Written Works

This page includes the text, and a scan of the cover, of the 16-page booklet from the 1985 LP 'Music from Caius'

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Speculation by PAT in characteristic manner on the origins of the ‘Humpty Dumpty’ and ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’ nursery rhymes leads him to consideration of composers being unconsciously influenced by half-remembered tunes – their own or others’ – in a process of ‘seepage’. Very much in the style of similar articles written for the Cambridge Review in the 1950s, and covering in part the same ground as ‘The Truth About Tunes’ published there on 4 June 1955, this is the sole example of the genre to be published in the Caian and perhaps the last that he wrote.

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Jottings of a Domestic Bursar was written while Peter Tranchell was Domestic Bursar and Keeper of the College Courts and Gardens 1962-1966.

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Is the piano dying out, and if not, why not? These questions reverberate about the occiput of any thinking person...

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We all remember the success of Kreisler, not only as a fiddler, but as a diddler. Many a time and [...Read More]

I have just seen a notice advertising a course of instruction in opera-production. It is one of many offered in [...Read More]

It is not generally realized how physically taxing are the demands of musical performance. In certain duller colleges where the [...Read More]

The Italians are quite right when they call opera a spettacolo. We go to see it rather than to hear [...Read More]

Integrity, awareness and a sense of values, as Saint Beachcomber says, are nowadays to be looked for in all branches [...Read More]

It is often said that a composer cannot be a good critic of music, and that even a performer is [...Read More]

Music is an international language; or so we are told. Harmony in the ears makes harmony in the heart and [...Read More]

Cuneiform music has long been a topic on everybody’s lips. A Babylonian clay tablet dating from about 800 b.c. has [...Read More]

Our civilisation has reached a very fine peak of hygiene in many ways—bread is wrapped, cigarettes are tipped, throats swabbed, [...Read More]

A composer sits at the piano and plays a pretty tune,—“why don’t you publish it,” say all his friends,—“why don’t [...Read More]

More and more music is becoming no more than a background noise; less and less is anyone prepared to make [...Read More]

PAT responds vigorously to a claim that there were too many ‘private enterprise’ concerts of dubious quality in Cambridge.

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PAT finds programme notes often more of a hindrance than a help when appreciating a concert: ‘programme-notes in their pestilential variety, their pestilential condescension and pestilential distraction can only be regarded as pestilential.’

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PAT wonders whether some composers’ disabilities might have been feigned...

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PAT travelled with a party from King’s as chorus master for a very successful performance of the Provost’s translation of ‘Cyclops’ with music by A H Mann.

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Where will it end? Not content with digging up mere music of the past, the Musicologist is turned Archaeologist and [...Read More]