MS Mus. 1778/4/1

Various sketches, typescripts and notes, mostly provisionally identified or unidentified.

(1). ff.1-17. Material possibly relating to ‘Earth Dances’ (1985-6): 10 folios of assorted sketches and jottings on 12-stave manuscript paper; 7 further folios of numerical and rhythmic workings.

(2). ff. 18-26. Pre-compositional notes for an orchestral work, most likely ‘Silbury Air’ (1977). 1 folio contains an early 'pulse labyrinth', which is certainly related to ‘Silbury Air’.

(3). ff. 27-30. Structural plan for a work, with detailed timings. Possibly relating to 'Silbury Air' or for 'The Mask of Orpheus', Act 2.

(4). ff. 31-66. Fragments of libretti, scenarios, and poems:

• ff. 31-42: Partial libretto for a work based on the myth of Kronos. Possibly related to plans for ‘Kronia’. Typescript with numerous neat ink annotations, not Birtwistle’s hand.
• ff. 43-46: Scenario for unrealised Covent Garden opera on Kronos theme (‘Kronia’, worked on between 1970-1). Typescropt with occasional pencil annotations by the composer.
• f. 47: translation of Choephori by Tony Harrison. Typescript with rhythm annotations in pencil over 10 lines of text.
• f. 48: handwritten stanza from Dylan Thomas’s ‘Ballad of the long-legged bait’, with a drawing of a flower.
• f. 49: handwritten excerpt from Christopher Logue’s ‘Wand and Quadrant’, used in Birtwistle's 'Meridian' (1970-1971). Certain words underlined; no further material related to 'Meridian' identified in this collection.
• f. 50: handwritten phrase: ‘No longer does my mouth utter sounds, nor does the clapping of hands follow’. This is the final line of 'Cantata' (1969), for which Birtwistle adapted tomb inscriptions and fragments of Sappho. No further annotations; no further material related to 'Cantata' identified in this collection.
• ff. 51-52: 2 typed copies (one annotated in pencil, one a duplicate) of a short twentieth-century adaptation of the fairy tale ‘Luke-Oie’.
• ff. 53-54: 2 poems by John Pudney: ‘Song for eight sopranos’ and ‘Innocence’.
• ff. 55: poem ‘For Harry’, author unidentified. Pencil annotations and note to the composer. Pencil annotation overleaf of the word ‘Noeharp’ (noh harp), used prominently in 'The Mask of Orpheus'.
• ff. 56-57: fragments of draft correspondence with an unidentified collaborator.
• ff. 58-59: note of Peter Maxwell Davies’s address, in pink ink.
• ff. 60-65: photocopied pages from books, one set titled ‘Psalmes’ (2 leaves), and the other ‘Symmetry’ (4 leaves).
• f. 66: doodle, and the line ‘sitting here where I am looking out’.

(5). ff. 67-75. Pad of pink A4 paper, containing assorted unidentified sketches. 2 leaves of numerical workings and grids; 3 leaves of instrumentation notes; 1 leaf of assorted brief sketches based around the words ‘river water’. Similar paper is used for certain 'Yan Tan Tethera' sketches, however these were found elsewhere in the collection, and positive identification between the two sets has not been made; however, a link remains possible.

(6). ff. 76-98. Assorted unidentified sketches, notes, and jottings, of which 16 are various sizes of manuscript paper. Includes:

• f. 76: sketch titled ‘The 1st Tool to set to work’, which contains a 7-bar canon idea ending on an A major triad.
• ff. 77-78: diagrams for a work (or part of a work) that appears to be for percussion. Instruments are given letters (A = Cymbal 1; B = B.D.; F = High Cymbal; G = Clash Cymbal; H = Maracas), which are laid out in semicircles. Instructions such as ‘Fast’, ‘Fast and slow’, ‘Slow’, and dynamics given. Blue, green, and red ink, and pencil.
• f. 79: structural chart for a work labelled ‘Gross Design’.