Recording helps in saving Coronation Fanfares

From the Craven Herald, a small weekly newspaper in the Yorkshire dales, England............

WHEN orchestra directors hit a major snag in their plans to replicate the music of the Queen's Coronation as part of this year's 50th anniversary celebrations, they turned to a distinguished musician from Craven.

The New Queen's Hall Orchestra wanted total authenticity for its forthcoming concerts of the Coronation music - which has never been played as a complete programme since its only performance in Westminster Abbey on June 2 1953.

But, after dusting off the country's greatest collection of state music, there were two major problems - five invaluable fanfares had gone missing and there was no orchestral score for key vocal sections.

'There were never any plans for this music to be played again so the fanfares were never published,' said the orchestra's artistic director John Boyden. 'They only ever existed as original handwritten manuscripts and we could find no trace of them.'

So Mr Boyden turned to Embsay composer and conductor Arthur Butterworth, who spent his early career as a classical trumpeter and had first-hand experience of the pre-war orchestral style in which the NQHO performs.

'The fanfares were mainly short pieces of two to three minutes and some were just little flourishes,' explained Mr Butterworth. 'They were very effective and to lose them would have been a real blow.

'It was thought they would be fairly easy to trace but we had quite a job on our hands. The problem was no-one ever envisaged another performance.'

The Royal Library at Windsor had no idea where the fanfares were. Neither had the Royal College of Music. The Royal Academy and Westminster Abbey were as mystified as EMI, the BBC and publishing house Novello.

But Mr Butterworth remembered that trumpeters from the Royal Military School of Music had been involved in the Coronation - so he contacted the archivist at Kneller Hall in Twickenham.

Within days the original manuscripts arrived at his home - tattered, torn, pale and faded. He transcribed them and set about making a set of 14 parts for horns, trumpets, trombones and timpani.

Then, helped by his acquaintance with the former Westminster Abbey organist Sir Ernest Bullock who wrote the fanfares, Mr Butterworth tracked down further manuscripts and, after studying an original recording of the coronation, painstakingly rescored them for orchestra.

'In effect Arthur put this music together backwards,' said Mr Boyden. 'He started with the words and then recreated the music - despite hearing it, for the first time, 50 years after the event. Without the fanfares, we would have a much diminished event.'

Mr Butterworth was given a standing ovation at the first concert at Fairfields Hall, Croydon, narrated by Sir Bernard Ingham. A second concert was due to take place at Guildford Cathedral last night (Thursday).

But even though the project is now complete there will be no sitting back for Mr Butterworth, who celebrates his 80th birthday this summer.

He has just completed his fifth symphony, which will be premiered in Manchester in October, he has been commissioned to write a new piece of music for the tuba, he teaches a potential conductor at Skipton's Ermysted's Grammar School and lectures in band mastership at Accrington and Rossendale College.

Asked whether he ever planned to retire, he said: 'Oh no although I would like to do other things, such as more painting.'

Very interesting. As it happens, I have a CDR of Arthur Butterworth's Symphony #3 ('Sinfonia Borealis' with Bryden Thomsen and the BBC Northern Sinfonia Orchestra that a friend taped some years ago. I really should bring it out and listen to it someday.

'Arthur Butterworth' is also the name of the person I believe to have been '# 1' at The Village. However, he dies offstage before #6's interrogation is begun. Someday I've got to remember to take my 'Prisoner' theory and put it on my Website.

On 16 Jun 2003 03:10:08 GMT, 'Matthew B. Tepper (posts from uswest.net

This is off topic, but have you read Thomas M. Disch's novelization of 'The Prisoner'? I've never seen the TV show or read the book, but I recently saw the Disch novel at the bookstore (I think it was just recently brought back into print), and I was intrigued. I'm a big fan of Disch's SF novels, but I've never been a big fan of SF spin-off books. Is it any good?

following letters to be typed in

The Disch is a mumble-jumble stream-of-unconsciousness story which lurches from scene to scene. Far better is the second 'Prisoner' novel, _Number Two_, by the late David McDaniel (who was a friend of mine).

In one of McDaniel's straight science fiction stories, he has a radio station play a recording of a piece of mine. ;