Fanfares by Fanfare

[jsnfmn]

Hi all, hopefully someone is still in this forum to answer copyright questions despite everything else going on.

Through a couple of sources, I was alerted to and subsequently was given access to a British magazine published in the latter half of 1921 which asked composers (many quite famous including de Falla, Vaughan Williams, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Bliss, Brian) to write or otherwise contribute fanfares to each issue, four of which appeared in the center pages. The magazine was called Fanfare: A Musical Causerie, for those curious about it. For a large number of these fanfares, I believe that they are published in the forms they take in this magazine nowhere else and in some cases do not even appear on these composers' list of complete works.

I was planning on uploading these to IMSLP after making sure that their copyright status in the US (and possibly in other countries depending on each individual composer) would allow for this. Since IMSLP is down temporarily, I'd like to offer them for download on my own website, possibly with some arrangements of the ones that were published only in short score. Is there someone that can help me confirm that I would be in the right to do this?

Thanks!
Jason Huffman
jsnfmn.net

[Yagan Kiely]

I *think* they are PD in the US and at least Stravinsky, Prok are copyright in some other places, as well as maybe V-Williams, don't know about the rest.

Do NOT take my word of it, I am far from an expert on Copyright. I'm merely guessing.

[Carolus]

Hi jsnfmn,

Carolus (the semi-retired copyright enforcer for IMSLP) here. The magazine - and all the music contained therein - is public domain in the USA due to its publication before 1923. The status of the individual composers depends on the which territory you're in. Stravinsky and Vaughan Williams are both still protected in Canada, Japan and all the life-plus-50 countries, while others are still protected in the EU and life-plus-70 (and greater) countries.

If and when IMSLP goes up again in the future, you'll have to make sure that only those works of composers who have been dead since before 1957 are posted here. We were planning to get rid of the US server because of the numerous technical glitches with it, so Stravinsky and the like will not be possible.

[jsnfmn]

Thanks Carolus and ArcticWind7 for the replies, I feel a little better about posting them on my site. I'll look into each composers' death dates (if applicable) before posting them to a resurrected IMSLP, which will require that I interpret the occasionally unreadable signatures attached to each fanfare. For anyone interested, they should be up on my site in the next few weeks.

Jason

[pml]

Hi Jason,

how strange - yesterday I composed a short Fanfare for the orchestral brass: 4 horns, 4 trumpets, 4 trombones (3 tenors & 1 bass) and bass tuba. A pity the takedown of IMSLP.org prevents me from easily sharing it!

Fanfare (the magazine of "musical causerie") ran for only half a dozen issues in 1921 (5 issues) and 1922 (1 issue), closing down after January of the latter year owing to lack of financial support. There's a succinct and praiseworthy description of the magazine in the Havergal Brian Society's newsletter no. 10 (March/April 1977) by Malcolm (Calum) Macdonald, which includes a facsimile of the Brian work, "Fanfare from Burlesque Opera 'The Grotesques'", which was simply four bars in piano score included as writ in MS by the composer, in Vol. 1 No. 5 (December 1921) of Fanfare.

Brian's work was the earliest published excerpt from the opera later known as "The Tigers", published in vocal score by Cranz in 1932. At the time of writing the later article (1977) the full score was unknown to Macdonald, so he elaborated it for brass and percussion himself; the long-lost full score was duly rediscovered in December of the same year.

Manuel de Falla contributed a "Fanfare pour une Fête", and Erik Satie the "Sonnerie pour reveiller le bon gros Roi des Singes"; besides Brian, British composers included Granville Bantock, Arnold Bax, Arthur Bliss, Josef Holbrooke, and Ernest Bryson. The entire set of published works from Fanfare would be in the public domain in the US, and elsewhere would rely on the local laws in force with respect to "author's life" + "X" years (where X may be 0, 30, 50, 70, 80, 99, or 100 or more).

The magazine is a collector's item now, and I'd be interested in seeing scans of the entire publication, if its possible for you do that. According to Macdonald "Fanfare was a stylish production, with some of the irreverence of the Twenties but with its critical head firmly screwed on: it took note of all of the most progressive developments in music at the time, and it contains, among other things, the first really sensible evaluations of Schoenberg and Stravinsky published in this country." (i.e. the UK)

Best regards, Philip

[Vivaldi]

Forgive me if this is off topic, but may I ask if this "Fanfare" is the same genre that Copland used in writing his "Fanfare for the Common Man"?

