Turnage, Mark-Anthony. (b. 1960)
Collection of Autograph Music Sketchbooks
A highly interesting and significant group of six autograph musical sketchbooks from the English composer who has gained particular recognition for his operas and as Composer-in-Residence with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Chicago Symphony Orchestra. All six notebooks are identical 9 x 12.5 inch (21.5 x 31.5 cm) black leather manuscript composition books, 121 pp. Each is signed by Turnage on the title page. Written in pencil with occasional smudges, overall very legible and clean.1. Sketchbook for Remembering, Turnage's orchestral piece for the LSO, and Strapless, his 2015 commission for the Royal Ballet. Title page dated February 25, 2015 (struck through) and April 9, 2015. Contains approx. 5 pp. of rough thematic sketches for Remembering, including Turnage's working-out of a theme on the letters of the name Evan Scofield, the son of jazz guitarist John Scofield who died in his 20's and for whom the piece was written; a musical scheme around John Donne's poem "Death be not proud"; and approx. 110 pp. of sketches and drafts for Strapless.
2. Sketchbook for Strapless, continued. 57 pp. of sketches and notes, including notes on the timing and cues of each scene.
3. Sketchbook for Act One of Coraline, Turnage's children's opera commissioned by the Royal Opera House and premiered in 2018. First page dated January 2015. 117 pp. of sketches, with and without texts.
4. Sketchbook for Act Two of Coraline and for a quintet written for the International Musicians' Seminar in Prussia Cove. 72 pp. of sketches for Coraline, with and without text. 2 pp. of a rough sketch of Prussia Cove. With two pages of printed music of scene 2 from Strapless, with Turnage's corrections in pencil.
5. Sketchbook for Towards Alba (first movement titled Aubade), a horn concerto commissioned for Richard Watkins and the Philharmonia Orchestra to be performed in 2019. Title page dated June 26, 2017. 31 pp. of sketches, including a draft of Aubade with the text of Philip Larkin's poem "Aubade" overlaid over the horn part.
6. Sketchbook for Refugee, a song cycle for tenor and orchestra to be performed by Allan Clayton and the Britten Sinfonia in September 2019. Title page dated February 3, 2017. At the head of the title page, struck through: "Echoes Return Slow / R. S. Thomas Song Cycle for Ian Shaw / Britten Sinfonia." 44 pp. of sketches, including drafts of settings of R. S. Thomas' poems "Here" and "Evening," W. H. Auden's poem "Refugee Blues," Benjamin Zephaniah's "We Refugees," Brian Bilston's "Refugees," Emily Dickinson's "These strangers, in a foreign world."
Mark-Anthony Turnage (b. 1960) is an English composer whose works include six operas, as well as orchestral, choral and chamber music. He is perhaps best-known for his 2011 opera Anna Nicole, based on the life of TV personality Anna Nicole Smith. The works represented in this group of sketchbooks include his 2016 ballet score for Covent Garden, Strapless (inspired by John Singer Sargent's Portrait of Madame X), his opera Coraline (based on the dark children's novella by Neil Gaiman), a quintet written for the International Musicians Seminar, Prussia Cove, in 2017, and an as-yet unpublished horn concerto and song cycle.
Turnage was the first Radcliffe Composer in Association with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra from 1989 until 1993 and between 2000 and 2003 was the BBC Symphony Orchestra's first Associate Composer. He was Composer in Residence with the London Philharmonic Orchestra from 2005 until 2010. Between 2006 and 2010, Turnage was a co-composer-in-residence of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a position he held alongside Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov. (16740)
Manuscript Music Classical Music