 'Flash Harry'.12 He made ill

judged remarks in the press recommending yearly contracts for orchestral musicians and

pensions only after a life-long commitment to playing.13 The Australian Broadcasting Commission invited him to conduct in five states, and make a report on the future of

music-making in Australia.14 He reached Sydney Harbour in September 1936, having trav elled by sea first to Quebec and Vancouver, and then New Zealand.15 At that time, the

Sydney Orchestra numbered forty-five players, and the Melbourne thirty-five. They com

12. Ibid., p. 19.

13. Ibid., p. 81.

14. Ibid., p. 85.

15. Ibid., p. 86.




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bined to perform large-scale works. Sargent brought them discipline and glamour. He ar rived at the first rehearsal in double-breasted pinstripe suit with a carnation in the lapel. Brass players mocked him by wearing toffee apples in their lapels after the first break. He behaved like a schoolmaster, made the players sit up straight in their chairs, and only section principals were allowed to talk.16

He conducted the first performance of Walton's Belshazzar's Feast as a young conduc tor at the Leeds Triennial Festival. The older and experienced Sir Thomas Beecham, artis tic director of the festival, chose not to conduct this new and difficult work. The festival chorus is alleged to have refused to sing it, and Beecham dispatched the young Sargent to charm the choir, and 'knock sense into them'.17 The parts of this first performance are in the Royal College library. Beecham's eagerness to avoid conducting new and difficult repertoire was repeated by Sargent in later life, when he allowed younger conductors to take over promenade concerts with serialist compositions.18 Although he championed

16. Ibid., pp. 86-7.

17. Charles Reid, Malcolm Sargent: a Biography (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1968), p. 201. 18. Ibid., p. 407.




new composers as a younger man, his choice of repertoire in later years was the late

Romantics, Dvorak, Sibelius, and earlier twentieth-century British composers such as

Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Hoist and Walton. His interest in contemporary music did not stretch beyond Britten and Shostakovich.19 The scores in Sargent's library include Shosta kovich symphonies up to No. 12, and Symphony No. 5 is signed with greetings from the

composer. There are, of course, scores of British twentieth-century composers in his col lection who have largely disappeared from the modern concert scene—George Dyson, Samuel Coleridge Taylor, E. J. Moeran, Edmund Rubbra. There are also scores by Arthur

Honegger (King David) and Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2.

Dance Band Collections

We also hold substantial collections of twentieth-century dance band and salon orchestra

music, which are not yet properly catalogued, despite attempts to find the funding to do this.

• Geraldo dance band (3600 titles) • Bridgewater salon and dance band (500) • Joe Loss (1800 arrangements) • Victor Sylvester ballroom orchestra (200) • Cavendish light classical orchestral arrangements

Geraldo (Gerald W. Bright) was employed with his dance orchestra to supply music for the BBC and for ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association) to entertain the

military and civilians during the war. The music includes Cole Porter medleys, Sousa

marches, Latin American dance music, and early twentieth-century popular songs such as 'A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square'. Joe Loss's band played for silent movies, in London's Astoria Ballroom, and began broadcasting in 1933, featuring soloists including Vera Lynn. It toured UK ballrooms during the Second World War and includes Glenn Miller arrangements in its library. The Cavendish Music Library includes pot-pourri arrangements of music from operas, especially overtures, and classical dance, for exam

ple Strauss Waltzes. It was used by theatre and cinema pit orchestras from 1900, to pro vide music on seaside piers, cruise ships, for Palm Court orchestras, and silent films. The music was for sale and hire.

The Value of Orchestra Parts

I want to consider why these collections of parts are of value to the performer and to the

musicologist and editor. What do these parts reveal about orchestral performance prac tice from the eighteenth to twentieth century, and why do performers prefer to play from facsimile copies of the eighteenth-century parts?

