ART Sung, created by pianist Elizabeth Mucha, is a variable group that unites song and narrative.
In this incarnation, they were two singers, two pianists, a dancer and a videographer, all focused on the life of Edith Sitwell, Behind Her Façade – who can lay claim to be Scarborough’s most famous daughter.
Young William Walton – “Willy” as she called him – knew the Sitwell family better than most, having encountered them at Oxford and lodged with them in London for more than a decade.
His decision to set Edith’s Façade poems thrust him onto the musical map; its success can be said to have benefited her equally. Neither looked back thereafter and, by the time of her death in 1964, she had become the grande dame of English poetry.
Art Sung made numbers from Façade the backbone of its exploration of Sitwell’s life, with mezzo Lucy Stevens inhabiting the role to her fingertips, dressed all in black, including gloves and turban-style hat.
Realism was enhanced with the very curtain used in the work’s 1923 premiere, from behind which she had projected her poetry through a megaphone. James Symonds contrived a video backdrop here with animated sketches intensifying her reminiscences.
During a potpourri of some 30 items, other composers had a welcome look-in. There was a surprising song from Michael Head, The King O China’s Daughter’ and two Ned Rorem settings of Sitwell too.
Two settings of Olivia Diamond’s Sitwell-related poetry by Hayley Jenkins made an impact, the one with exciting speech-song, the other involving tenor Michael Gibson in a solemn line, which he controlled smoothly.
He also offered an all-too-brief extract from Still Falls The Rain, Sitwell’s meditation on the raids of 1940, which Britten set as his Canticle III. It deserved more, but since this was mainly a frolic it may not have seemed to fit.
An opportunity was certainly missed to look into The Heart Of The Matter, a Sitwell programme devised especially for the Aldeburgh Festival in 1956, with Britten’s music.
Three extracts from Satie’s ballet Parade, played with considerable panache by pianists Elizabeth Mucha and Nigel Foster, either or both of whom were present throughout the evening, offered an opportunity for dancer Roxani Eleni Garefalaki to evoke the spirit that led to the Roaring Twenties. She reappeared in a fragment from West Side Story, recalling Sitwell’s visit to the USA.
A Joseph Horovitz setting of Out, Out Damned Spot (Macbeth) near the end accurately encapsulated the mixture of enthusiasm and derangement that Stevens had so vividly painted in this wide-ranging programme.
PHOTOGRAPHY, 3D imagery and video complement live performance in Art Sung’s exploration of Edith Sitwell’s iconic work Façade in Saturday’s concluding concert of York Late Music’s 2024 programme.
Edith Sitwell, Behind Her Façade is a semi-dramatised song recital that looks at the unusual and eccentric life of the flamboyant 20th century poet.
At 7.30pm, Art Sung tell Dame Edith Sitwell’s story in her own words, both spoken and sung, beginning with her troubled childhood at Renishaw Hall in Derbyshire, where she fell in love with a peacock, leading to a life of celebrity and notoriety in London, Paris and the United States of America.
It encompasses her encounters with various celebrities, most notably Noël Coward, with whom she was on non-speaking terms for 30 years after he parodied her in a West End revue, and Marilyn Monroe, with whom she got on famously, much to everyone’s surprise.
Edith also became a favourite subject for painters such as Wyndham Lewis, Roger Fry, and Russian painter Pavel Tchelitchew. The aesthetics of the art world from this period are the inspiration for the bespoke visual material that accompanies Saturday’s recital.
Woven through the narrative of the recital will be the story of Façade, the extraordinary musical entertainment that Sitwell created together with the then unknown composer William Walton.
His jazz-inspired music accompanied her poems that she recited through a megaphone from behind a curtain backdrop. The Sitwells saw this as an abstract method of providing poetry to an audience, without drawing attention to themselves. Ironically it had the opposite effect of turning them into celebrities.
“Saturday will be a multi-media performance with dance, animation and the interweaving of new music and poetry with excepts from Walton and Edith’s Façade and music by Britten, Bernstein and Satie, among others,” says Late Music co-programmer, composer and lecturer Hayley Jenkins, from the York St John University School of Arts.
“Elizabeth Mucha, the director, has cleverly interwoven these elements to illustrate Edith’s story via multiple characters performed by tenor Michael Gibson and contra-alto Lucy Stevens as Edith.
“This will be an evening with a difference for Late Music: we haven’t had a production on this scale for a very long time,so we are very excited to host it after such excellent reviews from Buckingham Festival, Barnes, New Malden and London Song Festival.”