[Yagan Kiely]

Fanfares are brass instruments playing quick arpeggios over one chord, but I am biased and generally do not like them so don't listen to me, listen to wiki.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanfare

[emeraldimp]

Actually, jsnfmn... Project Gutenberg would probably also be interested in scans (or transcriptions) of the magazine as well. You might contact them or distributed proofreaders ( http://pgdp.net/ ) to see.

[jsnfmn]

I wish I could say that I had the entire magazines, but right now I only have copies of the centerfolds with the fanfares. I got access to them at the Harvard Loeb Music Library, and due to their somewhat fragile condition, I didn't want to push my luck by asking to copy them in their entirety. I may go back at some point and ask to do the entire magazines, but at the time I was just happy that they let me copy the music.

I find these fanfares interesting mostly as they comprise the viewpoints of several prominent composers of the time looking both at the genre of the 'fanfare' and at the utilization and characterization of brass instruments, and trumpets specifically. Many of them take a sort of tongue in cheek approach. They may not go quite as far as say, Kagel's Fanfanfaren, but I think they should be interesting to both composers and brass players, or in my case both. I found it incredibly frustrating that most of the copies of these will continue to sit in music library special collections collecting dust.

Now for an additional question. From a few articles about the magazine that I found, I found out that Fanfare didn't just die off after 6 issues, but was merged with another called 'The Musical Mirror' and thereafter called 'The musical mirror and fanfare : music, radio and the gramophone' It still has fanfare in the title, might they have continued the tradition of including fanfares written specially for the magazine? Anyone who can answer that question (especially with a yes) would make me very happy.

Jason

[emeraldimp]

I wish I could say that I had the entire magazines, but right now I only have copies of the centerfolds with the fanfares. I got access to them at the Harvard Loeb Music Library, and due to their somewhat fragile condition, I didn't want to push my luck by asking to copy them in their entirety. I may go back at some point and ask to do the entire magazines, but at the time I was just happy that they let me copy the music.

Quite understandable! I do hope that you are able to get them, someday, though; it sounds like an interesting publication!

[pml]

Bump!

With the advent of IMSLP·EU, we are now able to… uhh, link to the remainder of these little pieces, provided someone in the US uploads them to that server (Havergal Brian’s ‘Fanfare from “The Grotesques”’ has already made its way there):

• Georges Auric, ‘Petite Fanfare’
• Arthur Bliss, ‘Fanfare for a Political Address’
• Piero Coppola, ‘Fanfara di quattro soldatini di piombo ubriachi’
• Eugene Goossens, ‘Fanfare for a cermony’
• Julius Harrison, ‘Fanfare for a masked Ball’
• Gian Francesco Malipiero, ‘Fanfare for Fanfare’
• Darius Milhaud, ‘Fanfare’
• Francis Poulenc, ‘Esquisse d’une fanfare’
• Francesco Balilla Pratella, ‘Fanfara per la festa di “Fanfare”.’
• Sergei Prokofiev, ‘Fanfare pour une spectacle’
• Egon Wellesz, ‘Fanfare’

Has anyone discovered evidence of further compositions gracing the pages of the successor magazine, “The musical mirror and fanfare”?

Cheers, Philip

[jsnfmn]

Bump!

With the advent of IMSLP·EU, we are now able to… uhh, link to the remainder of these little pieces, provided someone in the US uploads them to that server (Havergal Brian’s ‘Fanfare from “The Grotesques”’ has already made its way there)

True enough, I did scan them all and can start uploading them as I find the time, maybe even put some up today.

I did page through some of the first issues of the new combined periodical "The musical mirror and fanfare" and though it seems there are two pieces included in each issue, they are not nearly as interesting as the fanfares from fanfare, just a random grab bag of short songs and pieces for violin and piano.

[Electra Yourke]

I have tuned in to your exchanges on fanfares in search of background information on five concerts conducted by my late father Nicolas Slonimsky at the Hollywood Bowl in the summer of 1933. Fourteen fanfares were programmed, including several listed in your recent posting from the magazine Fanfare, plus others. I am currently editing a collection of his letters, including letters from that time. It would be interesting to obtain some background on these selections, as he does not mention them at all nor does he mention Fanfare - understandably, since there was enough turmoil around the longer pieces he programmed.

[pml]

Hi Electra,

that’s very interesting. These sorts of things occasionally come in and then go out of vogue. For example, I remember the Australian Broadcasting Corporation commissioning a dozen or so fanfares from Australian composers to be premièred by the various state orchestras during its 60th anniversary year in 1992; fifty or so years earlier, Eugene Goossens commissioned and performed eighteen fanfares with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, having composed one of the contributions to the 1921 magazine Fanfare:

During the 1942/43 season, CSO Music Director Eugène Goossens invited various composers to submit fanfares to be performed at subscription concerts. The composers seem mostly to be Americans; several later became well known. The only fanfare currently in the repertoire is Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. The titles salute various aspects of the war effort. Also during the season, national anthems from Allied countries opened the concerts.

