john field: the 'hidden manuscripts' and … field: the 'hidden manuscripts' and...

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JOHN FIELD: THE 'HIDDEN MANUSCRIPTS' AND OTHER SOURCES IN THE BRITISH LIBRARY ROBIN LANGLEY JOHN Field's manuscripts, both epistolary and musical, are rare, a dozen letters, of which two^ are in the British Library, and twenty-two autograph manuscripts, of which only the Pastorale in A H.14,^ Nocturnes nos. 5, 6, and 14, and Concerto no. 7, are complete. Field's reputation as the creator of the piano Nocturne and his influence on early Romantic style is assured. It is perhaps less widely recognized that his habit of rewriting his compositions not only refined details of both melody and harmony but on occasion altered the original conception fundamentally, while providing an additional and fascinating insight into a developing style.^ Further, not only his manuscripts, but especially his reworkings, contain detailed fingering, articulation, realization of ornaments, and pedalling. Regarded by many of his contemporaries as perhaps the greatest pianist of his time,'* Field imparted in these annotations more than one important lesson in early Romantic piano technique and performance practice. These reworkings take the form of ink or (more generally) pencilled alterations to printed copies, either on slips of paper pasted over the engraved text or (again, more generally) crammed into any available space within the music text or in the margins. It is in these 'hidden manuscripts' that the British Library holdings are particularly rich. Born in Dublin in 1782, Field (fig. i) left his native Ireland for good eleven years later, to be apprenticed to Clementi in London. A fully-fledged virtuoso and experienced, if not fully mature, composer by the age of eighteen. Field accompanied Clementi to Paris, Vienna, and St Petersburg in 1802. Finding Russian cultural society congenial. Field remained there, alternately in St Petersburg and Moscow, as pianist, composer, and teacher, apart from a concert tour (1831-5) to, most notably, London, Paris, and Vienna. Returning to Moscow in late 1835, he died there on 23 January 1837. Thus, much first- hand source material remains in Russia; the other two chief repositories of Field's music are the Library of Congress, Washington, and the British Library. Indeed, of the total of sixty-eight works (excluding the many and various transformations of a single seminal piece) printed in Field's Hfetime or posthumously through the composer's immediate circle, the British Library lacks copies of only H.ii, 232

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Page 1: JOHN FIELD: THE 'HIDDEN MANUSCRIPTS' AND … FIELD: THE 'HIDDEN MANUSCRIPTS' AND OTHER SOURCES IN THE BRITISH LIBRARY ROBIN LANGLEY JOHN Field's manuscripts, both epistolary and musical,

JOHN FIELD: THE 'HIDDEN MANUSCRIPTS'

AND OTHER SOURCES IN THE BRITISH

LIBRARY

ROBIN LANGLEY

J O H N Field's manuscripts, both epistolary and musical, are rare, a dozen letters, ofwhich two^ are in the British Library, and twenty-two autograph manuscripts, of whichonly the Pastorale in A H.14,^ Nocturnes nos. 5, 6, and 14, and Concerto no. 7, arecomplete.

Field's reputation as the creator of the piano Nocturne and his influence on earlyRomantic style is assured. It is perhaps less widely recognized that his habit of rewritinghis compositions not only refined details of both melody and harmony but on occasionaltered the original conception fundamentally, while providing an additional andfascinating insight into a developing style.^ Further, not only his manuscripts, butespecially his reworkings, contain detailed fingering, articulation, realization ofornaments, and pedalling. Regarded by many of his contemporaries as perhaps thegreatest pianist of his time,'* Field imparted in these annotations more than oneimportant lesson in early Romantic piano technique and performance practice. Thesereworkings take the form of ink or (more generally) pencilled alterations to printedcopies, either on slips of paper pasted over the engraved text or (again, more generally)crammed into any available space within the music text or in the margins. It is in these'hidden manuscripts' that the British Library holdings are particularly rich.