Here Art Sung’s founder, Scottish-Polish pianist Elizabeth Mucha, discusses Edith Sitwell, Behind Her Façade
Art Sung founder Elizabeth Mucha
What songs from this iconic work will be included in the programme?
“There will be movements from Façade by William Walton and Edith Sitwell, arranged for piano duet by Walton’s great friend Constant Lambert. These will include Popular Song, Fox-Trot, Swiss Yodelling Song, Scotch Rhapsody and Valse.
“There will also be music for piano duet, played by myself and Nigel Foster: extracts from the ballet Parade by Erik Satie and Leonard Bernstein’s America from West Side Story.
“The programme also includes songs by William Walton, Benjamin Britten, Ned Rorem, Michael Head and Noël Coward, as well as songs specially commissioned for this programme by Dominique le Gendre and York Late Music’s very own Hayley Jenkins.”
What is Art Sung?
‘”We are an ensemble of singers, pianist, actor and visual artists that creates connections between music, art and story in a series of semi-dramatised song recitals. Our projects have focused to date on women whose artistic careers have not received the recognition they deserve.
“Their stories are told in their own words drawn from first-hand sources, such as diaries and letters, with songs and music which reflect, comment or elaborate on the narrative, together with the creatively projected artwork.”
What is the story behind the Art Sung – Edith Sitwell: Behind Her Façade project?
“In 2022, I formed a piano duo with Nigel Foster (director of the London Song Festival). We are the London Piano Duo and one of our programmes that year included several movements from Façade by Walton.
“As we both have a huge interest in adding context to programmes through narrative and visuals, we thought it would be a great idea to join forces to create an Art Sung to tell the background story of how Façade came into being. And so, Art Sung – Edith Sitwell: Behind Her Façade was born as we joined forces with the London Song Festival in 2023 to create it.
“This is Art Sung’s fourth production and celebrates the premiere of Edith Sitwell’s collaboration with composer William Walton in 1923 on the musical entertainment Façade, as well as exploring her colourful and dramatic life.”
Who is involved in the Art Sung project?
“Lucy Stevens is both a singer and actor, who is touring with her one-woman show about singer Kathleen Ferrier. Last year, she was nominated for an OffFest Award (Edinburgh Fringe 2023) for her one-woman show about singer/actress Gertrude Lawrence.
“Michael Gibson is a tenor whose many roles have included: Borsa (Rigoletto), Young Servant (Elektra), Normanno (Lucia di Lammermoor), Heinrich (Tannhäuser), Pong (Turandot), Gastone (LaTraviata) and Ruiz (Il Trovatore).
“Pianist Nigel Foster is director of the London Song Festival, a prestigious festival that showcases the song repertoire and provides a performance platform for young singers. He has broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and on television in several European countries.
“Roxani Eleni Garefalaki is a performance artist, director and movement instructor from Athens, based in London. She has directed the previous three Art Sung productions and is part of the visual team that creates the bespoke imagery.
“James Symonds is the videographer. Under the guise of Symian, he mixes digital filmmaking, sound production, programming and 3D design to produce large-format exhibition work, theatre staging and ‘live’ visual events for companies.”
And yourself, Elizabeth?
“I am a pianist, scriptwriter and producer. I have been fortunate enough to perform throughout Europe, the Americas and the Far East as a song accompanist, chamber musician and solo pianist. I have broadcast on the BBC and other classical music stations in Holland, Brazil, Canada and the Philippines.
“I also had the great pleasure of performing at Late Music in 2019 with baritone Robert Rice. I’m very much looking forward to performing again at Late Music.”
