Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Newmarch [née Jeaffreson], Rosa

(b Leamington, 18 Dec 1857; d Worthing, 9 April 1940). English writer on music. A granddaughter of the playwright James Kenney, she married Henry Charles Newmarch in 1883, and all her writings appeared under her married name. In 1897 she made the first of a series of visits to Russia, where she worked at the Imperial Public Library of St Petersburg under the supervision of Vladimir Stasov. Her numerous articles and lectures on Russian music and art in general did much to further in England an interest already awakened by Tchaikovsky's music. Newmarch's articles on Russian composers, contributed to Grove's Dictionary, second edition, were to many English musicians the first source of information about the aims and achievements of Russian nationalists, and her libretto translations helped to make their operas accessible to the British public. Her last visit to Russia was in the early summer of 1915; when political events made access to the country difficult she directed her interest to western Slavonic music, particularly that of the Czechs and Slovaks, and enthusiastically took up the cause of emerging Czech composers including Janáček, Suk and Vycpálek. It was her initiative, for instance, that brought Janáček to England in 1926; her correspondence with the composer (published 1988) provides important data on this visit. Newmarch was a dedicatee of Janáček's Sinfonietta.

Her two pioneering books on Tchaikovsky (1900 and 1906) rendered invaluable service to that composer's early cause, though her 1906 translation of Modest Tchaikovsky's biography and letters of his brother is unreliable. She also translated several books on composers from German and French and from 1908 to 1927 she was an official programme writer for the Queen's Hall Orchestra.

WRITINGS

Tchaikovsky: his Life and Works (London, 1900/R, 2/1908/R by E. Evans)

‘The Art Songs of Russia’, SIMG, iii (1901–2), 377–87

‘Mily Balakireff’, SIMG, iv (1902–3), 157–63

‘Serov’, ZIMG, iv (1902–3), 173–9

Henry J. Wood (London, 1904)

The Life and Letters of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky (London, 1906/R) [abridged trans. of M. Tchaikovsky: Zhizn' Petra Il'icha Chaykovskogo (Moscow and Leningrad, rev. 2/1903)]

‘Bantock's Omar Khayyam’, ZIMG, viii (1906–7), 53–61

The Russian Opera (London and New York, 1914/R)

‘Alexander Scriabin’; ‘The Outlook in Russia’, MT, lvi (1915), 329–30; 521–3

‘Some Czechoslovak Choral Works’, MT, lxiv (1923), 171–4, 762–4

A Quarter of a Century of Promenade Concerts at Queen's Hall (London, 1928)

The Concert-Goer's Library of Descriptive Notes (London, 1928–48)

‘Letters of Dvořák to Hans Richter’, MT, lxxiii (1932), 605–7, 698–701, 795–7

Jean Sibelius (Boston, 1939/R)

The Music of Czechoslovakia (Oxford, 1942/R)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J. Mikota: ‘Leoš Janáček v Anglii’ [Janáček in England], Listy Hudební matice, v (1926), 257–68

R. Poulliant: ‘Poésie et musique: les Poèmes chinois d'Albert Roussel’, Les lettres romanes, xxxviii/3 (1984), 241–5

Z.E. Fischmann, ed.: Janáček-Newmarch Correspondence (Rockville, MD, 1988)

A. Jacobs: Henry J. Wood: Maker of the Proms (London, 1994)

H.C. COLLES/PETER PLATT/DAVID BROWN

New Music [New Music Edition].

American publishing and recording venture, founded in California by Henry Cowell. The quarterly publication New Music, issued first in 1927, was the only series of its day dedicated solely to the publication of new scores. These pieces, described by Cowell as ‘non-commercial works of artistic value’, often embraced advanced and innovatory compositional techniques for which publishing houses had little sympathy. The main series was supplemented by an Orchestra Series (1932–9) and occasional Special Editions. Many of the published pieces were also heard in San Francisco at concerts of the New Music Society (1925–36; founded by Cowell). In 1934 Cowell established New Music Quarterly Recordings. The discs, all first recordings, were more widely distributed than the scores, which were available only by subscription.

Cowell served as the head of all New Music projects until 1936. The recordings continued to be issued until 1942 under the direction of Otto Luening, while the New Music publications (New Music Edition from 1947) were edited by Gerald Strang, again by Cowell (1941–5), and later by Lou Harrison, Frank Wigglesworth and Vladimir Ussachevsky. Among the composers to be published in New Music (often for the first time) were Babbitt, John Becker, Paul Bowles, Brant, Cage, Carter, Chávez, Copland, Cowell, Crawford, Creston, Feldman, Harrison, Ives, Luening, McPhee, Nancarrow, Piston, Riegger, Rudhyar, Ruggles, Strang, Thomson, Varèse and Wolff. Although Americans dominated, Schoenberg, Webern and several Latin-American and Russian composers were also included. In 1954 New Music Edition experienced financial difficulties after the death of Charles Ives, who had for many years been its patron, and in 1958 it was transferred to Presser.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

R.F. Goldman: ‘Henry Cowell (1897–1965): a Memoir and an Appreciation’, PNM, iv/2 (1965–6), 23–8

R.H. Mead: ‘Cowell, Ives, and New Music’, MQ, lxvi (1980), 538–59

R.H. Mead: Henry Cowell's New Music, 1925–1936: the Society, the Music Editions, and the Recordings (Ann Arbor, 1981)

D. Hall: ‘New Music Quarterly Recordings: a Discography’, Association of Recorded Sound Collections Journal, xvi/1–2 (1984), 10–27

D. Nicholls, ed.: The Whole World of Music: a Henry Cowell Symposium (Amsterdam, 1997)

C.J. Oja and R. Allen, eds.: Henry Cowell's Musical Worlds (Brooklyn, 1997) [Henry Cowell Centennial Festival; programme book]

EMILY GOOD/DAVID NICHOLLS