Born in Dublin in 1782, Field (fig. i) left his native Ireland for good eleven years later,to be apprenticed to Clementi in London. A fully-fledged virtuoso and experienced, ifnot fully mature, composer by the age of eighteen. Field accompanied Clementi to Paris,Vienna, and St Petersburg in 1802. Finding Russian cultural society congenial. Fieldremained there, alternately in St Petersburg and Moscow, as pianist, composer, andteacher, apart from a concert tour (1831-5) to, most notably, London, Paris, and Vienna.Returning to Moscow in late 1835, he died there on 23 January 1837. Thus, much first-hand source material remains in Russia; the other two chief repositories of Field's musicare the Library of Congress, Washington, and the British Library.

Indeed, of the total of sixty-eight works (excluding the many and varioustransformations of a single seminal piece) printed in Field's Hfetime or posthumouslythrough the composer's immediate circle, the British Library lacks copies of only H.ii,

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^. / . John Field; from a lithograph. By courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum

12, 41-3, 57, 63-4, and 67, and H. deest 5-7 {Fantaisie stir un Air favorit de mon AnnN.P., Quatre Danses, Prelude in C minor). The small number of omissions makes thisthe most comprehensive collection in any of the world's great hbraries. In large measure,this is due to the long and distinguished career in the Music Library of Tim Neighbour,a committed and perceptive Fieldian beside his better known work on Byrd andSchoenberg.^

Turning first to the earliest known printed editions without annotations, the majorityof them are single surviving exemplars and the most important fall into two groups, oneof English, the other of Russian issues. With the publication of Hopkinson's Cataloguein 1961, incipits for five entries remained unknown: the Rondos 'Go to the Devil' H.3and 'Slave, bear the sparkling goblet round' H.5, the Variations on 'Logie of Buchan'H.7, the song 'The Maid of Valdarno' H.47, and the Andante H.64. H.5 has not yet beenfound (it may well have been confused with the similarly entitled Rondo on 'The TwoFavourite Slave Dances' H.6) and H.64, "^^st likely Field's last composition, is as onewould expect in Russia (Tchaikovsky Conservatoire, Moscow). The British Library hassince acquired H.3 (two issues: pressmarks h.3465.aa.(5.) [1797], g.352.0.(2.) [1800]) andH.7 (g443.mm.(5.) [1799]), and a later solo piano arrangement by Haigh of H.47, besidesthe earliest known editions of Del Caro's Hornpipe H.2 (h.3465.aa.(4.) [1795-6]), and

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Variations on 'Since then Vm doomed' H.4 (g.352.s.(i5.) [1798]) and *Speed thePlough' H.23 (H.i2i.(3.) [1800]). Some of these prentice works are by no meansneghgible, but give little hint of either Field's later development or the more sustainedassurance of the Three Sonatas H.8 (1801), his official Opus i.

Conversely, the group of Russian editions acquired from the early 1970s onwards isof the utmost importance to Field scholarship. For the first time outside - and indeedwithin - Russia came datable evidence of Field's style as it developed towards andbeyond the issue of the first three Nocturnes in November 1812,̂ at the head of asequence of twelve editions by his most consistent and longest-serving Russian publisherDalmas (h.3465.x.(i-i2.)). They are listed here with the publisher's plate-numbers:

(i.) Nocturne no. i H.24, pn5o8(2.) Nocturne no. 2 H.25, pn5O9(3.) Nocturne no. 3 H.26, pn5io(4.) Fantaisie [sur l'Andante de Martini] H.i5,(5.) Exercise module dans tous les tons H.33,(6.) Divertissement no. i H.13,(7.) Divertissement no. 2 H.14,(8.) Grande Valse H.19, pn584(9.) Polonaise en Rondeau H.19, pn6o6

(10.) Kamarinskaya H.22, pn683(11.) Nouvelle Fantaisie H.35, pn684(12.) Romance H.30, pn685

To the above were added later: Rondeau H.18, pn575 (pressmark h.3465.y.), QuintettoH.34, pn663 (h.3465.z.), and the first editions of Nocturne no. 4 H.36, pn8i4(h.3465.m.(8.)) and Nocturne no. 7 H.45, pni2i3 (h.3465.m.(5.)).

