Curlews
Long-billed Curlew (Numenius americanus) Fishing Pier, Goose Island State Park, Texas
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Charadriiformes
Family:	Scolopacidae
Genus:	Numenius Brisson, 1760
Species
N. phaeopus N. tenuirostris N. arquata N. americanus N. madagascariensis N. minutus N. borealis N. tahitiensis
Synonyms
Palnumenius Miller, 1942

The curlews /ˈkɜrljuːz/, genus Numenius, are a group of eight species of birds, characterised by long, slender, downcurved bills and mottled brown plumage. They are one of the most ancient lineages of scolopacid waders, together with the godwits which look similar but have straight bills.^[1] In Europe "curlew" usually refers to one species, the Eurasian Curlew Numenius arquata.

Curlews feed on mud or very soft ground, searching for worms and other invertebrates with their long bills. They will also take crabs and similar items.

Curlews enjoy a world-wide distribution. Most species show strong migratory habits and consequently one or more species can be encountered at different times of the year in Europe, the British Isles, Iberia, Iceland, Africa, Southeast Asia, Siberia, North America, South America and Australasia.

The distribution of curlews has altered considerably in the past hundred years as a result of changing agricultural practices. Reclamation and drainage of marshy fields and moorland, and afforestation of the latter, have led to local decreases, while conversion of forest to grassland in some parts of Scandinavia has led to increases there.^{[2][clarification needed]}

The stone-curlews are not true curlews (family Scolopacidae) but members of the family Burhinidae, which is in the same order Charadriiformes, but only distantly related within that.

Species in taxonomic order[link]

• Whimbrel Numenius phaeopus
• Slender-billed Curlew Numenius tenuirostris - critically endangered, possibly extinct (early 21st century?)
• Eurasian Curlew Numenius arquata
• Long-billed Curlew Numenius americanus
• Eastern Curlew Numenius madagascariensis
• Little Curlew Numenius minutus
• Eskimo Curlew Numenius borealis - critically endangered, possibly extinct (early 1960s?)
• Bristle-thighed Curlew Numenius tahitiensis

The Late Eocene (Montmartre Formation, some 35 mya) fossil Limosa gypsorum of France was originally placed in Numenius and may in fact belong there.^[3] Apart from that, a Late Pleistocene curlew from San Josecito Cave, Mexico has been described. This fossil was initially placed in a distinct genus, Palnumenius, but was actually a chronospecies or paleosubspecies related to the Long-billed Curlew.^[4]

The Upland Sandpiper (Bartramia longicauda) is an odd bird which is the closest relative of the curlews.^[1] It is distinguished from them by its yellow legs, long tail, and shorter, less curved bill.

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Bodsworth, Fred (1987). Last of the Curlews. ISBN 0-396-09187-3.  (originally published in 1954)

Peter Warlock

Peter Warlock was a pseudonym of Philip Arnold Heseltine (30 October 1894 – 17 December 1930), an Anglo-Welsh composer (mainly of songs) and music critic. He used the pseudonym (and various others) when composing, and is now better known by this name.

Life[link]

Philip Heseltine was born in the Savoy Hotel in London.^[1] His father died when he was only two, and his mother remarried in 1903;^[2] she then returned to her native Wales, living at Cefn Bryntalch Hall, Abermule, near Newtown, Montgomeryshire, the family home of her second husband, Walter Buckley Jones. Philip's education was mainly classical including studies at Eton College, at Christ Church, Oxford (for one year), and at University College London (one term). In music, he was mostly self-taught, studying composition on his own from the works of composers he admired, notably Frederick Delius, Roger Quilter and Bernard van Dieren. Nevertheless, one of the masters at Eton, Colin Taylor, had introduced him to some of the modern masters which made a marked impression on him, most notably Delius himself.^[2] He was also strongly influenced by Elizabethan music and poetry as well as by Celtic culture (he studied the Cornish, Welsh, Irish, Manx and Breton languages). It was the move to Wales, occasioned by his mother's remarriage, that was the spark for this; Welsh may at that time have enjoyed a relatively low status in the country but Philip, never one to shy away from the unconventional, set about learning it with vigour.

