Talk:Warsaw Concerto

Waxing condescending

To the poor student who's being forced to play the Warsaw Concerto and doesn't think he/she should have to and shared said sentiments at the bottom of the article (before I removed said sentiments): I feel your pain. Just get off Wikipedia, focus on the music for an hour a day, you'll have it in no time. I promise. It works for me. Kingnavland 04:52, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

The world outside - which came first

I was under the impression that "The World Outside" was based on the Warsaw Concerto, not the other way around. Which came first? Rconroy 19:17, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Spike

I'm just listening to said Warsaw concerto for the first time and have to say, I concur with Spike Milligan. Maikel 03:47, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Douglas and Addinsell

This edit should be discussed. Beckus has kindly made me aware of Douglas's own description of how he worked with Addinsell, and I reproduce that here:

"From December 1935 to January 1943 I orchestrated every bar of all Richard Addinsell's music for films and broadcasts. I must state firmly that I did not compose any of it. We developed a method whereby he would play his music on the piano (he could stretch a twelfth with either hand), and I would rapidly take it down to paper as he played. His contribution to the orchestrations was to say 'this is strings only, that is oboe, give that to the horns' and so forth, and I would eventually take my draft away and complete scoring in all details..." - Roy Douglas, ICRC Autumn Edition 1999

Addinsell would play the music on the piano, and Douglas would write it down, allocating themes to various instruments with Addinsell's general guidance. So the actual writer of the music in the sense of putting pen to paper was Douglas, although all the themes were Addinsell's own. This is a semantic point. When we say "This symphony was written by X", it's usually understood to be that X was the composer, even if he didn't actually write the notes down personally. Eric Fenby working with Frederick Delius comes to mind: Delius composed all the music, every last note of it, and was very specific about all the instrumentation, if "Song of Summer" was any guide - but Fenby wrote it down on his behalf because Delius was blind. That doesn't mean that Fenby "wrote the music"; it just means he "wrote the music down". That's an important distinction to make. Fenby was a scribe, pure and simple. In the Addinsell/Douglas case, it's not as clear cut as that. Addinsell allocated principal themes to various instruments, but my understanding is that he left some (possibly quite a lot) of the decisions about supporting instrumentation to Douglas. So when he says "I did not compose any of it", that's true; but he was more than the amanuensis that Fenby was to Delius. If Douglas had taken an existing piano score written by Addinsell, and orchestrated it (e.g. Mussorgsky/Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition, etc), that would be a clear cut distinction between a composer and an orchestrator. But that wasn't the case. Douglas wrote it down ab initio as Addinsell was playing it on the piano. I haven't read this anywhere, but my sense is that Addinsell simply did not know how to write for an orchestra, and relied on someone like Douglas to do the job for him. He had some general ideas about which instruments would play what, but he needed Douglas to fill in the gaps. Without Douglas or some other orchestrator, the world would never have heard the Warsaw Concerto or any of the other film scores that we've all been told were written by Addinsell, as if he were the only person involved. (Southern Rhapsody might put the lie to that, but I'd never be surprised to discover that Douglas or someone else played a role there too.) Comments? -- JackofOz (talk) 23:00, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I think the reason that the orchestrator is rarely given much credit is that their work is so replaceable. It is no doubt true that without the help of someone to orchestrate his music, Addinsell's works would never have been heard. But it didn't matter much who the orchestrator was: if not Douglas then somebody else, and the result would have been much the same. (And I'd note that Addinsell was not necessarily abrogating responsibility for the orchestration; if he had disapproved of something in Douglas's work, he could surely have changed it.)

It is a romantic ideal that the composer should have complete control over all aspects of their composition, but I imagine that the norm is rather different. It is easy to think of examples, such as Tchaikovsky allowing Ziloti to rewrite passages of his 1st Piano Concerto, or various composers getting their solo parts vetted by virtuoso performers. And many, many composers have used orchestrators. Generally we don't consider these secondary contributions as amounting to authorship. JBritnell (talk) 14:44, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Timing

According to IMDB, Dangerous Moonlight was released in the UK on 26 June 1941. According to this timeline, the UK-based Australian pianist Eileen Joyce was already playing the Warsaw Concerto in public in September 1940, 9 months earlier. How is this possible? -- JackofOz (talk) 05:05, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Further research: Richard Davis's biography "Eileen Joyce: A Portrait" (p. 101) talks about her playing the work in June and July 1940, and describes it as "...the Warsaw Concerto (a popular, single-movement piece for piano and orchestra recently composed by Richard Addinsell for the propaganda film Dangerous Moonlight)". If the movie wasn't released until a year later, how could the Warsaw Concerto have become "popular" in 1940? Maybe the work was published first and became well-known in its own right before the movie for which it was written was ever screened. I've never heard of any similar case, but I suppose it's possible. Any clues, anyone? -- JackofOz (talk) 06:52, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

More: This refers to 1940, although it says that the public heard it for the first time when they went to the movies in 1941. This and this and various other hits refer to Dangerous Moonlight as a "1940 film" (others date it at 1941). Maybe it was completed in 1940 but not premiered until 1941 (perhaps postponed because of the Battle of Britain), and the music was released in the meantime as a sort of promotional strategy. Or maybe IMDb have the premiere date, 26 June 1941, wrong. (It wouldn’t be the first time for IMDb.) This (incorrectly) says that Eileen Joyce played the work for the movie – it was actually Louis Kentner. But maybe the writer knew of her very early connection with the work and falsely assumed she must have been the one who played it for the film.

In any event, it would be good to discover the details of the premiere performance of the work as a stand-alone concert piece, whether it was before the movie was released or later. I’ve googled it endlessly, in vain. Richard Davis does not suggest that Eileen Joyce premiered it, so it must have been someone else who played it even earlier than she did. Or maybe Davis has his dates wrong and she played it in 1941, not 1940 (but the Eileen Joyce timelime above seems to support his data.) It’s all very mysterious. -- JackofOz (talk) 07:47, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

On reflection, if the premiere was postponed, it couldn't have been because of the Battle of Britain. That occurred between 10 July and 31 October 1940 (by British dating), and the plot of the movie itself involves an airman who'd been involved in that very battle. So the story could only have been developed either after the battle had ended, or at the very earliest while it was still happening (say, July-August 1940). Now, I've re-read Davis more closely and it seems I misread. That part of his book chops and changes a fair bit so the timeline is not always clear. He's talking about a nationwide tour by the London Philharmonic Orchestra on Jack Hylton's music hall circuit, with Eileen Joyce as the soloist. This tour started in September 1940, and she played the Warsaw Concerto, Rhapsody in Blue, the Grieg concerto and some other unnnamed items. He doesn't say when the tour ended. The battle only started in July 1940, which doesn't give much time for a story to be developed, Rachmaninoff to be approached (he declined), then Addinsell to be approached, for the music to be written, and for Eileen Joyce to learn it. I'd call this impossible even today, let alone during a war in 1940. Now, later Davis says "tour followed tour in 1940 and 1941". What I'm thinking is this: he's conflating all these separate "tours" into one "tour", and mentioning the major items she played at some stage during that whole time. Maybe she didn't actually play the Addinsell till after the movie came out, in one of the later Hylton tours, which would be consistent with what all other sources say about when it first came to the public's attention. Still, she must have been one of the first people to play it as a concert piece and I'd never be surprised to discover she was the very first. Pity we don't have a specific date for the first time she ever played it. -- JackofOz (talk) 07:11, 9 December 2008 (UTC)