Tales from the Stave: The extraordinary stories behind classical musical manuscripts
About this audiobook
Frances Fyfield and Clemency Burton-Hill explore the tales and tribulations behind the scores of well-known pieces of music
'Endlessly fascinating' New Statesman
Crime writer Frances Fyfield and classical music broadcaster Clemency Burton-Hill pore over the hand-written scores of great composers to decipher the hidden tales of creativity locked within. Behind the hieroglyphics, scribbles and corrections on these priceless pages are clues that, when forensically examined by an expert eye, reveal the extraordinary craft, skill and inventiveness of geniuses such as Beethoven, Handel, Elgar, Stravinsky, Schubert, Puccini, Rachmaninov and Chopin.
Accompanied by a team of musical sleuths, including world-leading performers, conductors, writers and graphologists, Frances and Clemency travel the UK, Europe and America to track down these rare and treasured documents. Among their discoveries are the manuscripts for famous songs like 'On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring', and some of the best-loved operas, operettas and musicals of all time including Madame Butterfly, Porgy and Bess, and The Pirates of Penzance.
They scour the fragile pages of Bach's B-Minor Mass, so thick with music that the ink has burned through the paper; the ballet score for Aaron Copland's 'Appalachian Spring', revealing the changes made to please guest dancer Rudolf Nureyev; and a long-lost flute concerto by Vivaldi, rediscovered after being buried in an Edinburgh archive for 250 years. Through detailed study of these, and many other, manuscripts, they reveal the answers to questions such as, how did Debussy attempt to capture the sea? What famous lines were adapted for their first singers? Why was one of Mozart's boldest lines crossed out? And did the shooting of a German diplomat inspire Tippett's A Child of Our Time?
Inspired, insightful and often surprising, this is an unparalleled look at the astonishing secret history of musical invention - ink blots, doodles, coffee stains and all.
Copyright © 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. (P) 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4, May 2004 - August 2020
Presented by Frances Fyfield, Clemency Burton-Hill
Christine Andreas and Ted Sperling (Series 19, Episode 3)
Loras Schissel (Series 19, Episode 4)
Produced by Tom Alban, Simon Elmes, Mohini Patel
About the author
Clemency Burton-Hill is a British broadcaster, journalist and novelist. She has presented BBC Radio 3 Breakfast and numerous other arts and culture programmes across television and radio including the BBC Proms, Young Musician of the Year, The Arts Hour, BBC New Generation Artists and Secret Knowledge. Previously she was a reporter on the BBC’s Culture Show, and a guest host of the BBC’s Review Show. She has presented the coverage of Last Night of The Proms, as well as hosted the BBC Young Musician competition from 2010-2018. As a journalist Clemency has contributed to all the UK broadsheets and has been a regular profile and features writer for the FT Weekend magazine, the Economist’s bi-monthly magazine 1843, the Telegraph and Observer. She is the author of two novels, The Other Side of the Stars, 2009, and All The Things You Are, 2013, both published by Headline Review. In 2017 her first non-fiction book Year of Wonder: Classical Music for Every Day was published and in 2018 released in the US. In 2021 her second non-fiction book Another Year of Wonder: Classical Music for Every Day was released.
