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User:Sfjohna

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I was born in the UK and live there now, though for seven years I lived and worked in San Francisco. In real life I'm a technology analyst, previously a technology journalist and newsletter/magazine editor. But here my main interest is the arts, particularly music and literature. I studied music many years ago at the University of Keele and have a BA in Music and English. Later, while working, I completed an MA in Modern English Literature from the University of London, Birkbeck College with a thesis on melopoetics. My speciality is British music of the 20th Century.

Most of the entries below fill in some gaps in the story of 20th Century British music through marginal and neglected figures. My starting point has been the circle of composers and others who knew Constant Lambert. One entry typically leads to others that are closely (or not so closely) connected.

"Creations" doesn't imply ownership. Most of my subjects are so obscure that I'm likely to remain the prime contributor. But if others care enough to add to the entries then that's fine with me. It's sometimes hard to accept that others may know more or have a different perspective, but that's really the essence of Wikipedia, and it should be encouraged. Likewise, if others can correct errors and make style and format improvements it means they have noticed the material. The first original entry I contributed (under a different login name in those days) was Adrian Bell, on 6 September 2005. It still includes text recognisable from my original.

I only list "additions" for pre-existing entries, when the text added is somewhere in the top five of contributions - but many of these are still works in progress. "Substantial contributions" indicates that I am the main contributor.

I love Wikipedia, but many entries are still very inadequate, incomplete or inconsistent. Others are far too long and need structuring and pruning. I try to apply deep research to those that spark an interest (or more likely connect to something else I've been looking into) and turn them, if I can, into a well documented, unique resource that - especially in the case of obscurities - might end up as the most detailed available outside of specialized libraries. Of course I don't always succeed.

Creations

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Substantial contributions

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Additions

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Future plans

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  • Eric Wetherell (BMS and others)
  • Cedric Thorpe Davie - selected list of concert works
  • List of British string quartets - in the sandbox
  • Inglis Gundry - selected list of works - ie all the operas
  • Edith Swepstone, needs a look, particularly the work list
  • Stanford 24 Preludes (two sets) - use template from Shostakovich 24
  • Entries on two Lambert ballets - Romeo and Juliet and Pomona
  • Joseph Jongen - improve the article! Perhaps add annotated list of works
  • Musical Exoticism - vast subject, touched on it in Chinoiserie (music) - would tie some currently isolated pages together, ie Turkish music (style)
  • Pierre Arvay (1924-80), film and library music, Vision On "Merry Ocarina"
  • Robert Saxton, needs a good revision
  • Leslie Head - at least a redirect
  • Imogen Holst list of works - add recording refs, esp. 'Discovering Imogen' (Sept 24)
  • Charles Woodhouse - https://www.musicweb-international.com/amateurs/Woodhouse.html
  • Leo Sowerby - new book
  • Malcolm Singer
  • Sort out Brian Elias discography - and expand the entry
  • Percussionists - Ernest Gillegin, Charles Donaldson, Frederick Bradshaw
  • Frederick Block - here and new Chandos recording
  • Gerald Strang - Schoenberg pupil in Los Angeles
  • Archer Street (jazz)
  • List of jazz venues in the UK - sandbox
  • New entries for Club Eleven founders:
    • Leon Calvert (1927-2018, trumpet)
    • Bernie Fenton (1921-2001, piano)
    • Laurie Morgan (1926-2020, drums)
    • Joe Mudele (1920-2014, double bass)
    • Johnny Rogers (1926-2016, saxophone)
    • Tommy Pollard (1923-1960, piano and vibes)

Awards

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Precious

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collection of British music

Thank you for quality articles about 20th century music and older, such as Carnegie Collection of British Music, Herbert Bedford and Freya Waley-Cohen, for improving Egon Wellesz and Society for the Promotion of New Music, for "I try to apply deep research", - John, you are an awesome Wikipedian!