He married Minnie Lucy Channing ("Puma") on 22 December 1916;^[1] they had one son born in wedlock. In 2011, the British art critic Brian Sewell revealed that he was Heseltine's illegitimate child, born seven months after the composer's death.^[3][4]

Career[link]

Heseltine wrote his earliest mature compositions, published to critical acclaim under the newly adopted pseudonym Peter Warlock, following his sojourn in Ireland of 1917-1918. They were followed by a period of concentration on musical journalism; for a while, he was the editor of the musical magazine The Sackbut.

His most prolific period, both as a composer and author, was in the early 1920s, when he withdrew from the financial and social pressures of London to his mother's and stepfather's house in Mid-Wales. Here he wrote some of his finest songs, finally completing his song cycle The Curlew to poems by W. B. Yeats. During this period he also met Béla Bartók, who visited him while returning from a concert in Aberystwyth arranged by Professor Walford Davies, and whose influence can perhaps be seen in The Curlew.^{[citation needed]}

Frederick Delius prevailed on Heseltine to make an English translation of the German text of his Requiem in time for its premiere in London in 1922. Ernest Newman had earlier declined to be involved in the project. Heseltine did not like the work and his heart was not in the translation. This would have reduced the chances of the Requiem being received in a positive light, and it remains one of Delius's least known and least performed works.

Between 1925 and 1929, following a quiet period, Warlock and his colleague E. J. Moeran led a wild, boozy life in Eynsford, Kent, having to deal with the local police more than once - including for riding his motorbike naked. For Warlock, this was one of the most fruitful periods of his life, but by the end of the 1920s his creativity was waning and he had to support himself with music criticism again. He was suffering from severe depression, but whether his death from gas poisoning at the age of 36 was suicide or an accident is not known for certain.^[5][6] His cat had been put out of the room before he died, perhaps to spare it. There is a third possibility: Warlock had made Bernard van Dieren his heir in his will, inspiring claims by Warlock's son Nigel Heseltine that van Dieren had murdered his father.

His name is surrounded by rumours of involvement with the occult, an interest which he shared with others in the Bohemian world of the early 20th century — for example the novelist Mary Butts asserted that it was Warlock who initially introduced her to these subjects. Aleister Crowley, in his book Magick Without Tears, affirms that Warlock's death was the result of an Abramelin magical operation aimed at winning his wife back. Other less conventional aspects of Peter Warlock's life include experimentation with cannabis tincture, a gift for the composition of obscene limericks and a marked interest in flagellation.^{[citation needed]}

In popular culture[link]

Warlock inspired several characters in English language literature, among them:

• Julian Oakes, in Jean Rhys's short story "Till September Petronella," in Tigers Are Better-Looking (1968),^[7]
• Coleman in Aldous Huxley's Antic Hay (1923),
• Roy Hartle in Osbert Sitwell's Those Were the Days (1938),
• Giles Revelstoke in Robertson Davies' A Mixture of Frailties (1958); and
• Maclintick in Casanova's Chinese Restaurant (1960) by Anthony Powell.

• D. H. Lawrence's use of Warlock as the model for Julius Halliday in his novel Women in Love (1920) led to threat of a lawsuit, followed by an out of court settlement.
• He is used as a character, together with Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, madrigalist and uxoricide, in David Pownall's play Music to Murder By (1976).
• His life was the basis of a highly fictionalized film entitled Voices From a Locked Room (1999). The film starred Jeremy Northam and depicted Warlock as having multiple personality disorder.
• His life was portrayed in the 2005 film Peter Warlock, Some Little Joy.^[8]

Works[link]

Warlock's compositions are nearly all songs and most of these are for solo voice and piano. There is a smaller, but still significant, number of pieces for voices — choral songs — although a few of these are arrangements of his solo songs.