Orchestral parts as a source of information about performance practice

Knowing the number of parts printed as a set, or kept together as a library set, gives an idea of how the work was performed, and the bass parts give information about the

19. Ronald Crichton. 'Sargent, Sir (Harold) Malcolm (Watts)', Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed 6 November 2007).




continuo practice. No scores were published with the parts in the eighteenth century. Richard Maunder, in his book on the Baroque Concerto, suggests that concerti grossi would have been performed one to a part, as chamber music, at least until 1740.20 Some

modern facsimile publishers still follow this practice, often to the despair of the orchestral

librarian. If you purchase facsimile parts from King's Music, for example, you will then

will have to find another publisher for the score since King's Music will not supply it. The parts can also give us information about the continuo players. If the bass is figured,

a chordal instrument would realize the harmony. The instruction 'violone o cembalo', Maunder suggests, could mean 'and/or', i.e., to be performed on string bass AND harp sichord or to be performed on string bass OR harpsichord.21 Evidence, often from the

parts themselves, suggests that different practices were current at different times and

places. The players want to use facsimile copies of these first edition parts because they want to make their own decisions about how to interpret the parts. For example, decisions

about double dotting, and whether dotted rhythms should be continued where they are

not indicated in the parts. In some Leclair works, the double sharp moving to a single

sharp is indicated by a natural sign. Some composer's marks, such as the wavy line in

Lully's Suite from Isis, and in Purcell's King Arthur poses questions for the performer as

to the composer's intention. Lionel Sawkins discusses this in relation to his editions of

Lully.22 Editors of modern editions transcribe these as slurs but the informed performer is

concerned about how accurately these are placed, and how long they should be.23

Names inscribed on parts can provide helpful information to the scholar of perfor mances at the time. The Royal College of Music library owns a substantial collection of

scores, parts, and writings by the eighteenth-century composer, theorist, and organist of

Westminster Abbey, Benjamin Cooke. The manuscript parts of one of his anthems for

soloists, SATB choir and orchestra, are inscribed on the covers with the names of per formers. All the vocal parts have names of singers written on the covers, and the first desk

of first violins is inscribed with the name 'Cramer'.24 A search of Grove Music Online re

vealed a violinist Wilhelm Cramer, born in Mannheim in 1746 , and a member of the

Mannheim Orchestra until he arrived in London in 1772 where he led the Italian opera and the Concerts of Ancient Music.25 The latter fact linked with the provenance of the

Benjamin Cooke collection.

Players continue to write their names on their orchestral parts. The principal percus sion player of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden orchestra, has found signatures on

the front of parts borrowed by and from other opera houses around the world. The Royal

Opera House lent or hired parts of Aida to the Cairo Opera House, and the percussion

parts came back with 'Felicitous greetings from Abdul'. And of course helpful perfor mance instructions, and timings, in addition to cartoons of the conductors, have been

found on these parts.

20. Richard Maunder, The Scoring of Baroque Concertos, Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2004, p. 1.

21. Ibid., p. 2.

22. Lionel Sawkins, 'Trembleurs and Cold People: How Should They Shiver?', Performing the Music of Henry

Purcell, edited by Michael Burden, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 243-64.

23. With thanks to Adrian Butterfield for insights from his experience of playing with period orchestras.

24. RCM MS 826.

25. Simon McKeigh: Wilhelm Cramer' Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed 7 November 2007).




The Editor's View.

Jonathan Del Mar, editor of Bärenreiter's new edition of Beethoven's symphonies em

phasises the importance of using orchestral parts rather than just the score as a source for an edition. The composer would make alterations at early rehearsals, which were noted in parts, but not always in the score, yet the publishers used the score to make the

edition. The scores therefore don't always match the parts. Jonathan Del Mar's father, the conductor Norman Del Mar, in his book Orchestral Variations itemises the cases of

particularly significant works in the orchestral repertoire where major variants exist be tween editions, and between parts and scores. Jonathan's editing developed from the work he did with his father, conductor, Norman Del Mar, on these discrepancies.

Jonathan Del Mar suggests that there is a lot to learn also from orchestral parts about

performance practice. The Royal College's parts of Beethoven's Symphony No. 8 confirm the incorporation of an important revision in the last movement—which Del Mar shows in a page from the timpani part.26 A page from the RCM-reprinted first edition of the viola

part of the Eroica Symphony, reproduced in the Critical Commentary, confirms Beetho ven's removal of two contested bars in the first movement.27 Del Mar reproduces the horn 2 part of the first symphony in his Critical Commentary, noting the succession of tied notes joined by one vague slur.28

Hand-written letters and bowings only began to be added to parts from the 1860s. We also find that manuscript parts may have no markings, leading to the perhaps erroneous conclusion that works were not rehearsed. Orchestras would have used the manuscript parts and bought printed parts later. The Eroica Symphony manuscript parts were used

up to 1870 and the first edition parts of other symphonies used up to 1880. Before 1834, Jonathan Del Mar observes, there were no rehearsal letters in parts. He

says that these were invented by Spohr. Bar numbers came later—in about 1920. How was it possible to rehearse without these? Del Mar suggests the players always had to return

to the beginning of a work. An 1809 letter in an English music journal, according to Del

Mar, complains that when the oboe or flute gets out the leader has to start the players again at the beginning. There is no mention of a conductor.

