# Favourite artefacts?



## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Just wondering what anyone's favourite music-related physical artefacts (that you personally own) might be. In my case for example, I have this:









...and this:









Anyone out there with Elgar's conductor's baton, Vaughan Williams' own notated copy of a Bach score and so on?

(PS. Sorry about the photos. I am not good at photographing things hanging on walls...)


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

Did you meet Britten for that?....so bloody jealous as he is one of the greatest composers and pianists ever imv.
I have a Tippet piano sonata score (the 3rd) signed by Paul Crossley. I have also had the pleasure of actually meeting Tippet, Messiaen and even Jerry Goldsmith, that counts as physical at least.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

mikeh375 said:


> Did you meet Britten for that?....so bloody jealous as he is one of the greatest composers and pianists ever imv.
> I have a Tippet piano sonata score (the 3rd) signed by Paul Crossley. I have also had the pleasure of actually meeting Tippet, Messiaen and even Jerry Goldsmith, that counts as physical at least.


Sadly, no. I am a tad too young for that; I remember hearing he'd died in about the second year of secondary school (so, aged about 12). I hadn't really heard of him by then, but I remember another student being quite upset at the news (he was more musically gifted than me!). So no, I only got Britten's autograph by paying for it on Ebay, and it came with the Peter Pears autograph thrown in. However, I did get to meet Peter Pears in the early 1980s, and I have a couple of hand-written post cards and letters from him confirming the meet-up arrangements, so they are my preferred Pears artefacts!

I used to pay Messiaen his expenses whenever he turned up at the Royal Festival Hall (I was Chief Cashier there in the later 1980s). He would only accept cash. I didn't realise his significance at the time either, so that kind of washed over my head, too, I'm afraid.

I hate to sound like a cab driver ('I 'ad that Gustav Holst in me cab the other week, guv'nor...'), but I did get to meet Arvo Pärt very, very briefly when he came to hear my church choir sing his _Passio _in Sydney. I was star-struck and thus mostly dumbfounded, but I did get to admire his beard from a position of some proximity!

I envy you the meeting with Tippet. He seems to have been a good man and I've grown to love a lot of his music.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

^ 
Meeting Messiaen? - wow...


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

Cash in hand for Messiaen - brilliant. I can imagine him and Yvonne hitting Soho after the gig.
I met Tippet whilst on crutches recovering from an ankle injury playing football for the Royal Academy of Music (I was a student there). The RAM organised composer weeks every year with the chosen composer in residence for the week. I met Jerry Goldsmith later as a pro composer whilst he was recording the score to Medicine Man. Just briefly, I was more impressed with his orchestrator, Arthur Morton, ( https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0607925/ ), who started out working on Laurel and Hardy films, he was such a gent and sat with me and a friend in the control room with the score as it was being recorded.
Tippet is wonderful, but Britten is pretty much out on his own with a perfect marriage of all things good when it comes to composition imv.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

I have Pierre Monteux's signature on a post card - given to me by a student of his.

Decades ago when Bell Telephone was still monopoly they would sponsor tours of major orchestras and many of them came through town. Nerd that I was, I would find a way backstage to get autographs. I have Maazel, Mehta, Solti, Ozawa, Guilini, Muti, Sinopoli, Ashkenazy. I still regret not being able to snag Svetlanov, but that's when the cold war was still on and security was too tight.

The best though was Klaus Tennstedt with the London Philharmonic. Got back stage and walked right up to his dressing room door. He saw me and invited me in. Asked me what I thought of the concert (it was terrific!) then offered me a Heineken. He had one in his left hand and a cigarette in the other. Incredibly friendly. I did get his signature, too. Maybe now that I'm in hermit mode thanks to this coronavirus I'll dig through storage and find those artifacts.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

mikeh375 said:


> Tippet is wonderful, but Britten is pretty much out on his own with a perfect marriage of all things good when it comes to composition imv.


I upvote this comment a thousand-fold!


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

I have a small square (about 1" by 1") of the doctoral gown Dvorak was given by Cambridge University.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

CnC Bartok said:


> I have a small square (about 1" by 1") of the doctoral gown Dvorak was given by Cambridge University.


Wow. What's the story: how did you come by it, etc?


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

I have dug out my Peter Pears letters:
















So that was him responding to my request for a meetup and a chat about Ben.

And then, when I'd replied proposing a specific date:
















Obviously, these were the days before Satnavs! The content is not profound, but I like the trouble he took! And the colour of his choice of ink!!


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Oh, and I wasn't sure of the date of my trip to Aldeburgh, but it turns out:









...that it was 1983 and he wrote his own envelopes! (Address redacted for hopefully obvious reasons!)


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

dizwell said:


> Wow. What's the story: how did you come by it, etc?


I could say "it's amazing what you can achieve with a museum ticket and a small pair of scissors", but I won't!

A friend was in charge of its restoration a few years back, nothing sinister nor untoward....! Removed a tiny bit from a section that needed replacing just for me as a big fan of AD.

Nowhere near as cool as the stuff you're posting about here, though.....


