MS 2809
Papers of Fritz Hart (1874-1949)
Papers
1895-1975 (bulk: 1910-1945)
84 cm (6 boxes) + 1 folio box
Available for reference
The papers were donated to the Library by Mrs Marvell Hart between 1970
and 1980
The papers include correspondence, personal recollections, articles,
lists of works, newspaper cuttings, programs, photographs, unpublished
novels and manuscript scores. The bulk of the papers cover the period 1920
to 1936 when Fritz Hart lived and worked in Melbourne. There are many
cuttings relating to his return to Australia from Honolulu in 1945 for
Jubilee celebrations of the Albert Street Conservatorium.
Many of the correspondents, including Dame Nellie Melba, Vaughan
Williams, Gustav Holst and AE (George Russell), were prominent in
literature and in music. The photographs of Hart are from all three stages
of his life, in England, in Australia and in Honolulu. There are also
photographs of many composers, including Percy Grainger, Richard Strauss,
Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst.
All of Harts unpublished novels are included in the collection.
The music scores are for voice and piano accompaniment.
Fritz Hart, composer, conductor and teacher, played an important part in
the early development of music in Australia. Born in Greenwich, England,
on 11 February 1874, he was a chorister at Westminster Abbey before
studying piano and organ at the Royal College of Music. His friends there
included the composers Gustav Holst, Coleridge Taylor and William
Thurlstone. He married Jessie Beattie in 1904 and they had a son, Basil.
Two years after his wife died in 1935, he married Marvell Allison, an
American.
Hart came to Australia in 1909 for a four-year engagement with J. C.
Williamson as conductor of a Light Opera Company. It was 1936 before he
left to become the first professor of music at the University of Hawaii
and permanent conductor of the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra.
When Hart succeeded G.W. Marshall Hall as director of the Melbourne
(Albert Street) Conservatorium of Music in 1914, Dame Nellie Melba
established her school of singing there. Melba and her pupils shaped Harts
work as a composer. He composed operas, choral works and songs, and he
also wrote for piano, violin, chamber groups and orchestra. In 1928 he was
appointed conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. He worked hard to
bring music to the people, conducting the first Myer Free Symphony
Concerts in Melbourne. He was highly regarded as a teacher, his pupils
including Peggy Glanville-Hicks and Margaret Sutherland.
During the war he wrote twenty four novels, none of which were
published. He also wrote verse, and Gustav Holst set some of it to music.
He died in Honolulu on 9 July 1949.
| Series |
Title |
|
|
| 1 |
Correspondence, 1895-1951 |
| 2 |
Other papers, 1880-1975 |
| 3 |
Novels, 1939-46 |
| 4 |
Music |
| Series 1 |
Correspondence, 1895-1951 |
|
The papers include individual folders of letters from Dame Nellie
Melba, Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst, and two folders of
correspondence from musicians and writers. Correspondents include AE
(George Russell), Sir Hubert Parry, Philip Heseltine (PeterWarlock),
Angela Thirkell, Percy Grainger, Sir Granville Bantock and Thomas
Dunhill. There are also typescript copies of extracts from letters to
his wife, 1932-37, and some personal items.
Only one of the twenty-nine Melba letters to Hart is dated (1917).
Included with the letters is one from Prime Minister W.M. Hughes to
Melba (1922), and signed copies of programs for Melbas farewell
appearances at Covent Garden and the Royal Albert Hall in 1926. There
are nineteen letters and notes from Vaughan Williams. |
|
|
| Folder |
|
| 1 |
Dame Nellie Melba |
| 2 |
Gustav Holst, 1922-34 |
| 3 |
Vaughan Williams, 1936-49 |
| 4 |
Correspondence, 1898-1925 |
| 5 |
Correspondence, 1926-51, and undated |
| 6 |
Typescript extracts from Harts
letters to his wife, 1932-37 |
| 7 |
Typescript letters to Lucy, 1943-47, and
Angela Thirkell, 1942; telegrams to Hart on his return to Australia in
1945; an admittance card to Windsor Castle for a performance by the
Royal College of Music in 1895. |
| Series 2 |
Other papers, 1880-1975 |
|
Included here are programs, newspaper cuttings, photographs, lists
of works, and articles by or about Hart, including personal
recollections. There are biographical sketches, recollections of his
years as chorister at Westminster Abbey, and an interview with Mrs
Hart about her husband for the Music and Sound Recording Section of
the National Library. A tribute to Fritz Hart from the Honolulu
Symphony Society, and details of the Fritz Hart Foundation are
included with the articles.