For more information and tickets and to download a free programme, go to: latemusic.org. Elizabeth Mucha and composer Hayley Jenkins will give a pre-concert talk at 6.45pm with a complimentary glass of mulled wine and a mince pie. Box office:https://latemusic.org/product/art-sung-concert-tickets-sat-7-dec-730pm/
William Walton (1902-1983) and Edith Sitwell (1887-1964) – Popular Song (extract) from Façade
Hayley Jenkins (b.1990) and Olivia Diamond (b.1947) – Be A Strange Bird In A Tame Pond
William Walton and Edith Sitwell – Fox-Trot (extract) from Façade
William Walton and Edith Sitwell – Old Sir Faulk (extract) from Three Songs
Michael Head (1900-1976) and Edith Sitwell – The King Of China’s Daughter
William Walton and Edith Sitwell – En Famille (extract) from Façade
William Walton and Anon – Rhyme from A Song For The Lord Mayor’s Table
William Walton and Edith Sitwell – Daphne from Three Songs
Ned Rorem (1923-2022) and Edith Sitwell – You, The Young Rainbow
William Walton and Charles Morris (1745-1838) – The Contrast from A Song For The Lord Mayor’s Table
Erik Satie (1866-1925) – Extracts from the ballet Parade: Prélude du Rideau Rouge; Petite Fille Américaine; Rag-time du Paquebot
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) and Anon – Rats Away (extract) from Our Hunting Fathers Op 8
William Walton and Edith Sitwell – Tango-Pasodoblé (extract) from Façade
Hayley Jenkins and Olivia Diamond – Edith Regina
William Walton and Edith Sitwell – Valse (extract) from Façade
Robert Marchant (1916-1995) and Edith Sitwell – When Sir Beelzebub
William Walton and Edith Sitwell – Popular Song (extract) from Façade
Interval
William Walton and Edith Sitwell – Popular Song (extract) from Façade
William Walton and Edith Sitwell – Valse from Façade
Noël Coward (1899-1973) – Poor Little Rich Girl from On With The Dance
Ned Rorem (1923-2022) and Edith Sitwell – The Youth With The Red-Gold Hair
William Walton and Edith Sitwell – Swiss Jodelling Song from Façade
Dominique le Gendre (b. 1960) and Olivia Diamond (b. 1947) – Pavel…You…
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) and Edith Sitwell – Canticle III, Op 55 – Still Falls The Rain
Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) – America from West Side Story
Lloyd Moore (b. 1966) and Edith Sitwell – Bells Of Grey Crystal
Joseph Horovitz (1926-2022) and William Shakespeare (1564-1616) – Lady Macbeth (extract)
William Walton and Edith Sitwell – Scotch Rhapsody from Façade
Roxani Eleni Garefalaki: Director and movement director
Edith Sitwell (1887-1964): the back story
BORN into an aristocratic family in 1887, she shot to fame in the 1920s through her unique and inventive collaboration with composer William Walton on her poems Façade. She was a favourite subject for portraitists of the 1920s, including John Singer Sargent, Roger Fry, Wyndham Lewis and Pavel Tchelitchew and was immortalised in black and white by society photographer Cecil Beaton.
Together with her brothers, Osbert and Sacheverell, the Sitwell literary trio became trend setters in the 1920s and 1930s, considered by some to rival the Bloomsbury set.
Her address book read like a 20th-century Who’s Who. She knew poets and writers such as Siegfried Sassoon, Dylan Thomas, W B Yeats, T S Eliot, Aldous Huxley, D H Lawrence, Robert Graves and Virginia Woolf, along with Noël Coward, Alec Guinness and Marilyn Monroe.
Descended from Plantagenet royalty, she flaunted her unusual looks with her unique fashion sense. Her six-foot frame was encased in bohemian or medieval garb, complete with feathery hats and colourful turbans. Her hands, considered by her to be her best feature, were laden with enormous rings.
Her motto was: “Why not be oneself? That is the whole secret of a successful appearance. If one is a greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingese?”
Edith’s early poems developed from fantastical, whimsical experiments with rhythm, texture and sound during the Roaring Twenties, through to her more serious poetry of the 1940s, coloured by the Second World War and the dropping of the atomic bomb, in works such as Still Falls The Rain and The Shadow Of Cain.
In the latter part of her life, she wholeheartedly embraced a return to spiritual values, both in her poetry and by converting to Roman Catholicism. By the time she died in 1964 at the age of 77, she had been made a Dame, held five honorary literary degrees from Durham, Leeds, Oxford, Sheffield and Hull and was considered the high priestess of English poetry.
In 1962, not only was a memorial concert held for her at the Royal Festival Hall, London, attended by 3,000 people, but also she appeared on the ITV programme This Is Your Life. However, only a few years after her death, her reputation crashed. She had clashed with critics publicly for more than five decades (whom she dubbed the “pipsqueakery”) and was now no longer around to defend herself as she had done so colourfully during her life.
Last year marked the centenary of the premiere of Façade in 1923. This year marks the 60th anniversary of Edith Sitwell’s death.
Did you know?
WHEN Edith Sitwell recited her Façade poems through a megaphone at the private premiere in 1922, she did so from behind a curtain backdrop designed by English artist Frank Dobson. Art Sung are “immensely grateful to film director Tony Palmer for loaning us this curtain, which was entrusted to him by Edith Sitwell’s nephew, Francis Sitwell”.
A further three curtains were designed by different artists in Edith’s lifetime, of which the John Piper curtain, created in 1942, is now considered to be the iconic Façade curtain.
