The music of Anthony Burgess: 'Mr W.S.'

'Mr W.S.: A Ballet on the Career of William Shakespeare' (Anthony Burgess, 1979).

(cf. the 'Mr W.H.' to whom Shakespeare's Sonnets are dedicated: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/SonnetsDedication.jpg)

Burgess writes in 'You've Had Your Time', the second volume of his autobiography: "The BBC broadcast [the ballet suite] twice and then, in obedience to Musicians' Union regulations, destroyed the tape. I wrote it in Bruno Micconi's study, looking down on the writhing vipers in the garden, while the huge portrait of Karl Marx, transferred to Montalbuccio from Rome, looked down on me. I wrote it without the aid of a keyboard to check the harmonies, putting myself entirely in the situation of the deaf Beethoven (whose harmonies were simpler than mine and did not have to be checked)."

Many thanks to helka09

Category:

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• Anthony Burgess
• music
• ballet
• suite
• orchestra
• Shakespeare
• Mr WS
• Beethoven
• Marx
• BBC
• Musicians' Union
• philistinism
• syndicalism
• trades unions
• Bruno Micconi
• viper
• Montalbuccio
• deafness
• harmony
• Elizabethan
• pipe
• shawm
• tabor
• galliard
• sea shanty
• sarabande
• death march
• Paul Phillips
• Marie-Laure Agrapart

[Doinghisbest]

Thank you so much for posting this. I've been an avid reader of Anthony Burgess for well over twenty years but, until seeing this clip, could only imagine how his music sounded.

Thanks again!