Item #27046 Autograph letter signed "Matyas" to the noted English composer, broadcaster, and writer on music Antony Hopkins. Mátyás SEIBER.

Autograph letter signed "Matyas" to the noted English composer, broadcaster, and writer on music Antony Hopkins

2 pp. Folio (ca. 254 x 203 mm). Dated Caterham, Surrey, December 8, [19]57. In blue ink on white paper. With original autograph envelope.

Seiber thanks Hopkins for a thoughtful radio presentation of his choral work Ulysses. He asks if the BBC or anyone else has recorded it. He also asks Hopkins if he will be in Festival Hall on Wednesday.

"What a pleasant surprise it was to hear you talk about 'Ulysses' this afternoon! Fortunately, I was at home and listening, otherwise I might have missed the whole thing: nobody told me about it. So, thank you very much for spending all that time on my work, and for giving such a careful and precise analysis. I enjoyed particularly your beautiful phrasing in some of your piano examples (the opening, for instance,) and also your singing; at last I know where to turn if I get into a fix with the Tenor Soloist!"

Very slightly worn; creased at folds. One word with autograph correction, slightly smudged.

Sieber was a British composer and teacher. His music "reflects both the breadth of stylistic sympathy and the insistence on craftsmanship that marked his teaching. It ranges from ephemera like the successful pop song By the Fountains of Rome (1956) – which entered the top ten of the popular charts and won an Ivor Novello Award – through incidental music, to chamber, orchestral and choral works. The highlight of his work in the film studio was his score to the animated classic Animal Farm (1955). Folk music – not solely from his native Hungary, but also that of many areas from France to Arabia and India – was a recurring interest, expressed in numerous arrangements. A quirky humour surfaces in the Morgenstern settings of the 1920s, reappears in his cartoon scores and the later settings of Edward Lear (1956 and 1957) and indeed is never very far away even in his most ‘serious’ music. His longstanding interest in jazz had a significant impact on his music: representative examples include the two Jazzolettes, the blues movement of the Second String Quartet and later the collaboration with John Dankworth on the 1959 Improvisations, which juxtaposes serial techniques and improvised solo passages." Hugh Wood and Mervyn Cooke in Grove Music Online.

Hopkins (1921-2014) is best known as a broadcaster and lecturer on music. "His weekly radio programme ‘Talking about Music’, in which he engagingly discussed the history, content and structure of a major work, ran for 36 years. He has also written a number of books and has introduced and conducted concerts, for children especially, in Britain, Australia and East Asia. As a tribute to his manifold activities the city of Tokyo in 1973 made him a special award. He was made CBE in 1976 and a Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge, in 1980." Richard Cooke in Grove Music Online.

Item #27046

Price: $250.00  other currencies

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