For Art Sung’s performance, video artist James Symonds continues this tradition of reinventing the background to Façade with his own digital version of a curtain. Symonds visually interprets Edith’s poetry by weaving in the experimental and abstract video work by photographer Etienne Gilfillan and creates a series of animated sketches to illustrate Edith’s reminiscences.
Becky Gee, curator of fine art for York Museums Trust, at the launch of the Beyond Bloomsbury exhibition at York Art Gallery. Picture: Charlotte Graham, courtesy of York Museums Trust
BEYOND Bloomsbury: Life, Love & Legacy, the spring exhibition at York Art Gallery, explores the extraordinary lives and work of the Bloomsbury Group of writers, artists and thinkers.
Active in England in the first half of the 20th century, the amorphous but amorous group met for 30 years, but with their unconventional lifestyles, bohemian airs and smart London and southern country addresses, they have since drawn opprobrium for their elitism as much as praise for the artistic acuity, audacity and intellect of writer and feminist pioneer Virginia Woolf, her sister, painter Vanessa Bell, and their contemporaries.
Acerbic New York satirist, poet, writer and critic Dorothy Parker famously drew on geometric imagery to say the prolific, passionate and hugely gifted group “lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles”.
Now, Beyond Bloomsbury finds a different angle, telling the story of not only the artists, but also the group’s writers, dancers, activists and philanthropists, as York Art Gallery and exhibition partners Sheffield Museums and the National Portrait Gallery showcase 60 major loans of oil paintings, sculpture, drawings and by Bell, Dora Carrington, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, Paul Nash, Gwen Raverat and Ray Strachey.
Alongside them are four new portraits by Sahara Longe, commissioned by York Museums Trust and Sheffield Museums to respond to the Bloomsbury Group and the exhibition themes.
Becky Gee, curator of fine art at York Museums Trust, says: “We proposed a show at York Art Gallery to the National Portrait Gallery in 2019, and when they said they were looking for a gallery to tour it to too, that’s when Sheffield Museums became involved, and we worked closely together on the research.
“The exhibition should have opened here, but then Covid intervened, so Sheffield hosted it first at the Millennium Gallery.”
York Art Gallery staff take in the expanse of Lydia Caprani’s expansive mural wall at the Beyond Bloomsbury exhibition. Picture: Charlotte Graham, courtesy of York Museums Trust
Now, for the York run, Bloomsbury-inspired murals and fireplaces by graphic artist Lydia Caprani have been added, while Caprani has worked collaboratively with York LGBT Forum and Kyra Women’s Group to create decorative pieces to complement the Bloomsbury works.
“The reason I proposed this show is that, firstly, I knew the National Portrait Gallery had a strong holding of Bloomsbury Group artworks, offering the chance to equally profile the work of men and women: highlighting women’s art, women’s histories,” says Becky.
“Because of the nature of the portraits, we could tell the stories of writers, dancers and activists, as well the artists.”
Equally important to Becky was a desire “for a long time to examine how LGBT histories and women’s histories are present in our own York Art Gallery collection, whether through the artists identifying as LGBT or through the subject matter.
“I knew that the Bloomsbury Group were involved in a lot of gay relationships, so we worked with York LGBT Forum, and there’s now a permanent display on that theme.
“To make that work happen, it’s good to attach it to a bigger project and I knew that would be a way to work with the LGBT Forum.”
Explaining the reasoning behind the Sahara Longe commissions, Becky says: “I thought, it’s not good enough just to put the LGBT histories and women’s histories on show, but we should also look at how the Bloomsbury Group was not progressive in certain areas.
Roger Fry’s portrait of Edith Sitwell in the Beyond Bloomsbury: Life, Love & Legacy exhibition at York Art Gallery. Picture: Charlotte Graham, courtesy of York Museums Trust
“It soon became apparent that the collection we were working with was not telling the full story, so to broaden that narrative, Sahara was perfect to work with.
“She studied painting at a very traditional Italian school, studying the techniques of master painters, and in her work she places Black figures in spaces traditionally filled by white portrait subjects, and luckily she thought it was right to do the portraits for this exhibition in a post-Impressionist style.”
Among Sahara’s portraits – along with novelist Mulk Raj Anand, Black queer Jamaican dancer and choreographer Berto Pasuka and Patrick Nelson, Jamaican boyfriend of Bloomsbury Group artist Duncan Grant – is the Jamaican writer and activist Una Marson, painted in oils on jute.
“She was the first Black woman to broadcast on the BBC, and as far as I’m aware, there have been no portraits of her until now. She featured in Voice, a radio series produced by Goerge Orwell for the India section on the BBC Eastern Service in 1941, and she wrote poetry and plays, as well as her radio broadcasts, many of which contributed to her feminist, anti-colonial and anti-racist actions.”