The newspaper cuttings include concert reviews, a biographical study
of Hart in the Australian Musical News (1920), coverage of his
return to Australia to participate in the Jubilee celebration of the
Albert Street Conservatorium, and an obituary of AE in the Sunday
Observer (1935). |
|
|
| Folder |
|
| 8 |
Articles |
| 9 |
Lists of compositions and novels |
| 10 |
Newspaper cuttings, 1920-75 |
| 11 |
Programs, 1927-72 |
| 12-14 |
Photographs (n.d.) The photographs of
Hart date from about 1880 to the 1940s. Included are photographs of
several portraits of him, one by Max Meldrum. Also included are
photographs of Percy Grainger, Dame Clara Butt, Fritz Kreisler, Richard
Strauss, Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst and Coleridge Taylor. |
| Series 3 |
Novels, 1939-46 |
|
Between 1939 and 1946 Hart wrote twenty four novels. None were
published. |
|
|
| Folder |
|
| 15 |
Puck and Mr Perkins(October
1939) |
| 16-17 |
Three ways of making love
(December 1939) |
| 18 |
Shreds and some patches
(March 1940) |
| 19 |
The toss of a coin (July
1940) |
| 20 |
By the grace of Ted (August
1940) |
| 21 |
The Anti-Mabelites (October
1940) |
| 22 |
Alice and a scruple (December
1940) |
| 23 |
Enquiries strictly private
(May 1941) |
| 24 |
The enigma mystery (July
1941) |
| 25 |
The burgeoning of Anderson
(August 1941) |
| 26-28 |
Sir Thomas in the background
(November 1941) |
| 29-31 |
Prelude in search of a fugue
(March 1942) |
| 32-34 |
James goes home to dinner
(May 1942) |
| 35 |
Miss Machiavelli (August
1942) |
| 36 |
The unofficial aunt
(September 1942) |
| 37 |
A summer of Saint Martin
(December 1942) |
| 38 |
A necessary nuisance
(February 1943) |
| 39 |
Juliet goes to town (April
1943) |
| 40 |
A pixy in pyjamas (June 1943) |
| 41 |
Coda to a concert (August
1943) |
| 42 |
The emergence of Mark
(September 1944) |
| 43 |
John and a loose end (January
1945) |
| 44 |
A party in summer (March
1945) |
| 45-47 |
A brazen little baggage
(January 1946) |
| Series 4 |
Music |
|
|
List of manuscript scores for solo voice with piano
accompaniment
Words for the songs were written by Robert Herrick (folios 1-6,
11,12), Humbert Wolfe (folios 7, 8), William Blake (folio 9), Joseph
Campbell (folio 13), W. E. (William Ernest) Henley (folio 8) and AE
(George Russell) (folios 8, 10). |
|
|
|
| Folio |
|
|
| 1 |
Opus 84 |
'To cherry blossoms' |
|
|
To Dianeme |
|
|
I will no longer kiss |
|
|
Shall I go to love and tell |
|
|
To pansies |
|
|
Let me sleep this night away |
|
|
Upon a comely and curious maid |
|
|
Frolic virgins once there were |
|
|
|
| 2 |
Opus 85 |
Love sick I am |
|
|
Upon Cupid |
|
|
To the Willow tree |
|
|
|
| 3 |
Opus 86 |
The shades grow great |
|
|
The old wives prayer |
|
|
To flowers |
|
|
The plunder |
|
|
|
| 4 |
Opus 88 |
Spend harmless shade thy nightly hours |