Besides providing hitherto unknown texts and a chronologically useful sequence ofplate-numbers, this group of Russian editions gives further evidence of Field's gradualrather than decisive crystallization of his developing style by means of revision. Items(4-6.) are described as 'Seconde Edition', to which (7.) adds 'revue et corrigee parl'Auteur^ while this edition of (12.) is Ma seule avouee par TAuteur'. One may add that(10.) is also a 'second edition', after the original published by Schildbach in 1809. PatrickPiggott^ was the first to draw attention to this important aspect of Field's creativeprocess, and recent research in Russia into his Moscow publishers, especially Elbert, hasprovided further confirmation that it was not only his piano technique which wassubjected to constant scrutiny and refinement.

While a number of such revisions may be traced from one printed edition to another,many more survive as autograph annotations on printed copies, and a number of themost representative are grouped under one pressmark (f.34.b.). Within that assembledvolume items (1-2.), (4-6.), and (11-15.) provide fingering for the Fantaisie H.35,Nocturnes nos. 4, 6, and 8, and Sonatas nos. 1-4 respectively.^ But the most tellingindication of the interest to be found in the fullest of these reworkings is the delicate,

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seemingly improvised, ornamentation (shown in small notes) of the original rests in bar14 of Nocturne no. 6 (ex. i), or the added inflection to the repeated harmony in bar 56(ex. 2).

Ex. 1

Ex.2

In 1812, Field had moved from Moscow to St Petersburg at the start of what was tobecome his most productive decade, and, after he accepted in 1815 Breitkopf & HarteFsoffer of publication of all his new works, knowledge of his music, and editions of it,proliferated throughout Europe. In 1821, he moved back to Moscow and the next tenyears marked a shift in emphasis from new music to comprehensive revision, judging bythe dates of the printed editions on which he worked, and the range of the piano keyboardused (ascending to f" from 1819, and descending to CC by the end of the next decade).This may have been dictated by circumstance, for Field became increasingly ill fromwhat appears to have been a form of cancer, took increasing refuge in (perhaps pain-killing) drink, and gave fewer concerts with orchestra - hence the most important corpusof'hidden manuscripts', the revisions of Concertos nos. 1-5 and the Quintetto H.34 forsolo performance founded on the annotated printed copies bound as Add. MS. 47855,part of the bequest of Edward Meyerstein in 1953.

The printed piano parts of Field's concertos contain both the solo part and theorchestral ritornelli (often imaginatively arranged for piano and at variance in detail withthe orchestral parts). In his conversion from what doubtless served as a short score fromwhich the soloist could direct an orchestral performance,^ Field was resourcefullyruthless with both the original formal proportions and the detailed matter of the musicalargument. Each concerto is much shorter in its version without orchestra and the amountof new material - enriched texture or harmony, melodic ornamentation, cadenzas andthematically or technically developing passagework to tide over excised bars (or pages)- can sometimes be considerable. He published mature revised versions for solo

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' V.

wmmmrmm

JOHN FIELD.

ST FETEJi SB OUR a

Fig, 2. Title-page of the first edition of Field's Concerto no. 4. Music Library, h.346s.v.

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performance of only the slowmovement of Concerto no. i (pressmark h. 110.(5.)) ^^d theRondo of Concerto no, 5 (g.270.k.(6.)), after his return to England in 1831.̂ ^

A full analysis here of this quantity of largely unpubUshed material would be out ofplace.̂ ^ Nonetheless, an idea of the formal revisions can be measured from thedifferences between the earliest known source of the Third Concerto's Rondo (Saltikov-Shchedrin Library, St Petersburg) and the solo version in Add. MS. 47855. The latteris sixteen bars longer (excluding the introduction) than the former, but disposes theconcerto's material in a totally opposite way, while adding small improvements here andthere and adapting the music of the full orchestral version to accommodate the cuts. Ofthe two episodes of fiery passagework and thematic excursions to G flat major, the earliersource contains the former only (as does the earliest published solo Rondo) while Add.MS. 47855 has the latter only. If, thus, the overall large-scale structure of the movementin its solo form is preserved in each instance, it is the later (British Library) source whoseversion is the more powerful, as the second episode of fiery passagework is both moremotivically developmental (lending an illusion of sonata-rondo) and more richlyharmonized than the earlier more elegantly decorative, but more simply harmonized,episode.

