MS Mus. 1844/1/36

Settings by Adrian Welles Beecham of a number of 'Bab Ballads' by W. S. Gilbert, comprising: (1) a manuscript booklet of completed settings in autograph manuscript; (2) a number of unbound settings in autograph draft; (3) printed edition of settings of nineteen ballads.

(1). Settings of forty-one 'Bab Ballads', scored in blue ink for voice and piano accompaniment. Contents listed on inside front cover, followed by 38 numbered pages. The first verse only of each ballad is given. Most are dated in pencil (January - March 1930) in a small hand above the first stave. Pages are used continuously. Most pages are signed 'Tune by A. W. Beecham'. Pages tied at the centrefold.

Ballads set: 'Captain Reece'; 'The Rival Curates'; Sir Guy the Crusader'; The Troubadour'; 'The Bumboat Woman's Story'; 'The Two Ogres'; 'Thomas Winterbottom Hance'; 'Bob Polter'; 'The Folly of Brown'; 'A Discontented Sugar Broker'; 'Ellen McJones Aberdeen'; 'Sir Macklin'; 'The Precocious Baby' [title only - staves blank]; 'To Phoebe'; 'Gentle Alice Brown'; 'Peter the Wag'; 'Mister William'; 'The Bishop and the Busman'; 'The Baby's Vengeance'; 'Babette's Love'; 'Emily, John, James, and I'; 'The Sailor Boy to his Lass'; 'Brave Alum Bey'; 'Thomson Green and Harriet Hale'; 'Lost Mr Blake'; 'Annie Protheroe'; 'The Yarn of the Nancy Bell'; 'The Perils of Invisibility'; 'Little Oliver'; 'The King of Canoodle-Dum'; 'The Two Majors'; 'The Three Kings of Chickeraboo'; 'The Mystic Selvagee'; 'Sir Barnaby Bampton Boo'; 'The Way of Wooing'; 'Etiquette'; 'The Cunning Woman'; 'The Modest Couple'; 'The Fairy Curate'; 'A Worm Will Turn'; 'Old Paul and Old Tim'; 'Tempora Mutantur'.

(2). Music manuscript notebook, covers detached, enclosing 16 loose sheets (pages numbered 1-32 in pencil). Scored in ink, with pencil annotations (notes to printer). The same ballads as above (in different order).

(3). Printed edition (1930, advance copy?) of nineteen ballads, including Gilbert's illustrations. Volume 1. Pencil annotation to front cover (referring to overlap): 'Copy for experimental cutting of edges / cut off half overlap at top'.

The nineteen ballads are: 'The Yarn of the Nancy Bell'; 'Ellen McJones Aberdeen'; 'To Phoebe'; 'The Baby's Vengeance'; 'The King of Canoodle-Dum'; 'The Cunning Woman'; 'Mister William'; 'Emily, John, James, and I'; 'The Modest Couple'; 'Brave Alum Bey'; 'The Two Ogres'; 'The Way of Wooing'; 'Babette's Love'; 'Bob Polter'; 'Lost Mr Blake'; 'The Two Majors'; 'Tempora Mutantur'; 'Etiquette'; 'The Bumboat Woman's Story'.