1. A Fanfare for Airmen, Bernard Wagenaar, Oct. 9, 1942
2. A Fanfare for Russia, Deems Taylor, Oct. 16, 1942.
3. A Fanfare for the Fighting French, Walter Piston, Oct. 23, 1942.
4. A Fanfare to the Forces of our Latin-American Allies, Henry Cowell, Oct. 30, 1942.
5. A Fanfare for Friends, Daniel Gregory Mason, Nov. 6, 1942.
6. A Fanfare for Paratroopers, Paul Creston, Nov. 27, 1942.
7. Fanfare de la Liberte, Darius Milhaud, Dec. 11, 1942.
8. A Fanfare for American Heroes, William Grant Still, Dec. 18, 1942.
9. Fanfare for France, Virgil Thomson, Jan. 15, 1943.
10. Fanfare for Freedom, Morton Gould, Jan. 22, 1943.
11. Fanfare for Airmen, Leo Sowerby, Jan. 29, 1943.
12. Fanfare for Poland, Harl McDonald, Feb. 5, 1943.
13. Fanfare for the Medical Corps, Anis Fuleihan, Feb. 26, 1943.
14. Fanfare for the American Soldier, Felix Borowski, March 5, 1943.
15. Fanfare for the Common Man, Aaron Copland, March 12, 1943.
16. Fanfare for the Signal Corps, Howard Hanson, April 2, 1943.
17. Fanfare for the Merchant Marine, Eugene Goossens, April 16, 1943.
Performed at a “popular” concert:
18. Fanfare for Commandos, Bernard Rogers, Feb. 20, 1943.

All of these appear (probably including Milhaud and Goossens) to be new compositions.

My trawling of the web came up with little that was helpful for your enquiry, but let’s see how we go. The Hollywood Bowl has a paragraph stating:

Musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky claimed he was fired after conducting two weeks of concerts in 1933 because the music was too dissonant and unusual. His programs, which mixed Mozart and Strauss with such daunting contemporary works as Varèse’s Ionisation, undoubtedly caused some audience disapproval, but they had a profound impact on composer John Cage, who attended all of them.

I note Ionisation was premièred by your father earlier in 1933.

I presume you know the Library of Congress’ Slonimsky Collection backwards and forwards. One would suppose the programmes for the concerts escaped being put in Box 125 (which isn’t itemised like the other boxes).

Box 119 contains holographs for the parts of fanfares by:
Manuel de Falla — perhaps the Fanfare pour un fête in Fanfare Issue 1, 1 October 1921?
Darius Milhaud — listed by the LoC as “Fanfare pour un fête”, but that’s clearly the title of the Falla work; the Milhaud work in Fanfare was simply entitled “Fanfare”
Serge Prokofiev — Fanfare pour une spectacle [including a printed version]
Amadeo Roldán — Fanfare/Llamada
Igor Stravinsky — Fanfare for a liturgy
Also there in “miniature printed versions” (presumably direct copies from Fanfare?):
Arthur Bliss — Fanfare for a Political Address
Francis Poulenc — Esquisse d’une fanfare

Of those, only the works by Roldán and Stravinsky apparently weren’t in the one of the six issues of Fanfare in 1921. As mentioned upthread, the Loeb Music Library at Harvard have a complete set, and IMSLP contributor Jason Huffman scanned all 24 fanfares for his own website (and most of them have subsequently become available on IMSLP·US).

Slonimsky’s own Fanfare is listed separately and more completely: “Fanfarria habanera para despertar a los trasnochadores” (and elsewhere I found it attributed to one Nicolas Slonimsky whose dates were erroneously given as 1913–1990!)

Holograph score (4 p.) and parts (5), in ink with pencil annotations.
Score signed "Habana, 22.-IV-1933"
Note: piccolo, clarinet, horn, bell, maracas, and bongos

With that orchestration, I wonder whether it has anything in common with the Piccolo divertimentos mentioned elsewhere amongst his works. I realise that those eight are well short of the fourteen you mention in your post, but there were in all 24 fanfares included in the 6 issues of the 1921 magazine, so it would not be too brazen to presume some or all of the other six originated there. (The 24 composers represented were: Auric, Bantock, Bax, Bliss, Havergal Brian, Ernest Bryson, Coppola, Falla, Fogg, Goosens, Julius Harrison, Harty, Holbrooke, Malipiero, Milhaud, Poulenc, Pratella, Prokofiev, Roussel, Satie, Vaughan Williams, Wellesz, Felix White, and Gerard Williams.)