Concertos nos. 2 and 4 are particularly successful adaptations, the latter beingespecially interesting as the British Library owns the only known copy (fig. 2) of the firstedition (Dalmas, pn586 [1814]: pressmark h.3465.v.). A second, extensively revised,edition was issued by Dalmas before 1820 (but still with the same plate-number), andthis accords more closely with both the Pacini edition (h.3465.a.(5.)) and some aspectsof the revisions in Add. MS. 47855. The latter has an instructive indication of left handrubato (ex. 3) among many other felicities.

Ex.3

Concerto no. 5 (or at least its first movement) exists in two different solo versions, bothof considerable virtuosity (Add. MS. 47855, and h.3465.b.(2.)); compare these differentways of adapting the end of the same orchestral tutti (ex. 4).

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Ex.4

<\ \ Itp dim.JT)

U Jf

Field has created here five large-scale concert Sonatas, looking forward perhaps to theF minor Sonata Op. 14 of Schumann (actually subtitled 'Concert sans Orchestre');performers may well find them worthy of investigation.

The adaptation of the Quintetto H.34, originally with string quartet, in Add. MS.47855 (and in parallel but less complete form in the Tchaikovsky Conservatoire,Moscow) is of the utmost subtlety in the heightening of detail in the manner in whichthe following (ex. 5a):

Ex. 5a

becomes (ex. 5b)

Ex. 5b

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and a tenor part (here in small notes) is added (ex. 6)

Ex.6

In this, one of his finest pieces. Field has produced an unique blend of Nocturne andConcerto, Rondo and Variation, an amalgam of early Romantic sensibihty andtechnique. Indeed, any student of early Romantic pianism and style will find no shortageof both instruction and delight within these closely annotated pages.

1 Add. MS. 33965, f. 40, and Loan 48/13/12; iJan. 1800, ordering music, and 13 Feb. 1832,confirming arrangements for his PhilharmonicSociety concert two weeks later.

2 The majority of Field's works are numberedaccording to Cecil Hopkinson, A BibliographicalThematic Catalogue of the Works of John Field,1/82-1837 (London, ig6i). Those worksmentioned here but omitted by Hopkinson aregiven H. deest nos. as listed in Robin Langley(ed.), John Field: Nocturnes and Related Pieces,Musica Britannica, lxx (forthcoming).

3 For a fuller account of Field's creative de-velopment, particularly in his early Russianperiod, see Robin Langley, 'John Field and theGenesis of a Style', Musical Times, cxxiii (1982),pp. 92-9.

4 See Musical World, lvii (1837), p. 71: 'AHunprejudiced musicians who, heard him... areunanimous in the opinion that he stood quitealone and unrivalled, and that his touch and tonewere the most perfect that it is possible to

conceive ... even Hummel, in his best days, couldonly be pronounced second to him.'

5 See, for example, O. W. Neighbour, 'EarlyEditions of John Field', British Museum Quar-terly, xix (1954), pp. I, 2.

6 Nicholas Temperley, 'John Field and the FirstNocturne', Music & Letters, lvi (1975), pp.335-40-

7 Patrick Piggott, The Life and Music of John Field,ij82-i8;^j. Creator of the Nocturne (London,1973)-

8 See Robin Langley (ed.), John Field.Klaviersonaten (Munich, 1983), pp. vii-viii, 5, 7.

9 In accordance with contemporary practice, allhis concertos were published in separate partsonly.

10 Laying aside the somewhat opportunisticallyhandled solo versions of the Rondos of Concertos3 and 4 issued some fifteen years earlier.

11 A critical edition is being prepared for pub-lication.

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