Del Mar makes interesting observations about bowing, from his experience of using parts for his editing. No bowings are to be found in parts used for performances of Beethoven's symphonies. The first printed bowings are to be found in 1874 in Bruckner's

Symphony No. 4. The bowing there was stipulated by the composer, with down bows used at essential moments.

An orchestral player, again from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, gives another view than the editor. He warns of the strong possibility for error in final printed parts, from his own experience. This may apply particularly to opera, and many orchestral and

opera librarians have discussed the subject of errors in Ricordi opera parts.29 The Royal Opera House Percussion Principal tells of an example at the end of Verdi's Ealstaff where

26. Ludwig Van Beethoven; Symphonie nr. 8 in F-dur op. 93: Critical Commentary, edited by Jonathan Del

Mar, Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1997, p. 13.

27. Ludwig Van Beethoven; Symphonie nr. 3 in Es-dur op. 55 "Eroica": Critical Commentary, edited by Jonathan Del Mar, Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1997, p. 12.

28. Ludwig Van Beethoven; Symphonie nr. 1 in C-dur op. 21: Critical Commentary, edited by Jonathan Del

Mar, Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1997, p. 3.

29. Private communication, Robert Sutherland, Librarian of the Metropolitan Opera, New York.




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there is an indication in the part for a bass drum and a cymbal roll above a timpani roll.

Experience tells the player that the sound is very unsuitable, at this point.

Performance Practice in the Twentieth Century

Sir Malcolm Sargent's orchestral library is of interest for what it shows about mid

twentieth-century performance of classics of the orchestral repertoire. It reveals a self confidence and lack of respect for the composer's original intentions that would shock crit ics and audiences now, who are used to performances which make use of urtext and facsimile editions, and are informed by research into historic performance practice.

Sargent added clarinets to Bach's B Minor Mass, and silenced the bassoons in the last chord of Elgar's Nimrod from the Enigma Variations because he did not like the rough sound.30 The parts of Bach's Cantata no. 140 have clarinet parts doubling the oboes, trom bones added to the final chorale, and trumpets 3 and 4 added to the first chorus. Sargent performed this work with a very large choir, almost certainly in the Royal Albert Hall, and a larger orchestra would have been required to balance the choir. The trombone parts for

Haydn's The Creation are heavily edited. He added a flute 3 part to Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 in addition to the piccolo, and a clarinet 3 part is to be found in Beethoven's Sym phony No. 9, which is an edited copy of the first clarinet part. This can be considered a

bumper part, and shows that practice at Sargent's time was not very different from now for the purpose of using doubling in the wind and brass. Large symphony orchestras— The London Symphony Orchestra for example—use doubled woodwind and brass in Beethoven's Symphonies Nos 3, 7 and 9. Four oboes are used in the tuttis to give extra

weight to balance the large string sections. This would not happen in a chamber orches tra where the string section is smaller. In practice, the principal oboe in the large orches tra will not play in the tuttis, to save his/her lip—these are tiring works for the oboes. The principal players will then preserve themselves for the important solos.31 Furtwängler

marked these doublings in his scores, and Sir Malcolm Sargent clearly followed this prac tice, because his parts include doubled/edited parts for additional wind and brass players.

The Royal College of Music's historic collections of orchestral parts have not been cat

alogued online yet, nor has any research been undertaken into their provenance apart from the little noted here. I am confident that when they become more widely publicised by being catalogued on the College's online catalogue, they will become an even more im

portant resource for editors and musicologists than has already been the case.

30. Thanks to Colin Bradbury, who played for many years under the baton of Sir Malcolm Sargent, in the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

31. Thanks for this information to Roy Carter, who has been Principal Oboe in both the London Symphony Orchestra and the Northern Sinfonia.



orchestral performance practice revealed in a conservatoire's historic collections

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