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

CnC Bartok said:


> I could say "it's amazing what you can achieve with a museum ticket and a small pair of scissors", but I won't!
> 
> A friend was in charge of its restoration a few years back, nothing sinister nor untoward....! Removed a tiny bit from a section that needed replacing just for me as a big fan of AD.
> 
> Nowhere near as cool as the stuff you're posting about here, though.....


Oh, I don't know. That's a pretty cool story all on its own! Thanks for sharing. I take it the cloth in question is displayed properly? Or is it hidden away somewhere


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Hazy on this one:









It was used in the early 2010s or late 2000s to conduct a performance of Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. But I don't think I've kept a record of precisely when or who wielded it, which is kind of annoying.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

I see you like Dover scores huh...I can see Mahler 5+6 in there. Another Britten connection.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

mikeh375 said:


> I see you like Dover scores huh...


All I can afford 

Though I got lucky with some of these:









I don't know whether Amazon was having a nervous breakdown one day, but I got the 5th and 8th symphonies for about £15 each, instead of the more usual £80. Unfortunately, I wasn't so lucky with the others...

I used to be a regular at Boosey & Hawkes, though:











Interesting you say Mahler = another Britten connection. My entire entrée to classical music was Benjamin Britten. In other words, we sang his Rejoice in the Lamb at school, so I got 'into' his music in consequence. And since he conducted or performed works by Purcell, Elgar, Schumann, Schubert, Mozart, Bach and many others, once I'd started buying them, I became a bit of a fan of many of these 'other' composers. And then you get to know about Britten's early diaries and his enormous affection and respect for Mahler, so you get into Mahler as a result. And on and on. I think I'm pretty much exhausted on that route into new music now, but in the 1980s, Britten was almost literally my music teacher!


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

Do you know the Travis and Emery Bookshop in Cecil Crt, just off CharingX rd? They have a great selection of used scores in the basement, but you have to ask to go down there. There are some rarities down there. I was in Booseys at the top of Regent St almost every week at one time. My best buy score however was from Foyles, a full size, hard back, special edition of Elgar's The Apostles. It should have cost a few hundred, but I got it for something like £40 (if memory serves), because the pages where printed upside down in relation to the cover.
Here's some of mine.....


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

Nowhere is Britten more Mahler-ish than in the last Sea Interlude. From some of the scoring to the angst, pure Mahler. I can also hear clearly his musical affinity with Shostakovitch, but we are digressing, sorry.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

mikeh375 said:


> Do you know the Travis and Emery Bookshop in Cecil Crt, just off CharingX rd? They have a great selection of used scores in the basement, but you have to ask to go down there. There are some rarities down there. I was in Booseys at the top of Regent St almost every week at one time. My best buy score however was from Foyles, a full size, hard back, special edition of Elgar's The Apostles. It should have cost a few hundred, but I got it for something like £40 (if memory serves), because the pages where printed upside down in relation to the cover.
> Here's some of mine.....
> 
> View attachment 132010


OK, I'm officially jealous. I don't know the store you mention (a country bumpkin from Nottingham here!), but I shall see if I can look it out next time we're in town. I was in Regent Street maybe back in October, for about the first time since 1993 (a slight 26-year side trip to Australia intervened) and was shocked to discover B&H aren't there any more 

And yep. We're digressing. The best sort of digressing, though


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Oh go on then. My favourite bookshelf shelf:









Cost me an (Australian Dollar) arm and a leg. Wouldn't be without them, though, nor the CD set on the top-right.

Sorry about the plethora of Australian creatures cluttering things up. They get everywhere....


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

I have a biography signed by John Barbirolli and a concert programme signed by Richard Tauber (from a concert where he was the conductor rather than singing). Neither of them received in person, unfortunately, as both died before I was born.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

chill782002 said:


> I have a biography signed by John Barbirolli and a concert programme signed by Richard Tauber (from a concert where he was the conductor rather than singing). Neither of them received in person, unfortunately, as both died before I was born.


Can we see them, please?!


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

dizwell said:


> Can we see them, please?!


Of course. I think I know where they are, once I've located them I'll post some pictures.


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

Here you go, here's the Barbirolli biography:


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

And here's the Tauber programme:


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Envy oozes with every pore!
Very nice. Good strong signatures in both.
Thanks for sharing...


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

You're very welcome, I picked them up years ago and they're nice to have but what I wouldn't give for something signed by a favourite composer. Mahler's signature goes for rather high amounts, Stravinsky's and Sibelius' are somewhat more reasonably priced but more than I would want to admit spending to the wife on something like that.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

Mahler's death mask was in London a few years ago at an exhibition, as was some paintings by Schoenberg. It was quite amazing to see Mahler at his last.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

chill782002 said:


> You're very welcome, I picked them up years ago and they're nice to have but what I wouldn't give for something signed by a favourite composer. Mahler's signature goes for rather high amounts, Stravinsky's and Sibelius' are somewhat more reasonably priced but more than I would want to admit spending to the wife on something like that.


I always rather liked Vaughan Williams in this regard:









If you're quick you can snap it up for... yeah, well. I mean, it's not an absolutely astronomical sum, but I'd have trouble getting that through the Budget Committee of the Other Half, too!


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