You are recipient no. 2478 of Precious, a prize of QAI. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:22, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Barnstar

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The Music Barnstar
Awarded for consistent dedication to the editing of music-related pages, in particular, the creation and editing of new articles on British composers. SpookiePuppy (talk) 15:27, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Contribution timeline and rationale

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(this is an ongoing experiment, for my own benefit)

Adrian Bell My first contribution, started on Tuesday, 6 September 2005 (under the IP address 217.207.153.51, and significantly a work day morning - as ever I was finding an excuse not to do my real work). It would have been written in my then office in Newbury, Berkshire, where I rented one small room at the top of a house on the London Road, near the Robin Hood Roundabout. I'd read his book Corduroy and was intrigued to find out his son was the war correspondent Martin Bell - and then that his daughter was Anthea Bell, translator of Kafka. That set me off tweaking their entries too, and I was off. I also began looking into the history of the crossword puzzle, to which Adrian Bell was an early contributor. And I dug out details of all of his less famous books. Around 32% of the article is still attributable to me (in September 2023), including that worklist. However, as far as I remember, I didn't write any further significant contributions until I set up this account on 6 June 2017, to record the death of composer Malcolm Lipkin.

Bernard van Dieren and Cecil Gray These were both existing entries, but in a bit of a mess (van Dieren, though it was substantial and included direct contributions from Barry Smith) and too short (Cecil Gray, it was just a few lines). I started editing and adding to both early in September 2018. For van Dieren it was mostly the Musical Style section and worklist (which someone else, a German speaker, helped to tidy up later). My contribution is now 47%. For Gray I added biographical details, survey of the music and "personal", including a lot of stuff I'd never seen before (for instance, his affair with H.D. and their daughter Perdita). My contribution to Gray is now 83% (Sept 23). Both are absolutely fascinating characters, though Gray especially remains rather obscure.

Harry Farjeon A representative of that less popular thread of composers trained at the Royal Academy of Music during this period (his contemoraries included York Bowen, Adam Carse, Benjamin Dale and Percy Hilder Miles, with a few relative stars like Arnold Bax and Eric Coates). He's also a member of the fascinating Farjeon family. A name that comes up often in the literature, and a significant teacher himself, but someone whose music I knew nothing about, because it just isn't heard anywhere these days or recorded. It was an existing entry when I started on it in September 2018. I added quite a bit more on the music itself and spent a long time sorting out the list of works.

King Palmer Created on a Sunday (28 October, 2018), this one set a pattern for the future: neglected but intriguing British composers. Since reading Teach Yourself to Compose Music years ago - it's a simple but very clear introduction to the basics of music theory - I'd always wondered who the author King Palmer was, who set himself up as a well-known composer and even included a few extracts of his own music in the book - but whom I'd never heard of. It turned out he was a significant composer - of library music, often unattributed but used in many films, radio shows and documentaries. Over some time the entry has become the most detailed source generally available, and certainly the most accessible. I suppose I'm disappointed though that nobody else has made a significant contribution to it (90% still attributable to me in September 2023). If page views are accurate, the average views have been 71 a month - which actually isn't bad if it's true and if the count doesn't include me. (For contrast, the page Carl Davis, a composer in similar fields but much more recent and famous), gets around 320 page views per day). There was a spin-off in my expansion of the Teach Yourself entry, starting in January 2019 with a proper history and examples of the early publications and some background on the authors, often very interesting characters.

Hyam Greenbaum (started October 2019). There was almost nothing on the web about Hyam Greenbaum - a key friend of Constant Lambert, Walton, Warlock and others - and hardly any other sources either - probably because he didn't achieve his full potential. I did manage to draft in some material from the TV pages (opening of BBC television), and from the Sidonie Goossens connection. I think it's still the most detailed single piece about him. I also expanded the existing entry of his much younger sister, Kyla Greenbaum. Greenbaum helped Constant Lambert complete what I think of as Lambert's masterpiece, Summer's Last Will and Testament. Lambert inscribed the vocal score he gave to Greenbaum: "To Hyam Greenbaum (who as far as I remember wrote most of this work) from Constant Lambert". Incidentally, Archibald Jacob, brother of the more famous Gordon Jacob, produced the piano reduction of Summer's Last Will and Testament, used in the original 1937 published score and the lavish limited edition score published in 1947. I wrote his entry too.

