Havergal Brian, Early Choral Works

[Graham1973]

Havergal Brian is a composer remembered mainly for his large scale symphonies composed between 1919 - 1968, however prior to this he wrote a number of choral pieces, such as 'Shall I compare thee to a summers day' (Breitkopf & Hartel), Psalm 137 (Breitkopf & Hartel), Psalm 23 (Cranz?) & 'Stars of the Summer Night' (Novello)

Some details of what might be findable are in a poorly scanned copy of the 1947 book 'Ordeal by Music' which can be found at the Internet Archive website.
http://www.archive.org/details/ordealbymusic007340mbp

[ctesibius]

Hi,
William "Havergal" Brian (29 January 1876 – 28 November 1972)'s works are under copyright in Canada till 2023 (1972+50 years)
See IMSLP policy here: http://imslp.org/wiki/Public_domain

Ctesibius

[pml]

Quite so, and in Australia (where both Graham and I hail from), it'll be life+70; I'll be a fortnight short of my 71st birthday by the time HB enters the PD here, having been born the year he died. A number of substantial works are however in the PD in the US: would anyone want to help with a US repository of early Brian, à la Daphnis' "Stravinsky" project?

Regards, PML

[pml]

Update: as of late 2010, United Music Publishers is beginning to make available study scores of the orchestral and vocal music set by members of the Scores Sub-Committee of the Havergal Brian Society; eventually this should include the Seventh symphony, which I typeset back in 2005.

New scores available:
Concerto for orchestra (1964)
Symphony No. 24 in D major (1965)
19 Partsongs

The partsongs represents the first tranche of these (the entire set have been typeset and more will appear subsequently):

Unaccompanied: Blow, blow thou winter wind · Come o’er the sea · Daybreak · Happiness, celestial fair · He was a rat · Introit · Lullaby for an infant chief · Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? · Shall I then be spared? · Sweet solitude
Accompanied: A child’s prayer · Ah, county guy · The dream · The fairy palace · Goodbye to summer · If I had but two little wings · The lover and his lass · Laughing song · Spring, the sweet spring

I’ve also heard that some of the piano works that are PD in the US will be arriving sometime shortly on IMSLP·US…

Cheers, PML

[pml]

Bump. A not-so-early choral work, the Gothic Symphony of 1919–27, is on the radio this weekend. As far as I know the internet radio version is not region-locked, although it’s 22kHz 16-bit stereo, so not hugely flash.

Station: Brisbane, 4mbs.com.au – recorded in the Concert Hall of the Queensland Performing Arts Centre, 22 December 2010
Date: Saturday 4 June 2011
Time: 20:00 AEST (= UTC +10 hours)

If you can’t hear this, then you could always attend the Proms concert at the Royal Albert Hall this July. Or maybe not, since the tickets sold on the same day they were released... Further announcements on that performance will be forthcoming.

Cheers, Philip

[pml]

Bump, again, this time for our US friends. It seems Cranz totally failed at registering and renewing the US copyright of the Gothic symphony, which is now available over at the Wiki.

Cheers, PML