Author Archives
Michael Craske researches transgressive poetics, music, aesthetics, and perhaps transgressive anything at Queen Mary, University of London (but mainly Swinburne, Wagner, and T. S. Eliot). He was once involved in diplomacy, of a Middle Eastern kind...
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Lot 228: A bookish harmony in black and gold
One of Swinburne’s bookcases, designed and painted by the artist James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) is up for sale at the Lyon & Turnbull auction house next week (21 April 2021). Shown in the auction house’s picture left, the bookcase stood… Read More ›
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‘A Match’: Swinburne in Paris, Richard Monckton Milnes, “William Blake”, and Wagner’s “Tannhäuser”
The first two stanzas of A Match by Jeremiah Rhodes, published in 1868. Swinburne’s poem ‘A Match’ from his 1866 collection Poems and Ballads would become one of his most popular lyrics and the poem most often set to music…. Read More ›
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A Swinburne song catalogue, a work in progress, and two Holy Grails
Here is a catalogue of songs which were set to the lyrics of Swinburne and published between 1866-1920. It also lists a few important unpublished songs and some musical oddities and odds and ends that I’m not sure how to… Read More ›
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Original score for Marzials’s ‘Ask Nothing More’ (1883)
Here is an original score for Theophilus Marzials’s popular song ‘Ask Nothing More’ (1883). The words are from Swinburne’s poem ‘The Oblation’ (Songs Before Sunrise, 1871). I played my own recording of this piece at the British Association of Decadence… Read More ›
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Chewing Swinburne’s Thistles: Swinburne, Dannreuther, and Wagner’s ‘Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg’
I’m glad to say that my short article on Edward Dannreuther (1844-1905) and Swinburne has been published in Notes & Queries. It reveals two hitherto unnoticed references to Wagner by Swinburne in his 1869 essay, ‘Notes on the Text of… Read More ›
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‘The world, what is it to you, dear’: Mary Wakefield’s Maytime in Midwinter (1885)
On the afternoon of 13 March 1878 at a charity concert at the Palazzo Odescalchi in Rome, Mary Wakefield started to sing. In the audience was Anne Crawford, the Baroness von Rabe, who was amazed by her performance. It had… Read More ›
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The Journal of Victorian Culture: Swinburne, Wagner, T. S. Eliot, and the musical legacy of ‘Poems and Ballads’
I’m very happy to report that my article, ‘Swinburne, Wagner, Eliot, and the Musical Legacy of Poems and Ballads‘, has been published by the Journal of Victorian Culture. The article links to the post below concerning Francis Hueffer, whom the article… Read More ›
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Roses, pleasure, and pain: ‘A Match’ (1873) by Francis Hueffer
The following post is related to my article ‘Swinburne, Wagner, Eliot, and the Musical Legacy of Poems and Ballads’ in the Journal of Victorian Culture. In addition to the piece by Francis Hueffer below, if you want to hear the… Read More ›
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An Evening with the Gladstones
Last month I attended a hugely successful ‘Sounding the Salon’ event, which recreated an after-dinner concert originally given on Wednesday 12 March 1873 by Mary Gladstone – the daughter of the Prime Minister W. E. Gladstone – at the concert’s… Read More ›
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Sounding the Salon: ‘An Evening with the Gladstones’
This exciting event is happening on Thursday (8 March, 2018) at the British Academy at Carlton House Terrace. It’s a re-creation, in the original space, of a concert that took place in 1873, the details of which come from the… Read More ›