Finally, I’ll append a more complete quote of the British music critic Malcolm MacDonald, writing in the Havergal Brian Newsletter No. 10 (March 1977, © 1977 Malcolm MacD):

The most minute of all Brian's compositions — if we can even call it that — is nevertheless an item of some interest. It owes its existence to Leigh Henry’s little magazine Fanfare, which ran for half-a-dozen issues in the years 1921–22. Described as a ‘musical causerie’, Fanfare was a stylish production, with some of the irreverence of the Twenties but with its critical head firmly screwed on: it took note of all the most progressive developments in music at the time, and it contains, among other things, the first really sensible evaluations of Schoenberg and Stravinsky published in this country. The editor, Leigh Henry, was well versed in all aspects of contemporary music, and had a high opinion of Havergal Brian (on whom he wrote two important articles in the May & July 1922 issues of Musical Opinion). That Fanfare closed down for lack of support in January 1922 was, however, a sign of the times — of how much the Great War had broken the spirit of the English Musical Renaissance.

The magazine (a collector’s item nowadays) owed its name to its stimulating practice of commissioning tiny musical supplements from leading British and European composers: four per issue, on average, were asked to contribute a little fanfare. Thus were written such gems as Falla’s Fanfare pour une Fête and Satie’s Sonnerie pour reveiller le bon gros Roi des Singes; British composers who contributed included Bax, Bliss, Bantock, Holbrooke, Ernest Bryson — and Havergal Brian. While most of them wrote complete pieces in full score, Brian simply produced a four-bar extract, in short score, from a major work which at that time remained in sketch — the opera we now know as The Tigers. It appeared in Fanfare vol. 1, no. 5 (December 1921).

The fragment (which is all it is, though I have made a realization for brass and percussion, should anybody want to perform it) is thus chiefly worth our attention for what it can tell us about the early stages of a work whose genesis is still somewhat mysterious. The original pencil sketch-score of The Tigers is lost. The present Fanfare corresponds to the last bar of p. 119 and the first three bars of p. 120 of the printed vocal score. But in bars 1–3 the dynamics and accentuation are different, and the right-hand part in bars 1–2 is at a different octave; while bar 4 (in 3/4 and suggesting a percussion pattern) is completely different from the purely melodic 4/4 allegro molto we find in the vocal score. Moreover the parent work is here designated a ‘Burlesque Opera’ (Brian was later to say that it was not burlesque at all, and the vocal score in fact just calls it ‘Opera’) with the title The Grotesques — which the piece in fact bore at least well into the 1920s. We don’t know exactly when the change was made; but it is fascinating to note, in the stage-direction above bar 3, that at least one character’s name got changed too. Colonel Sir John Stout, operatic history’s softest chocolate soldier, is here called ‘Colonel Toby’ (like a Toby Jug, perhaps?).

Mere hints, musical and dramatic — but we could, if we wished, postulate a major revision of Brian’s first opera between 1921 and its publication in 1932 on the strength of them. Even about a major work like The Tigers there is so much that we still don’t know. It remains to mention that on the small slip of manuscript paper on which Brian wrote his little Fanfare — which recently came to light in a bookseller’s catalogue — are the lowest three systems (viola, cellos, basses) of a page of full score. The bars are empty, but they contain clefs and a key-signature of B flat or G minor. We possess no orchestral work by Brian of around this date that uses such a key-signature. So what is this, then? A scrap from the lost Tales of Olden Times? Part of a full score that Brian the copyist was making for some more fortunate composer? As always with Brian, each new piece of evidence for his creative life only raises further questions.

It is worth noting that IMSLP·US now hosts a copy of the opera’s vocal score mentioned (here), and the manuscript full score of the work, missing since the 1940s or 50s, was recovered late in 1977, several months after MacDonald wrote the above.

Best regards, Philip

[Graham1973]

I've heard, though I'll have to do more research to confirm this, that the 18 fanfares Goosens comissioned during WWII were not the first such set he had comissioned.

Supposedly there is an earlier set of fanfares he comissioned during WWI, but there are no details on just who was asked to compose them...

Later:

I've done some quick internet research, unfortunately all I seem to find is variations on the following:

"Eugene Goossens, conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, had written to me at the end of August about an idea he wanted to put into action for the 1942-43 concert season. During World War I he had asked British composers for a fanfare to begin each orchestral concert. It had been so successful that he thought to repeat the procedure in World War II with American composers"

Wikipedia

It might be time to hit the offline archives...