Mr Garry Humphreys is writing a major book about the English composer Arthur Somervell (1863-1937), as well as compiling a catalogue raisonné of Somervell’s compositions. On 6 September last year he emailed me to ask whether I thought a typescript entitled The Blue Cloth — Abu Nâsi: A Wordless Comedy, accompanying a full score of Somervell’s incidental music to the work, was the same as George Calderon’s ballet libretto The Red Cloth: A Comedy without Words.
From the very words Abu Nâsi (which refer to a tame donkey in the script and appear to mean in Arabic ‘Father of Clarification’), I was able to say that the text Humphreys has seen at the Royal College of Music is a version of the ballet libretto The Red Cloth, which I discuss on pages 338-39 of my biography George Calderon: Edwardian Genius. The question is, of course, whether The Blue Cloth is an earlier or later version of The Red Cloth. On Garry Humphreys’s advice, I ordered a copy of the text from RCM’s archive at the end of October. Not having received it by the end of November, I reordered it and for good measure inquired about a copy of Somervell’s music as well. I am still waiting…
On the typescript that Humphreys has seen, George’s address is given as 42 Well Walk, Hampstead, whereas on the typescript that belonged to Kittie, and of which I have a copy by courtesy of Mr John Pym, the address is Heathland Lodge, Hampstead Heath. Since George and Kittie did not move from Heathland Lodge to 42 Well Walk until the end of 1912, one might conclude that The Blue Cloth is the later, even ‘definitive’ version. But Kittie’s copy, The Red Cloth, which she described as ‘very valuable’, contains changes in George’s hand as well as his manuscript cartoons accompanying the typed text, which suggests to me that it postdates The Blue Cloth and is the ‘master copy’.
George’s cartoon of the Sheikh, who thinks he has caught his wife’s lover in the coffer he is sitting on.
My theory about why the ballet was renamed The Red Cloth is that on Kittie’s copy she had written ‘This was going to be produced by the Moscow Art Theatre in 1914 when the War came’ and red would be far more attractive in a Russian title, as krasnyi (scarlet) has always been Russia’s favourite colour and used to mean ‘beautiful’. Originally, the libretto was created by George for Michel Fokine and West European performance. Because Kittie’s copy had the Heathland Lodge address on it, I concluded George had written it in 1911 or early 1912. In June 1912, however, Fokine resigned from Ballets Russes and did not come to London with the company, hence George’s offer to the Moscow Arts, which was perhaps facilitated by George’s admirer and correspondent Vsevolod Meyerhold.
The gratifying thing for me is that my hypothesis of the date of composition of The Red Cloth, as presented in the biography, and Kittie’s account of a planned 1914 Moscow Arts production (which when I first read it in the 1980s seemed implausible), are validated by this paragraph from Arthur Somervell’s as yet unpublished memoirs, written in 1935, which Garry Humphreys has most kindly shown me in his transcription:
In 1912 George Calderon called on me with a wordless play to which he wished me to write music. The scene was set in a Harem, and the action was quick and very amusing, the end being a climax of absurdity, which was very much heightened since the audience knew what the end would be before the discomfited husband, and they watched his disillusionment with ever increasing delight. Calderon said there was no hurry, as he hadn’t got the promise of a performance, but early in 1914 he told me that he had got a promise from the Moscow Arts Theatre, and that the production would take place in October of that year. I had already made a start and played him some of the beginning. Then he went to the War, and though we hardly expected it could be played in October, I went ahead with it and it was finished and scored by the middle of the month. Alas, Calderon never returned! He was reported ‘missing’ in the autumn and was never heard of again; so The Blue Cloth went on to the shelf. We were very much shocked about Calderon’s death, he was one of those men for whom I felt a real affection, although I knew him so slightly.
There is, of course, a factual error here, as George was not ‘missing’ after his wound ‘in the autumn’ at Ypres; he recovered, was reported missing after the Third Battle of Krithia, and is now known to have died at Gallipoli on 4 June 1915. But Somervell’s memoir of George, as ‘one of those men for whom I felt a real affection’, is invaluable.
Obviously, now that we have the complete music to George’s ballet The Blue/Red Cloth for Michel Fokine, and George’s complete illustrated libretto, it could be performed for the first time! (No music is known to have been commissioned for the other four ballets or ‘mimodramas’ that George wrote originally for Ballets Russes.) The Blue/Red Cloth is indeed set in ‘the Harem of the SHEIKH’s house in Cairo; early 19th Century’, its plot probably derives from one of the Tales of the Arabian Nights (although I’ve not been able to discover which), and it is a comic version of Fokine’s sensational and trail blazing ballet Scheherazade, which George must have seen in London during the 1911 and 1912 Ballets Russes seasons. I hope to return to the subject of a future premiere of the Calderon/Somervell collaboration — giving a full account of the plot of The Blue/Red Cloth — when I have received copies of the libretto and music from the Royal College of Music.
