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July 05, 2023Read More
By Ross W. Duffin
Lost music—thwarting the performance of something that otherwise is obviously worth hearing—has long been a fascination of mine, and I’m drawn to projects with some missing feature that I might supply. Since retiring from university teaching in 2018, I have often found myself on the trail of music for poetry collections that were originally intended to be sung, but for which little or no evidence has survived of their tunes. The roots of that interest extend back into my work on songs in early modern English plays, including Shakespeare and his contemporaries. And it was while tracing further theatrical tunes that I ran across Gude & Godlie Ballatis (first published 1565), the first of three poetic collections I noticed that were crying out for musical attention.
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April 26, 2023Read More
By Allan W. Atlas
It was in or around 1990 that I met Wilkie Collins (1824–89) for the first time, our introduction courtesy of the phenomenally popular Woman in White (1860). Looking back, I can say that my initial experience with that novel echoed that of the then-Chancellor of the Exchequer (and later four-term prime minister) William Ewart Gladstone (1809–96), who, while reading the work at home one evening, became so engrossed in it that he forgot to keep an appointment at the theater. I, too, could not put down The Woman in White. And though I could not have possibly realized it at the time, it was that meeting that marked the genesis of A Wilkie Collins Songbook.