Angus Morrison (started May 2020) and Ruth Gipps (contributions 2018-22). Angus Morrison was someone I'd actually met (at the Royal College of Music in 1982 for his 80th birthday celebration concert). Couldn't believe he didn't have an entry, but pianists who didn't leave any recordings are quickly forgotten. But he was a key member of the Constant Lambert/William Walton circle, and had a big influence on them. I also met Ruth Gipps, so I filled out her entry and added a new one on the London Repertoire Orchestra. And that got me looking into pioneering British women conductors, including (in chronological order) Florence Ashton Marshall, Cécile Hartog, Ethel Leginska, Grace Burrows, Gwynne Kimpton, Iris Lemare, Avril Coleridge-Taylor, Kathleen Merritt, Imogen Holst and Kathleen Riddick.

John Pudney and Hugh Kingsmill (2020-2022). I really enjoyed the childrens books of John Pudney when I was growing up, and they became rare and hard to find later on, when I wanted to re-read them as an adult. So I always looked out for his name. In 2020 I massively expanded his entry. Pudney was a jobbing writer who wrote whatever came his way to pay the bills - but he was also a war poet and at the end of his life an unflinching autobiographer. It took quite a lot of work to retrieve the information as Pudney was largely ignored by critics. So was Hugh Kingsmill, who apart from an enthusiastic group of friends, never gained widespread recognition and struggled to make the writing profession pay. His biography of Frank Harris, his conversational travelogues with Hesketh Pearson, and his creative literary criticism in the short novella The Return of William Shakespeare are well worth exploring.

Mary and Geraldine Peppin (started January 2021). I first noticed this twin sister piano duo because they premiered Lambert's Trois Pièces Nègres pour les Touches Blanches in 1949. The were clearly very high profile at the time, and were linked to the circle of artists and musicians associated with the left wing Unity Theatre in King's Cross. Both also married left wing activists, and there's a suggestion of communist spying links during the war. Their later careers were much harder to document. I still can't believe that there isn't more written about these two. The entry led to other work, such as the pianist James Gibb, royal piano teacher Mabel Lander and a composer whom I'd long admired, Bernard Stevens.

Addressing the balance. It really irritates me that musical aspects (particularly classical music) of many subjects are downgraded or not included at all in many entries, such as settings of poetry or other texts, and musical festivals or people related to a particular place. Sometimes (as in Diegetic music and Merry England) there are some musical references related to film or popular music, but nothing on classical or music theatre. Tufton Street - which previously mentioned only Brexit politics - is a non-musical example. Entries where I've tried to redress the balance include Abbotsholme Arts Society (to Abbotsholm School), Tony Britten (where the only thing previously deemed inportant was his arrangement of a football theme tune), Anthony Burgess (music), Chinoiserie (music), Clements Memorial Prize (to Alfred J. Clements), Mary Coleridge musical settings, Deirdre of the Sorrows (musical settings), Diegetic music (musical theatre), Finnegans Wake (dramatic and musical adaptions), Goblin Market (adaptions), Grosvenor House Hotel (music), Robert Herrick in music, The Hound of Heaven (musical settings), The Hovingham Festival (to Hovingham), Lushington (musical family) (to Vernon Lushington), Fiona Macleod (musical settings), Merry England (music), Moonlight Feels Right (marimba solo), Palm court music (to Palm court), William Soutar (musical settings), Seumas O'Sullivan (musical settings), Test card music (to Test card), Alfred, Lord Tennyson (musical settings), Walenn (musical family) (to William Henry Walenn), and William Wordsworth (musical settings).

(to be continued.....)

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