Nigel Simeone

One of the greatest and most original composers of the early twentieth century, Leos Janácek (1854-1928) occupied a pre-eminent position in Moravian culture, not only as a composer but also as a folksong collector, journalist, educator and nationalist. His friends and associates included artists, writers, ethnographers and politicians, as well as conductors, singers and instrumentalists. Janácek'smany pupils included the conductor Bretislav Bakala and the composer Pavel Haas. He had important associations with publishers in Vienna and Prague and with the earliest years of Czech Radio. Janácekwas strongly attached to particular places - Hukvaldy, Brno, Luhacovice - and had professional links with Prague, Berlin, London and beyond. The Janácek Compendium includes nearly 300 entrieson every aspect of Janácek's life and works, with detailed notes on all his significant compositions - above all the operas - providing the latest information to emerge about some of his most famous pieces. An extensive bibliography supports the entries, which are cross-referenced to enable wider exploration of particular topics.

Jiří Zahradka, director of the Janáček Archive in Brno, writes: "This Compendium represents a book that has been conspicuously absent from the Janáček literature. It is quick and straightforward to find all of the important information on Janáček's life and works, including key personalities and editions. Everything essential is here, supported by an admirably thorough and up-to-date bibliography. As always, Nigel Simeone's work is of the highest quality, and this publication is a must for all musicologists, opera lovers and admirers of Janáek's extraordinary music."

Edited by Nigel Simeone and John Tyrrell.

By the time of his death in 2010 at the age of 84, Sir Charles Mackerras had achieved widespread recognition, recorded extensively and developed into a conductor of major international significance. In addition to areas in which he already had forged a distinctive and definitive profile (Janacek, Mozart, Handel, Sullivan) he revisited - and rethought - much of the standard repertoire. The last thirty years were particularly momentous in the coming to fruition of so many cherished projects: not only the Janacek operas but the Gilbert and Sullivan series, the Mozart operas, the two Beethoven cycles, other projects with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (Schumann and Brahms at Edinburgh; the outstanding late Mozart) and at the Royal Opera House and the Met. Unspoilt by fame, and undeterred by personal tragedies and increasing physical frailty, he remained productive and inventive: for him music-making, whether with world-class professionals or with students, was a kind of joyous oxygen that kept him going right to the end.
A detailed narrative account of his life by Nigel Simeone is complemented by chapters written by performers and scholars who worked closely with him: Alfred Brendel, Dame Janet Baker, David Lloyd-Jones, Dame Anne Evans, Sir Antonio Pappano, Sir Nicholas Hytner, John Tyrrell and Jiri Zahradka. There are also chapters based on interviews with his family. The book is illustrated with photographs, both informal and professional, and is supplemented by an up-to-date discography, by listings of all the performances of Janacek operas Sir Charles conducted and of all his concerts in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic. While Sir Charles' whole life is considered, emphasis is given to his final quarter century in which so many important projects were realized. This book celebrates and epitomizes an exceptional life.

NIGEL SIMEONE has published books on Janacek, Messiaen and Bernstein.
JOHN TYRRELL has published books on Janacek and Czech opera and, with Sir Charles Mackerras, edited two Janacek operas.

Contributors: Janet Baker, Alfred Brendel, Ales Brezina, Rosenna East, Anne Evans, Nicholas Hytner, Simon Keenlyside, David Lloyd-Jones, David Mackie, Chi-chi Nwanoku, Antonio Pappano, Nigel Simeone, John Stein, Heinz Stolba, Patrick Summers, John Tyrrell, Malcolm Walker, David Whelton, Jiri Zahradka

Contents

    1  Charles Mackerras: A Chronology
    2  Janet Baker - Prologue: A Eulogy for Charles
    3  Nigel Simeone - An Immense Stylist Evolves: 1947-87
    4  David Lloyd-Jones - A Personal Portrait of Charles Mackerras
    5  John Tyrrell - Mackerras and Janáček
    6  Heinz Stolba - Goat's Milk in Vienna: Three Memorable Meetings
    7  Patrick Summers - The Lion: Charles Mackerras
    8  Nigel Simeone - 'The Musical Values of Opera': WNO, 1987-92
    9  John Stein - Remembering Charles in Wales
    10  Nigel Simeone - Triumphs and Tribulations: Opera, 1993-2001
    11  Anne Evans - 'Impeccable musicianship and enthusiasm for whatever he did'
    12  Nigel Simeone - Rethinking Old Favourites: Opera, 2002-10
    13  Antonio Pappano - Viva Charlie!
    14  Simon Keenlyside - A Master of Mozart
    15  Nicholas Hytner - Three Memorable Collaborations
    16  Jiří Zahrádka - The last great 'Czech' conductor
    17  Jiří Zahrádka - Reminiscences of a friend and colleague
    18  Aleš Březina - Reconstructing a Better Version of The Greek Passion
    19  David Mackie - Reconstructing Sullivan's Cello Concerto
    20  Nigel Simeone - Three Orchestras
    21  Chi-chi Nwanoku - 'And there was Light!' Sir Charles and the OAE
    22  Rosenna East - An Electric Entrance
    23  Alfred Brendel - On Sir Charles Mackerras
    24  David Whelton - Sir Charles at the Philharmonia
    25  Nigel Simeone - Coda
    26  Appendix 1: Mackerras in Performance
    27  Nigel Simeone - Appendix 2: Desert Island Lists
    28  Malcolm Walker - Discography
    29  Bibliography
    30  Editions and Arrangements by Charles Mackerras