I cannot thank Garry Humphreys enough for contacting me, and wish him every success with his work on Arthur Somervell, which I am sure will be definitive and shine needed light into further corners of British music in the Edwardian period. I would hope to write about it one day on this blog. I am also deeply beholden to the trustees of Arthur Somervell’s estate for giving me permission to quote the above passage from his memoirs.
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SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS
‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement
‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine
‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian
‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review
‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter
‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer
‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18
A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.
A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.
Related
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
George Calderon c.1901
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Captain of the 11
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
George Calderon, 1912
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
A stunning discovery
Mr Garry Humphreys is writing a major book about the English composer Arthur Somervell (1863-1937), as well as compiling a catalogue raisonné of Somervell’s compositions. On 6 September last year he emailed me to ask whether I thought a typescript entitled The Blue Cloth — Abu Nâsi: A Wordless Comedy, accompanying a full score of Somervell’s incidental music to the work, was the same as George Calderon’s ballet libretto The Red Cloth: A Comedy without Words.
From the very words Abu Nâsi (which refer to a tame donkey in the script and appear to mean in Arabic ‘Father of Clarification’), I was able to say that the text Humphreys has seen at the Royal College of Music is a version of the ballet libretto The Red Cloth, which I discuss on pages 338-39 of my biography George Calderon: Edwardian Genius. The question is, of course, whether The Blue Cloth is an earlier or later version of The Red Cloth. On Garry Humphreys’s advice, I ordered a copy of the text from RCM’s archive at the end of October. Not having received it by the end of November, I reordered it and for good measure inquired about a copy of Somervell’s music as well. I am still waiting…
On the typescript that Humphreys has seen, George’s address is given as 42 Well Walk, Hampstead, whereas on the typescript that belonged to Kittie, and of which I have a copy by courtesy of Mr John Pym, the address is Heathland Lodge, Hampstead Heath. Since George and Kittie did not move from Heathland Lodge to 42 Well Walk until the end of 1912, one might conclude that The Blue Cloth is the later, even ‘definitive’ version. But Kittie’s copy, The Red Cloth, which she described as ‘very valuable’, contains changes in George’s hand as well as his manuscript cartoons accompanying the typed text, which suggests to me that it postdates The Blue Cloth and is the ‘master copy’.
George’s cartoon of the Sheikh, who thinks he has caught his wife’s lover in the coffer he is sitting on.
My theory about why the ballet was renamed The Red Cloth is that on Kittie’s copy she had written ‘This was going to be produced by the Moscow Art Theatre in 1914 when the War came’ and red would be far more attractive in a Russian title, as krasnyi (scarlet) has always been Russia’s favourite colour and used to mean ‘beautiful’. Originally, the libretto was created by George for Michel Fokine and West European performance. Because Kittie’s copy had the Heathland Lodge address on it, I concluded George had written it in 1911 or early 1912. In June 1912, however, Fokine resigned from Ballets Russes and did not come to London with the company, hence George’s offer to the Moscow Arts, which was perhaps facilitated by George’s admirer and correspondent Vsevolod Meyerhold.
The gratifying thing for me is that my hypothesis of the date of composition of The Red Cloth, as presented in the biography, and Kittie’s account of a planned 1914 Moscow Arts production (which when I first read it in the 1980s seemed implausible), are validated by this paragraph from Arthur Somervell’s as yet unpublished memoirs, written in 1935, which Garry Humphreys has most kindly shown me in his transcription:
There is, of course, a factual error here, as George was not ‘missing’ after his wound ‘in the autumn’ at Ypres; he recovered, was reported missing after the Third Battle of Krithia, and is now known to have died at Gallipoli on 4 June 1915. But Somervell’s memoir of George, as ‘one of those men for whom I felt a real affection’, is invaluable.
Obviously, now that we have the complete music to George’s ballet The Blue/Red Cloth for Michel Fokine, and George’s complete illustrated libretto, it could be performed for the first time! (No music is known to have been commissioned for the other four ballets or ‘mimodramas’ that George wrote originally for Ballets Russes.) The Blue/Red Cloth is indeed set in ‘the Harem of the SHEIKH’s house in Cairo; early 19th Century’, its plot probably derives from one of the Tales of the Arabian Nights (although I’ve not been able to discover which), and it is a comic version of Fokine’s sensational and trail blazing ballet Scheherazade, which George must have seen in London during the 1911 and 1912 Ballets Russes seasons. I hope to return to the subject of a future premiere of the Calderon/Somervell collaboration — giving a full account of the plot of The Blue/Red Cloth — when I have received copies of the libretto and music from the Royal College of Music.
I cannot thank Garry Humphreys enough for contacting me, and wish him every success with his work on Arthur Somervell, which I am sure will be definitive and shine needed light into further corners of British music in the Edwardian period. I would hope to write about it one day on this blog. I am also deeply beholden to the trustees of Arthur Somervell’s estate for giving me permission to quote the above passage from his memoirs.
ADVERTISEMENT
SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS
‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement
‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine
‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian
‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review
‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter
‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer
‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18
A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.
A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.
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