He wrote little instrumental music, although the suite Capriol (October 1926) is probably his best-known work and exists in versions for string orchestra, full orchestra and piano duet. (There are arrangements for other combinations, but these are not by Warlock.) His only composition for solo piano is a set of arrangements of Celtic melodies, the "Folk-song preludes". He had a deep affinity for poetry, especially that of Yeats and his friends Robert Nichols and Bruce Blunt (1899–1957). He always chose texts of high artistic value, many of them from the Middle Ages, as basis for his songs.

Many people consider his greatest work to be the song-cycle The Curlew, for tenor and chamber ensemble, in which he sets four linked poems by Yeats. It is certainly his most substantial piece and was written over a long period of time — some seven years — taking in many stylistic changes along the way from the neo-Delianism of "The lover mourns for the loss of love" to sections within the longest song, "The withering of the boughs" that suggest Bartók and Schoenberg as influences before achieving a more idiosyncratic, modal, and genuinely Warlockian vocabulary.

Warlock is also known for his many carols, such as Adam lay ybounden, Tyrley Tyrlow, I Saw a Maiden and Bethlehem Down, the last a setting of words by Bruce Blunt.

Warlock's musical tastes were wide, from Renaissance music to Bartók. In his own works, we hear a development from emulation of the Victorian and Edwardian drawing-room style to a more contrapuntal, strongly personal idiom characterised by the relationship between modal lines and a distinctive palette of chords. He was unusual amongst composers of his generation in being largely unaffected by the folksong movement, either as an arranger (the above-named piano pieces being an exception) or a composer. He wrote only one folksong-orientated work, the cycle "Lilligay".

Apart from original works, Warlock edited and transcribed many lute songs by Elizabethan and Jacobean composers in addition to music by Purcell and other Baroque composers. He also did much to promote the music of Delius, especially by organising the successful Delius Festival of 1929 with Thomas Beecham. He wrote the first biography of Delius, as well as, with Cecil Gray, a book about Carlo Gesualdo. His book on The English Ayre was a ground breaking study, but he also wrote about contemporary music. His article on Arnold Schoenberg was probably the first substantial study in English of his music. In 1925, Warlock rediscovered the music of 16th century composer Thomas Whythorne, and published a book of his compositions and poetry.

Warlock also edited, under the pseudonym Rab Noolas (to be read backwards, i.e. Saloon Bar), an anthology on drinking "for the delectation of serious topers", entitled Merry-Go-Down (Mandrake Press, c. 1930).

Selected bibliography[link]

• Collins, Brian, Peter Warlock: The Composer (Aldershot, 1996).
• Copley, Ian, The Music of Peter Warlock: A Critical Survey (London, 1979).
• Gray, Cecil, Peter Warlock: A Memoir of Philip Heseltine, with contributions by Sir Richard Terry and Robert Nichols (London, 1934).
• Heseltine, Nigel, Capriol for Mother (London, 1992)
• Peter Warlock: A Centenary Celebration, compiled and edited by David Cox & John Bishop. London: Thames Publishing, 1994.
• Smith, Barry, Peter Warlock: The Life of Philip Heseltine (Oxford, 1994).
• Smith, Barry, Frederick Delius and Peter Warlock: A Friendship Revealed (Oxford, 2000).
• Smith, Barry (ed.), The Collected Letters of Peter Warlock (4 vols.) (Woodbridge, 2005)

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Peter Warlock

• Philip Arnold Heseltine (Peter Warlock) (1894-1930), Music scholar and composer: Sitter associated with 4 portraits (National Portrait Gallery)
• The Peter Warlock Society website, including a more detailed biography and a complete list of works.
• Peter Warlock's Songs in the Schubertline (online) edition.
• The UK branch of the Peter Warlock Society website, with UK events and the music hire library lists.
• The Warlock Singers A chamber choir based in Kent, UK named after Peter Warlock, specialising in British music of all periods.
• Free scores by Peter Warlock in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• Free scores by Peter Warlock at the International Music Score Library Project