Leonard Bernstein was a charismatic and versatile musician—a brilliant conductor who attained international super-star status, and a gifted composer of Broadway musicals (West Side Story), symphonies (Age of Anxiety), choral works (Chichester Psalms), film scores (On the Waterfront), and much more. Bernstein was also an enthusiastic letter writer, and this book is the first to present a wide-ranging selection of his correspondence. The letters have been selected for the insights they offer into the passions of his life—musical and personal—and the extravagant scope of his musical and extra-musical activities.  Bernstein’s letters tell much about this complex man, his collaborators, his mentors, and others close to him. His galaxy of correspondents encompassed, among others, Aaron Copland,Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Robbins, Thornton Wilder, Boris Pasternak, Bette Davis, Adolph Green, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and family members including his wife Felicia and his sister Shirley. The majority of these letters have never been published before. They have been carefully chosen to demonstrate the breadth of Bernstein’s musical interests, his constant struggle to find the time to compose, his turbulent and complex sexuality, his political activities, and his endless capacity for hard work. Beyond all this, these writings provide a glimpse of the man behind the legends: his humanity, warmth, volatility, intellectual brilliance, wonderful eye for descriptive detail, and humor.

From Ashgate's description:
One of the Broadway musicals that can genuinely claim to have transformed the genre, West Side Story has been featured in many books on Broadway, but it has yet to be the focus of a scholarly monograph. Nigel Simeone begins by exploring the long process of creating West Side Story, including a discussion of Bernstein's sketches, early drafts of the score and script, as well as cut songs.

The core of the book is the commentary on the music itself. West Side Story is one of the very few Broadway musicals for which there is a complete published orchestral score, as well as two different editions of the piano-vocal score, the second a thorough revision of the musical text (2000). This enables an examination of the music that can consider orchestration (done in part by Bernstein himself) as well as other aspects of the score. Simeone's commentary considers: musical characteristics and compositional techniques used to mirror the drama (for example, the various uses of the tritone), motivic development, the use and reinvention of Broadway and other conventions, the creation of dramatic continuity in the score through the use of motifs and other devices, the unusual degree of dissonance and rhythmic complexity (at least for the time), and the integration of Latin-American dance forms (Mambo, Huapango and so on).

Simeone also considers the reception of West Side Story in the contemporary press. The stir the show caused included the response that it was the angular, edgy score that made it a remarkable achievement. Not all reviews were uncritical. The book also looks at the making of the original Broadway cast recording.

Reviews:
"Nigel Simeone's new study of West Side Story is a model of how the musical should be written about. It's both chatty and scholarly; it is the first book to go back to the original sources and explore Bernstein's music in depth; and it tells the backstage story of the show's creation more rigorously than any other account of the show. One come away with an incomparable understanding of the show's concerns, and nobody with an interest in the Broadway musical should be without it" (Music Teacher, May 2010).

"This study of West Side Story...is the first in Ashgate's Landmarks in Music series to move outside Europe. It subjects that quintessentially American form, musical theatre, to the same rigourous analysis...and does so to great effect. Nigel Simeone is a graceful and engaging guide. His admirably brief but comprehensive work explores the nature of the genre, the specifics of musical theatre, the financing and construction of a show and most rewardingly, looks at the process of orchestration and close-reads the score... The revealing interviews debunk some of Bernstein's later inflationary rhetoric, as when he claimed he built the score tightly around the tritone. Sondheim's response is a brisk "nonsense": how could it have been when "half the score was taken from other shows?" A final bonus is the original cast CD included with the book, with brings to life an already vibrantly engaging text" (Times Literary Supplement, 11 June 1010).

