Brigg Fair

An English Rhapsody

DCW 31
RT VI/16
DCE 24b

Composer: Frederick Delius
Dedicatee: Percy Grainger

Percy Grainger notated a performance of the folksong 'Brigg Fair' in the Lincolnshire market town of Brigg in 1906. The performer, a seventy-two year old bailiff named Joseph Taylor, only recited two verses, but Grainger added a further four from other folksongs to create a 6-verse setting for unaccompanied solo tenor and mixed chorus. Delius was so impressed with the setting that he decided to write his own version, comprising - the title of 'rhapsody' notwithstanding - a tightly structured set of orchestral variations. Although recorded on a 1952 list of Delius manuscripts in the Beecham Library, the autograph score was lost prior to the deposit of all the Beecham-Delius material with the Delius Trust in 1982. The remaining manuscript sources are, therefore, fragmentary.

Composition: 1907.

Instrumentation:

Orchestra : 3 fl., 2 ob., cor.ingl., 3 cl., cl.b., 3 fg., cfg., 6 cor., 3 tr., 3 trb., tb., timp., gr.c., tubular bells, trgl., arp., str.

Slow - Pastoral

Musical incipit for this work

Sources

Sketch material

[Classification: notated music, manuscript, autograph, short score, sketch, fragment]

A single page of untitled ink sketches on the verso of a sketch for Cynara.

GB-Lbl (British Library, London) MS Mus. 1745/2/13/4. Link to external resource

British Library source record

Sketch material

[Classification: notated music, manuscript, autograph, short score, sketch, fragment]

Brief sketches for the middle section of the work.

GB-Lbl (British Library, London) MS Mus. 1745/2/11/5. Link to external resource

British Library source record

Sketch material

[Classification: notated music, manuscript, autograph, sketch, fragment]

Part of an early pencil score (6 pages).

GB-Lbl (British Library, London) MS Mus. 1745/2/13/5. Link to external resource

British Library source record

Sketch material

[Classification: notated music, manuscript, autograph, short score, sketch, fragment]

4 pages of short-score early sketches, formerly in the collection of O.W. Neighbour, facsimile reproduced in Lionel Carley and Robert Threlfall, Delius: A Life in Pictures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 60.

GB-Lbl (British Library, London) MS Mus. 1810.

Published score

[Classification: notated music, print, score, first edition, complete]

F.E.C. Leuckart, Leipzig 1910.

This edition includes Grainger's text for the folk song in English, alongside a German translation by Jelka Rosen.

Thomas Beecham's copy

Beecham's copy of the printed score, with his performance markings.

Delius Trust, London.

Miniature score

Alfred Kalmus; Universal Edition, London; Leipzig 1951.

This edition is a re-engraving of the Leuckart edition as a miniature score, which includes the song text of 'Brigg Fair' and an introduction and formal synopsis by Erwin Stein.

Collected Edition

[Classification: notated music, print, score, later edition, complete]

Editor: Thomas Beecham

Boosey & Hawkes; Universal Edition, New York; London 1953; 1989.

The work was re-engraved as vol. 24b of the Collected Edition, edited by Thomas Beecham, in 1953. A second revised edition was published in 1989 by Universal Edition.

Performances

Documents

Last changed 2020-10-26T14:17:12+00:00

18 January 1908	Liverpool (Liverpool Orchestral Society; conductor: Granville Bantock).
19 February 1908	Birmingham Town Hall, Birmingham (Hallé Orchestra; conductor: Landon Ronald).
31 March 1908	Queen's Hall, London (New Symphony Orchestra; conductor: Thomas Beecham).
28 May 1910	Grosser Tonhallesaal, Zurich (conductor: Volkmar Andreae).
28 October 1910	New York (Symphony Orchestra; conductor: Walter Damrosch).