Briefs / Feuilletons

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• Briefs / Feuilletons
• Ruth Hellen and Liz Hart

Among the various early music imprints and manuscripts held among the Library of Congress Music Division’s rare general collections are 306 music anthologies dating from the late fifteenth through seventeenth centuries. These materials represent about ten percent of the total number of musical anthologies produced at that time and are sources for some of the greatest musical works of the period.

A new bibliography, Anthologies of Musical Works in Print and Manuscript from the 15th–17th Centuries in the Library of Congress Music Division, presents an inventory of the Music Division’s holdings with tables of contents and annotations for most entries: https://www.loc.gov/static/research-centers/performing-arts/documents/Anthologies-Final-Bibliography.pdf .

An accompanying research guide provides discussions about and highlights from this unique body of materials, emphasizing matters of provenance, cataloguing, music publishers, online resources, and bibliography, and how the Music Division’s collection historically parallels the total output of anthology sources: https://guides.loc.gov/music-anthologies/introduction .

Please contact https://ask.loc.gov/performing-arts with any questions.

The newest volume of the Bohuslav Martinů Complete Edition has been published. The Frescoes of Piero della Francesca, H 352 and The Parables, H 367, edited by Arne Stollberg and Janina Müller (BMCE II/2/7; BA 10590-01) represent the culmination of the late Neo-Impressionist orchestral output of Bohuslav Martinů, marked by a fantastic, kaleidoscopic style. Martinů transforms his extramusical inspirations (visual, literary) into the principles of musical forms, which are open to associations from mood setting to philosophical inquiries into the essence of human existence.

The composer wrote The Frescoes in spring 1955 and conceived them after the cycle of Renaissance frescoes of Piero della Francesca in the Basilica of St Francis of Assisi in Arezzo, Italy. The premiere at the Salzburg Festival on 26 August 1956 was given by the Vienna Philharmonic under Rafael Kubelík, to whom the composition is dedicated. Martinů wrote the first two movements of The Parables in July 1957; he returned to the work after a break in early 1958 (completing the final, third movement on 8 February). The Parables premiered in Boston on 13 February 1959 by Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The mottos of the first two movements of The Parables reference ‘The Wisdom of the Sands’ by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. For the third movement, Martinů created a motto from loosely associated excerpts from Georges Neveux’s play ‘The Voyage of Theseus’, which later provided the subject matter for the opera Ariane, H 370 (1958). Although the music of The Parables relates to the mottos only abstractly or, in the case of the third movement, perhaps somewhat accidentally, these texts are nevertheless an integral part of the work. This volume of the complete edition is based on a thorough assessment of all the composer’s autographs and their copies, as well as Martinů’s extensive correspondence, which is the source of numerous new [End Page 334] findings regarding the genesis of both compositions. The editors include this information in the Foreword, which also examines the mottos of The Parables in the context of the composer’s late works.

Jacques Chailley and Henri Martelli online. The complete musical estates of the renowned French composers Jacques Chailley (1910–1999) and Henri Martelli (1895– 1980) recently found a home at the Tobias Broeker Archive in Germany. For both estates, biographical information, extensive work catalogues, as well as finding aids are now available online via the Web site of the archive. In addition, scores of previously unpublished compositions of the two composers are presented for free download. The archive is available at www.tobias-broeker.de.

Jacques Chailley was a composer, but also one of the leading musicologists in France in the twentieth century. His main interests were the music of earlier centuries and the development to modern music, and plays of ancient and medieval tragedians, as well as the scout movement. In every respect, Chailley composed original works or harmonised and arranged existing music for modern use. He also was one of the first composers to use the ondes Martenot in compositions and included...