"...Going back to original sources - many never before accessed - and with new interviews with surviving participants, Simeone delves deep into both process and product to produce fresh information and new insights. The chapter unpicking and re-threading the score is worth the price of the book alone. Writing with a journalist's flair for storytelling and a scholar's concern for forensic detail, Simeone has produced an immensely readable analysis that immediately establishes itself as the critical reference point for a work that transfomed the sound, and, arguably, the point and purpose of the Broadway musical...The addition of the original Broadway cast recording is a marvellous bonus and an essential companion to this rich, remarkable and altogether recommendable book." (Classical Music Magazine, February 2010).

"Quite aside from the depth of the insights made by the author Nigel Simeone on nearly every page, the reason why this book represents a significant new contribution to the literature on the Broadway musical is that it is much more thorough in its discussion of primary resources than almost any other study I can think of. The result is that we gain a completely new understanding of its chosen focus, Bernstein's classic West Side Story" (www.musicalcriticism.com, 5* review). For full review see: http://www.musicalcriticism.com/books/wss-review-0310.shtml

"Nigel Simeone's Leonard Bernstein: West Side Story (Ashgate, £35) offers a fascinating glimpse into the greatest musical of all, drawing on letters between its creators to put it in context and to show why, half a century on, it endures" ("Best Music Books for Christmas 2009", The Independent, 11 December 2009).

"General works have addressed Bernstein--for example, Humphrey Burton's biography Leonard Bernstein (1994) and Paul Laird's comprehensive bibliography Leonard Bernstein: A Guide to Research (CH, Jul'02, 39-6143)--but these leave room for detailed studies. Witness this addition to the "Landmarks in Music since 1950" series, the first in the series to treat an American composer. Simeone admits right off that West Side Story was not solely Bernstein's composition but the creation of a team that included Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents, and Stephen Sondheim. But though he acknowledges this joint enterprise throughout, the author emphasizes the music and provides excellent musical examples that reveal the score development. He provides an excellent chapter on the recording of the original cast album (offered on the included CD, a neat bonus). The author acknowledges the film and stage revivals but does not dwell on them. (That could have filled another volume.) An invaluable addition to performing-arts collections... Recommended" (Choice, June 2010).

"...The story of the genesis of West Side Story is particularly absorbing. Simeone pieces together evidence from Bernstein’s sketch materials with recollections and archive materials from the other collaborators to unpick the evolving nature of the score. A simple example is the duet ‘Tonight’, which, rather than prompting the emotional whirl of the ‘Quintet’, was actually extracted from it at a relatively late stage. There are also revelations about Bernstein’s recycling, with significant portions of material from West Side Story being adapted from earlier projects, while rejected music for the rumble found new life in his later choral work Chichester Psalms. Another fascinating chapter examines the nature and making of the original cast recording, included on the accompanying CD, along with Bernstein’s searing first recording of the Symphonic Dances. Amidst the myriad insights and discoveries, the book prompts a renewed desire to experience West Side Story" (BBC Music Magazine, May 2010, Book Choice of the Month, 5* review).

"Nigel Simeone's new book, Leonard Bernstein: West Side Story, offers a behind the scenes, intimate and illuminating insight into the genesis and creation of one of America's landmark musical achievements. This is a book that will appeal to the WSS enthusiast as well as those curious about the collaborative creative process."
Marin Alsop, Music Director Baltimore Symphony Orchestra

"Musicologists are finding the Broadway musical a rich field for study after long experience writing about more hallowed areas. Nigel Simeone is the latest and one of the most exciting of these, and his West Side Storyis as richly rewarding as his earlier and ongoing work on French music. Because he has researched the show's genesis, history, musical manuscripts, structure, meaning and reception so extensively, probing a great deal further than previous scholarship, and yet writes it all up so simply and approachably, his book will be welcomed equally by scholars, students and general readers devoted (and who isn't?) to this epoch-making show."
Stephen Banfield, Stanley Hugh Badock Professor of Music, University of Bristol, UK

http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&title_id=9442&edition_id=11258

French music was much encouraged by British concert promoters in London during World War Two. Plans for a Festival of English and French Music had to be abandoned as a result of the Fall of France, but the planning was an ambitious instance of musical entente cordiale which is explored in the first part of this study.

In 1942 General de Gaulle and the Free French start to sponsor a series of 'Concerts de musique française' at the Wigmore Hall. They were organized by Tony Mayer (for the Free French and, later, at the French Embassy) and by Felix Aprahamian, whose deep knowledge of French music and whose contacts with London musicians enabled him to arrange marvellous programmes, performed by musicians such as Maggie Teyte, Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears, Michael Tippett, Reginald Goodall and the Griller String Quartet. After the liberation of Paris, the concerts featured several of the greatest French composers and performers of the time such as Francis Poulenc, Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Bernac, Gérard Souzay, Ginette Neveu, Pierre Fournier, Maurice Gendron, Monique Haas and Yvonne Loriod.

