September 2001 saw the publication of the Collected Poems of Dermot O'Byrne (Arnold Bax's literary pseudonym) within a large volume entitled IDEALA. This fascinating book of poems, love letters, music and writings by those who knew him intimately is edited and introduced by Bax's first biographer, Colin Scott-Sutherland.
This sumptuous book contains 320 pages with over 70 illustrations and is case-bound and gold-blocked. The purchase price in the UK is £55.00 which includes postage and packing. To order, please use the Order Form, quoting catalogue number FM091.
Initial reviews of the book are very encouraging - we include a few here:
"... here is a beautiful and lovingly-produced quality volume of his poems, including all of those he wrote under the pseudonym of Dermot O'Byrne, together with some of his Love Letters, happily preserved and made available by the Bax Estate ... reading many of the poems is akin to hearing the music contained in the sound of speech. The love letters amplify the poems, all of which is illuminated by the music ..." Musical Opinion, September 2001.
"Colin Scott-Sutherland is to be well and truly congratulated on his
achievement in so expertly marshalling and editing all the material.
...the paper used in this hard-back volume is of high
quality with many photographs, drawings, and other reproductions. There is also a striking front cover design (after
Rossetti) in gold embossed on a cream ground, which was inspired by the 1911 deluxe edition of Clifford Bax's 'Poems Dramatic and Lyrical'.
This is a fascinating book, and nobody with a real interest in British music or in the byways of English poetry should
be without it ... lavish publication ..." Graham Parlett, author of A Catalogue of the Works of Sir Arnold Bax, OUP.
"What we have here are all the poems of Arnold Bax ... or at least all the ones known to Colin Scott-Sutherland, the editor, who is also the first Bax scholar in modern times. The poems are as written under Bax's own name as well as those published under the name of his Irish 'doppelganger', Dermot O'Byrne. The editor has also in-gathered a selection of the composer's teenage love letters."
"Colin's dogged determination to the Bax cause - sharing Bax's creative work with the world - complements the now more celebrated work of fellow Baxian, Lewis Foreman."
"Each poem in Ideala is carefully footnoted to explain obscure references. Alternative versions are also recorded with variorum diligence."
"The book ... is very solidly case bound in bleached cream boards inlaid with gold stamped titling and using rondel designs from an early edition of Swinburne's 'Atalanta in Calydon'."
"I do not underestimate the dedication invested in this work by the editor and the publisher. It must have been a phenomenal task."
"This sumptuously presented book is a prominent landmark in the Bax literature and another magus-key to one window into Bax's musical legacy: a magical casement indeed."
RB, British Music Society News 92, December 2001.
"... am absolutely THRILLED with it ... a truly beautiful book ... congratulations to all involved." A Satisfied Customer!
"... collected and published by loving hands ... written by a phenomenally gifted musician (Bax's) literary gifts were not insignificant ... of appeal to devotees ... the editorial notes are useful ..." Robert Matthew-Walker, International Record Review.
"... an absorbing collection of about 260 poems, mostly from the full flowering of Bax's youth ... This splendid case-bound and gold-blocked volume is a pleasure to hold and an essential adjunct to Lewis Foreman's biography of the composer." Stephen Lloyd, BMS News, March 2002.
[Ideala] " ... is truly
a beautiful book and an extraordinarily important one"
Richard
Adams, The Sir Arnold Bax Web Site (www.musicweb.uk.net/bax/Welcome.htm)
"The book is a landmark and is essential for all Baxians"
The Delian
"This extensive collection of poems by Bax and his alter ego Dermot O'Byrne, annotated copiously by Bax's first biographer [Colin Scott-Sutherland] (Arnold Bax, Dent, 1973) and beautifully produced by Fand Music Press, illuminates those years of ardent youth to which he said 'farewell' in his autobiography of 1943. The collection includes a 30-page memoir of Arnold and his brother Clifford by their tutor Francis Colmer, especially written for Scott-Sutherland, and derives its title not only from an early setting of Bjornson - published as 'The Flute' (1923) - but evoking the ideal love of Bax's many romantic liaisons. Its theme became Bax's for life: pursuit of unattainable beauty: romantic and realistic."
"Scott-Sutherland's 'Ideala' is illustrated (or rather, illuminated) by an extensive array of photographic plates, most never published before: rare photos and the whole score of 'The Princess's Rose-Garden', in homage to Harriet Cohen's garden, a sumptuous example of Bax's piano writing, and most unlike much well-mannered English Music. If Bax's originality had little feeling for scholarly historic perspective, his brother Clifford Bax (also featured in the new book) was a poet with a keen sense of such perspective. His splendid and extensive English anthology 'Vintage Verse' has illuminating introductions to each selection (Hollis & Carter, London, 1945)."
"Arnold Bax set to music only four of his own poems: two of them with authorship attributed to his nom-de-plume Dermot O'Byrne. I recall asking the Scots Gaelic poet Sorley Maclean 'Who is a Gael?' He replied: 'One who has the language, the Gaelic? Now that this ancient language's survival is threatened, the point is all the more clamant."
"That authoritative view (from the acknowledged doyen Gaelic poet of recent history) deserves consideration. It is facile to ridicule Bax's alter ego of Dermot O'Byrne, but Bax had the Irish Gaelic language. The volume under review reproduces the MS of his translation of Synge's play 'The Shadow of the Glen' into Bax's Irish Gaelic. Synge did not write in Gaelic. Neither did Yeats. Bax did. He justified his nom de plume Dermot O'Byrne."
"Detail has been
lavished on the book's presentation. The cover design is appropriately from
Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Two young Scottish pianists have recently been playing
Bax: Joseph Long and Jeremy Limb, who is a family descendant of Bax. Names to
remember. So after moribund years Bax is reconsidered. It may herald a
renaissance that can only enrich what sometimes seems the recent dry period in
British piano music."
Ronald Stevenson, International Piano Quarterly