It’s entirely reasonable for a society such as ours to have some sort of central repository for material pertaining to the reason for its existence: in our case the life and work of Havergal Brian. We are not alone in having such a collection. The society dedicated to one of HB’s closest musical relations (Robert Simpson) has such a collection, held under the auspices of Lionel Pike—no doubt some of you may remember his remarkable piece on tonality in The Gothic published some years ago in Tempo, as I recall. A visit to their website will show the riches the collection contains. Then again, the Elgar Birthplace has a collection of material in an environment that would be the envy of any archivist—certainly me! But then Elgar is after all a well established presence in British music and the Birthplace can, and does, command the wherewithal to attract the clout to finance all things Elgarian. And of course the Britten collection has been established for years.

So we are not alone—but at present we are, perforce, rather more modest in the content of our Archive as is perhaps natural, for its roots reach back only to the autumn of 1997 when the first load of material was deposited at the University of Keele. But this had been preceded by eighteen months or so of frustrating and fruitless searching for a home for the intended collection. Actually, the idea for an archive goes back a very long way: indeed I might be right in thinking that Malcolm MacDonald raised the issue way back in the early days of the HBS.

Truth to tell I can’t remember who instigated the Keele negotiations, although former committee member Kate Baxter might well have had something to do with it. But the ‘negotiations’, I remember, were conducted outside a pub in a tiny but very picturesque Cheshire hamlet, and sealed by quaffing several pints of a potent local brew! In their generosity, Keele gave me considerable space (free of charge!) in a location which would appear to give added clout to pleas for donations: the collection ‘sits’ only half a dozen miles or so from where Brian was born. So, in the end, the wait paid off.

Now the Archive is located in a temperature and humidity controlled environment, in a ‘safe’ room, situated in the library at Keele University. Its existence is mentioned an the University of Keele website’s home page and may also be discovered on a ‘ring site’ of music collections. Access to the material so available through the Special Collections Librarian at Keele or I can, and do, act as a go between.

Of what then, does the collection consist? Well, there are nine ‘boxes’ covering all aspects of Brianiana. These include published and unpublished monographs and theses; published and unpublished items on the music and of a biographical nature; a great deal of material concerning the commercial recordings including reviews and a very large amount of stuff connected with live performances including signed programmes from Gothic performances. There is also a small collection of HB’s journalistic writings.

Box 5, containing correspondence, is one of the ‘jewels in the crown’ including, as it does, the Robert Simpson—HB letters. There is also a number of scores in the collection although—and I shall return to this—I am aware that this is a terrifically weak point in the collection.

The collocating and cataloguing of material took a great deal for time especially at the beginning when n David Brown, in an extreme act of generosity (although David might not see it like this!), handed me a huge amount of material. I well remember him dumping it all in the boot of my car at Keele and me wondering, "what the hell do I do with all this?!" Now comes the really spooky thing. Amongst all the material he handed over to me were two letters form Lord Alfred Douglas to HB and, as I was driving back to Yorkshire on the M62, BBC Radio 4 were broadcasting a play about the Wilde—Queensbury court case which included… Lord Alfred Douglas!

So David’s donation really started the collection off on a substantial footing (and it should be said that this has been yet another of David’s invaluable contributions to the cause of HB). I’ve brought the duplicate of the Keele file of listings—or ‘calendars’ as they’re officially called—of the material; as you can see, it’s a fairly hefty tome. I’ve tried to make the division of material as logical as possible but it is inevitable that some arbitrary decisions have to be made. So far (fingers crossed) no one has picked up the phone and told be they can’t make head nor tail of it! No; it’s not computerised yet although that may be a project for the future when the collection is a lot more consolidated.

At present, the ‘big project’ is to collate and index all the letters which HB wrote to Robert Simpson between 1957 and 1972. Already those written between 1957 and the end of 1963 are in Keele stored in proper non-reacting archival envelopes and boxes. The letters for 1964-67 have been likewise collated and, as these are awaiting proper storage material, I’ve brought them along to show you today. It has to b said that it is not beyond the realms of possibility that a book will result form this particular collection, and already your committee has already talked about this with various offers for help already taken onboard. One thing I ought to mention is that, at some point, I hope to get copies of the Brian-Bantock correspondence which would complement the Simpson collection.

Other sets of correspondence include that with the late and, I think, sadly missed sculptor dedicatee of symphony no 29. There’s another intriguing set of letters to one of our ‘elder statesmen’, Wilfrid Chadwick, who would have been told of HB’s candidating Das Siegeslied to consecrate Liverpool Anglican cathedral!

What of the future? I am painfully aware of a lack of scores within the collection, by which I mean material other than that available through UMP or, in the past, Musica Viva. The library at the Royal College of Music contains by far the largest single collection of HB manuscripts—including a great many sketches. Your committee has already entered into discussions with a view to obtaining first class copies of this material in paper and/or electronic formats. To be honest, I find the lack of score facsimiles in a collection such as this to be a downright embarrassment. So, pressing ahead to secure such copies really must be my number 1 priority.

The continuing saga of indexing the Robert Simpson letters is likely occupy me for another few months, and then I should like to give some thought to sound recordings, which are intended to be included in the archive, and negotiating with Keele an arrangement for playing these. Moves are already afoot to have CDs made from items in the Heaton Collection. I hope also, to arrange a visit to the Elgar birthplace and learn something form their presentation expertise and perhaps horse trade items of mutual interest.

I am reasonably pleased with the way the archive has progressed; but it could not have got nearly so far had it not been for the outstanding generosity of those HBS members who have donated items, and it is heartening that so many have seen fit to part with material in order to contribute to what is clearly recognised as a legitimate HB resource. Indeed it must be a measure of how respected the society as a whole has become as a custodian of all things Brianic that Robert Simpson’s widow has, in an amazing act of generosity, donated the autograph of part one of The Gothic to the Society. Originally this was to have been placed in the archive, but the clearly exceptional nature of this item means that (if all goes well) it may well end up in the British Library.

I think my last thought on the archive—at least for now—is that of how well it complements Jeremy Marchant’s magnificent website. Because I think that with these two resources, the Havergal Brian Society is going to be really rather well served in raising its profile both in terms of its out-reach and in its ability to conserve HB’s legacy. 

NL148 / April 2000

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