This monograph also includes a complete listing of the 'Concerts de musique française' from 1942 to 1947.

Cette contribution considère la trajectoire de la critique musicale dans la presse britannique à partir des écrits de George Bernard Shaw, à la fin du XIXe siècle, jusqu’à l'évolution des blogs musicaux à la fin du XXe siècle. Les traditions parallèles d'essais critiques brillants (Constant Lambert, Cyril Scott) et de critiques de journaux qui sont aussi des écrivains sérieux (Ernest Newman, David Cairns, Wiliam Mann) ont produit un discours critique à multiples facettes au cours du XXe siècle - un discours qui est maintenant dans un état de transition.

Proof copy of the paper: A New Society for the Best and Most Approved Instrumental Music: The Foundation of the Philharmonic Society in London (1813), presented at the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna, in 2012, at the conference "Die Emporbringung der Musik – 200 Jahre Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien".

As well as being a prolific critic, André Coeuroy
(1891–1976) was the author of successful books on contemporary music, on the importance of recordings, the radio, on folk music, and on jazz (with André Schaeffner). His enthusiastic support for La Jeune France, and his correspondence withthe composers involved, reveals an unusual sympathy for their aesthetic goals. As well as considering the substance of Coeuroy's comments on the work of the group, this paper will also consider whether Coeuroy's attraction to the Jeune France agenda was motivated purely by his voracious appetite for new music, or whether the group's declared aims of 'sincerity, generosity and artistic good faith' had a particular appeal for the critic who praised the 'new kind of spirituality' in the work of La Jeune France.

N.B. The uploaded version of the text is an unpublished draft of this paper. The other file is a PDF of the slides and illustrations.

CD booklet notes for Nash Ensemble disc of American chamber music, including Bernard Herrmann: Souvenirs de voyage; Aaron Copland: Waltz and Celebration from Billy the Kid; Franz Waxman: Four Scenes from Childhood; George Gershwin: Walking the Dog and George Gershwin's Songbook.

Frances Fyfield is joined by Conductor Marin Alsop, writer Nigel Simeone and Librarian Mark Horowitz to explore the boxes full of scores and sketches from Leonard Bernstein's 1957 Broadway smash - West Side Story. They're the proud property of the Library of Congress in Washington DC where the musical was first tried in an 'out-of-town' run before hitting Broadway.
It was something of a tortured collaboration between writer Arthur Laurents, choreographer and director Jerome Robbins and Bernstein himself along with a young Stephen Sondheim. The manuscripts tell the story of Bernstein's ambitions for an operatic score thwarted according to the composer or channelled and controlled according to history. Time and again numbers are cut back, honed, re-worked and refined until we reach the familiar show hits 'Somewhere', 'America', 'Tonight' and 'Somethings coming' which are so familiar today.
Librarian Horowitz also reveals the examples of music Bernstein culled from earlier works and other bits that were composed for the show but ended up in his later Chichester Psalms.
The writing is always neat but increasingly hectic as the rehearsals start in the summer of 1957.
The programme is intercut with extracts from Bernstein's letters to his wife in which he divulged his frustration at what was happening to 'my poor little score'. In the event he rejoiced with his team when the reviews were beyond their wildest dreams.
And there are gems beyond the musical scores. Bernstein's audition books reveal that Warren Beatty was amongst those who tried out for a part. 'Charming as hell' according to the composer but ultimately not quite right.

Producer: Tom Alban.

In the last of the current series of Tales from the Stave Frances Fyfield returns to the Library of Congress in Washington to see one of their most treasured possessions. George Gershwin's Opera Porgy and Bess still provokes debate today from those uneasy at the work of three white men, George, his brother Ira and the lyricist Dubose Heyward, in depicting the world of what amounts to a black Ghetto in early 20th century South Carolina. However, the brilliance of the music, and the complexity and craft of Gershwin's score is beyond dispute.

Frances is joined by the conductor and writer Nigel Simeone, the library's expert Raymond White and most important of all by Solomon Howard of the Washington National Opera. Solomon, who's sung the role of Porgy and has himself experienced life at the bottom end of American society, is given the chance to perform from Gershwin's original manuscript. In doing so he finds small but vital changes from the texts he's used to, as well as evidence of the detailed but vital changes George Gershwin made to the lyrics delivered to him by Heyward - lyrics including famous hits like 'Summertime'.