Visitors move through three galleries, the first introducing the figures associated with the Bloomsbury Group, highlighting the importance of personal relationships, conversation and the privilege of time and space wherein to pursue creative practice.
Even if Vanessa Bell expressed initial disquiet at moving to Charleston Farmhouse in the Sussex countryside in 1916 with her sons Quentin and Julian: “It will be an odd life…but it seems to me it might be a good one for painting,” she wrote.
The second centres on the Omega Workshops, an enterprise established by Roger Fry in 1913 to sell furniture, fabrics and homeware designed by leading artists of the day, plus the rival Rebel Arts Centre.
Becky Gee, curator of fine art at York Museums Trust, who worked for three years to put the Beyond Bloomsbury exhibition together . Picture: David Harrison
The third gallery focuses on activism and philanthropy, identifying causes of importance to group members and highlighting how such beliefs shaped the group’s collective mentality, such as being involved in establishing the Contemporary Art Society, in which York Art Gallery has played its part since the 1920s.
Summing up Beyond Bloomsbury, Becky says: “One of our aims is to celebrate the good but to critique the bad too, because if we didn’t do that, we’d just be telling the same story again.”
Oh, and should you be wondering what an exhibition about a bunch of posh arty southerners is doing in a Yorkshire gallery, Becky is quick to point out: “Look out for the portrait of Edward Carpenter, who lived just outside Sheffield.
“He was a Victorian gay rights activist and writer, so he’s from the generation just before the Bloomsbury Group, and he influenced EM Forster, a gay writer who did not come out in his lifetime.
“Edith Sitwell features in the exhibition, and the Sitwells had Scarborough connections, owning Woodend in the resort.”
Beyond Bloomsbury: Life, Love & Legacy runs at York Art Gallery until June 5. To book tickets, go to: yorkartgallery.org.uk.
Morgan Feely, senior curator at York Museums Trust, stands by Vanessa Bell’s portrait of David “Bunny” Garnett, painted in oil and gouache on cardboard, at the Beyond Bloomsbury exhibition. Picture: David Harrison
Andrew Clay, chief executive of Scarborough Museums Trust, with archive material donated by William Sitwell in the Sitwell Library at Woodend, Scarborough. Picture: Tony Bartholomew.
UNIQUE vintage photographs depicting Woodend, in its days as the private Scarborough summer home of the Sitwell literary family, have been donated to Scarborough Museums Trust by a descendant, journalist William Sitwell.
William is the grandson of writer Sacheverell Sitwell, who, together with brother Osbert and sister Edith, spent many summers at the house in The Crescent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The most famous of the three siblings, William’s great-aunt Edith, was born at Woodend in 1887. William writes for The Daily Telegraph, among other publications, and is a judge on BBC1’s MasterChef.
The Sitwell conservatory at Woodend, Scarborough, in the late 19th or early 20th century. Copyright: Scarborough Museums Trust
When clearing out family belongings, he came across photos that show Woodend, now a creative industries centre, in its heyday as a family home, with a spacious entrance hall, busy living rooms and a palm-filled glasshouse.
William Sitwell says: “I’ve visited Scarborough on many occasions and have always relished a trip to Woodend, now a creative hub run by a collection of talented people my ancestors would be proud of.
“But it’s always strange walking around a museum and wondering what it must have been like as a home, with the presence of my eccentric forebears. When I came across these old photographs, the settings looked familiar and then I realised they were of Woodend, fully furnished and looking very Victorian.
The Sitwell conservatory today, now the Woodend Gallery. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
“I knew at once that they should be sent to Andrew Clay [chief executive of Scarborough Museums Trust], who would cherish them and share them with visitors. They bring a wonderful insight to a lost era.”
Clay says: “The vintage photographs of Woodend are delightful. We have often wondered what these rooms looked like when the Sitwell family lived here and now we have a tantalising glimpse of Woodend in that era.
“It is fascinating to see the beautiful furnishings that once adorned these spaces. They conjure up a long-lost age of elegance and remind us today how sophisticated life on The Crescent really was. We are very grateful to William Sitwell for making this gift and we look forward to keeping in touch.”
Scarborough Museums Trust’s venues – Scarborough Art Gallery, the Rotunda Museum and the Woodend Gallery – are closed during Lockdown 3, but the trust hopes to be able to put the photographs on public display as soon as possible.
Another room at Woodend, from the Sitwell archive material donated to Scarborough Museums Trust by William Sitwell