|
|
Fair shows deceive |
|
|
Weep for the dead |
|
|
|
| 5 |
Opus 89 |
Let us take time and play |
|
|
The willow garland |
|
|
The bride-cake |
|
|
Gone she is a long long way |
|
|
|
| 6 |
Opus 90 |
Ill to thee a simnel bring |
|
|
Purgatory |
|
|
The funeral rights of the rose |
|
|
Hear ye virgins |
|
|
Alpine chaces |
|
|
The lonely tree |
|
|
|
| 7 |
Opus 93 |
|
|
Ser 111(1) |
Cyclamen |
|
(2) |
The pale and pilgrim moon |
|
(3) |
Harebell |
|
(4) |
An Eastern court |
|
(5) |
The alpine cross |
|
Ser 1V (1) |
Street of all souls |
|
(2) |
Now in these fairylands |
|
(3) |
A candle cool |
|
(4) |
Bright hair grow dim |
|
(5) |
Sinks the dead cedar-tree |
|
|
|
| 8 |
|
Miscellaneous songs |
|
|
Evening |
|
|
Forgiveness |
|
|
I am the reaper |
|
|
In the street of lost time |
|
|
In the year thats come and gone love |
|
|
Let me sleep |
|
|
Neither moon nor candlelight |
|
|
Night |
|
|
O gather me the rose, the rose |
|
|
Praise the generous gods |
|
|
Refuge |
|
|
Renunciation |
|
|
Rest |
|
|
Ruths song of praise |
|
|
The sea is full of wandering foam |
|
|
The spring my dear is no longer spring |
|
|
|
| 9 |
|
The shepherd |
|
|
|
| 10 |
|
Upon a child |
|
|
Rest |
|
|
Bright hair grow dim |
|
|
The headache |
|
|
The white peace |
|
|
|
| 11 |
|
Upon a child |
|
|
To God, on his sickness |
|
|
To heaven |
|
|
Tapers |
|
|
A grace for a child |
|
|
His creed |
|
|
The headache |
|
|
To violets |
|
|
An epitaph upon a virgin |
|
|
To the water nymphs drinking at the fountain |
|
|
To the lark |
|
|
|
| 12 |
|
To the yew and cypress |
|
|
Borne was I to meet with age |
|
|
Hope well and have well |
|
|
When I consider, dearest |
|
|
I begin to wane in sight |
|
|
Let not thy tombstone |
|
|
Burn or drown me |
|
|
The bedman |
|
|
Tis said as Cupid danced |
|
|
Upon her feet |
|
|
On love |
|
|
To sycamores |
|
|
Chop-cherry |
|
|
To daisies, not to shut too soon |
|
|
The primrose |
|
|
|
| 13 |
|
Untitled songs, first words
|
|
|
I follow a star |
|
|
I am the gilly of Christ |
|
|
By a word rows mystery of Christ |
|
|
When rocks fly homeward |
|
|
As I came over the grey grey hills |
|
|
Christ wandring with the Twelve |
|
|
The dark is magical |
|
|
The women bore their children |
|
|
He staggered through the burning street |
|
|
Twilight fallen white and cold |
|
|
I am the mountainy singer |
|
|
The moon is on the marshes |
|
|
At morning tide, upon the hill of Slidhnamban |
|
|
|
| 14 |
|
Piano pieces |
|
|
Variations on an original theme |
|
|
In the land of memory |
|
|
Dance of the little happiness |
|
|
The farewell of sight |
|
|
Untitled |
| Box |
Series |
Folder |
|
|
|
| 1 |
1 |
1-7 |
| 2 |
2 |
8-14 |
| 3 |
3 |
15-22 |
| 4 |
3 |
23-31 |
| 5 |
3 |
32-39 |
| 6 |
3 |
40-47 |
|
|
|
| Folio |
|
|
| 1 |
4 |
1-14 |
|
|
|
May 1980
|