As well as a full orchestral score there are also the fragments and sketches Gershwin made while living in Carolina where he sought inspiration for this, his most ambitious work.

Producer: Tom Alban.

Written when he was still little more than an aspiring composer, driven by the image of a woman with whom he had fallen passionately in love from afar, and breaking new ground in the drama of concert performance, Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique is one of the most important manuscripts held at the Bibliotheque Nationale de France.

With the help of the conductor Nigel Simeone, the Berlioz scholar Professor Peter Bloom and the music curator Cecile Reynaud, Frances Fyfield discovers the youthful energy of the handwritten score that Berlioz kept with him for fourteen years before delivering it to the publishers. In that time there were rewrites, extra parts written in for extraordinary circumstances and all the usual tweaks and refinements you'd expect of a composer working towards his imaginative ambitions. But the score also comes complete with the composer's dedications to Harriet Smithson, the Anglo-Irish actress whose image became the famous 'idee fixe' of the symphony. This simple melody returns again and again throughout the five movements.

There are also printed programme notes created for the first audiences, notes describing the 'story' of a young man taking opium and having a sequence of dreams and imaginings about his love, his jealousy, his death at the scaffold and the witches' sabbath thereafter.

As well as evidence of extraordinary musical imagination the manuscript score also displays bizarre gothic doodles alongside the fourth movement, complete with ravens, chains and helmets. This, the famous March to the Scafford was actually lifted from one of the composer's earlier operas that doesn't survive. To make it work in the symphony, Berlioz felt it needed the inclusion of the 'idee fixe', and there, on the last page, in the dying breath of the hero as he awaits the guillotine's blade, it appears wistfully played by the clarinet.

And just to cap it all there are the many exotic instruments Berlioz called upon, including the magnificent brass ophycleide.

It's all in the last of this series of Tales from the Stave.

Producer Tom Alban
Presenter FRANCES FYFIELD.

Review by Elizabeth Mahoney in The Guardian (1 December 2008):

In Music from the Dark (Radio 3, Saturday), musicologist Nigel Simeone told a stirring story of cultural resistance. "How did French musicians meet the challenge of the occupation in Paris?" he asked. The answer he found was inspiring, though his report had its clunky moments, with Simeone telling us where in Paris he was, and why, rather too often. The programme also assumed oodles of classical music knowledge - there were certainly names casually mentioned here that I didn't recognise.

Beyond this, however, were tales of artistic bravery to keep creativity alive under tremendous pressure. I especially enjoyed hearing how subtexts were sneaked into seemingly innocent new compositions. Poulenc was especially adept at this, filling his fable Les Animaux full of anti-Nazi sentiment for the French audience. "For the French it was very obvious there were hidden messages," we heard. "For the Germans it was just a nice ballet."

Concert encores were also popular places for subterfuge, as were printed music scores. The latter fell outside of censorship laws, unlike most written material. Outlawed sentiments, if tucked away in a score were, Simeone explained, "available in any Parisian music shop".

1/5 BIRTH: Donald Macleod and biographer Nigel Simeone explore early influences on Messiaen.

2/5 PARIS: Donald Macleod and biographer Nigel Simeone look at Messiaen's life and career in Paris.

3/5 Donald Macleod explores the works making up Messiaen's Tristan trilogy.

4/5 NATURE: Donald Macleod and biographer Nigel Simeone explore nature in Messiaen's music.

5/5 LEGACY: Donald Macleod and biographer Nigel Simeone explore Messiaen's final works and his legacy.

(details from BBC website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006tnxf/episodes/guide?page=9#b00fvfjq)

Study Afternoon: Richard Rodgers, Act III, 8 March 2014, 3.00pm – 6.00pm

With Nigel Simeone and Bert Fink

Richard Rodgers (1902–79) is considered one of the greatest dramatic composers of the 20th century, epitomised in his landmark partnerships with Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II.

In the final two decades of his life, Rodgers continued to create sophisticated and often innovative works of music theatre, collaborating with such talents as Stephen Sondheim, Arthur Laurents, Sheldon Harnick, Martin Charnin – and even himself.

This often overlooked period in Rodgers’s life is explored in a study afternoon with musicologist and writer Nigel Simeone, joined by Bert Fink, Senior Vice President/Europe for Rodgers & Hammerstein.

This event is part of the following series:Nash Ensemble American Series

In Oiseaux exotiques, Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone have provided a fascinating study that draws together several strands of musicological research, including source studies, reception history, commentary and analysis. This beautifully written book is an original ...