Ian Partridge CBE (born 12 June 1938) is a retired English lyric tenor, whose repertoire ranged from Monteverdi, Bach and Handel, the Elizabethan lute songs, German, French and English songs, through to Schoenberg, Weill and Britten, and on to contemporary works. He formed a renowned vocal-piano duo with his sister Jennifer Partridge, with whom he worked for over 50 years. While concentrating mainly on songs, oratorio and lieder, he also recorded opera, and has an extensive discography. He is now a teacher and adjudicator, and conducts master classes in many countries.

Biography[link]

Ian Harold Partridge was born in 1938 in Wimbledon.^[1] He was a chorister at New College, Oxford 1948-52,^[2] and a music scholar at Clifton College.^[1] He studied at the Royal College of Music from 1956, studying piano and voice.^[3] Leaving after a year because he engaged in paid employment, which was banned by the RCM,^[2] he transferred to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where his voice teachers were Norman Walker and Roy Hickman; he also studied conducting under Aylmer Buesst.^[3][4] During this period, he also appeared in the West End production of John Osborne's Luther.^[2] Fron 1958 to 1962 he sang in the Westminster Cathedral Choir, where he worked on plainchant with George Malcolm.^[5] He also worked for some time as a piano accompanist.^[1] He took further instruction from Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears.^[3][6]

He made his debut in 1958 at Bexhill in Handel's Messiah,^[3] and commenced a solo singing career in 1962.^[1] He formed a renowned vocal-piano duo with his sister Jennifer Partridge, with whom he performed over 430 recitals over 52 years.^[2] On one occasion in Syria, the hall was sold out, until the audience discovered the performers were not The Partridge Family.^[2][6]

Partridge appeared only once in opera,^[2] but at Covent Garden, singing the role of Iopas in Berlioz's Les Troyens conducted by Sir Colin Davis, which he later recorded.^[1]

In 1973, his recording of Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin, which was the first time the cycle had been recorded on a single 33rpm LP record, was voted Best Record by Record Review.^[2]

He sang the title role in the Thames Television production of Benjamin Britten's Saint Nicolas, which won the 1977 Prix Italia.^[1][7] With Pierre Boulez, Partridge recorded Schoenberg's Die Jakobsleiter, Schumann's Der Rose Pilgerfahrt and Stravinsky's Le Rossignol.^[3]

Ian Partridge has appeared in recital and concert in many countries. He collaborated with the actress Prunella Scales in over 350 performances of "An Evening with Queen Victoria" all over the world, singing songs composed by Prince Albert.^[3][7][8] He has performed Walton's Façade at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam with the composer's widow Lady Walton.

He has been President of the Incorporated Society of Musicians (ISM).^[5] He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1992 New Year's Honours for services to music.^[1][3][4] He gave his farewell recital on 9 October 2008 at the Oxford Lieder Festival.^[2]

He has conducted masterclasses on Lieder, English Song and Early Music, at Aldeburgh, Vancouver, Ravinia, Trondheim, Versailles and Helsinki. He has been a professor at the Royal Academy of Music since 1996.^[2][3][8]

His voice appears on Vol. 5 of The Record of Singing.

External links[link]

• Ian Partridge website: Complete Discography

References[link]

Jeremy Huw Williams (born 3 April 1969 in Cardiff) is a Welsh baritone opera singer who studied at Ysgol Gyfun Gymraeg Glantaf, St John's College, Cambridge, at the National Opera Studio, and with April Cantelo.

Williams has appeared for Welsh National Opera, Opera Ireland and Music Theatre Wales amongst others, and has released numerous recordings, most notably of music by contemporary Welsh composers, including Alun Hoddinott, William Mathias and Mansel Thomas. In addition to these he has also given premieres of works by composers John Tavener, Martin Butler, John Metcalf, Julian Phillips, Edward Dudley Hughes, Ian Wilson, Richard Causton, Edward Rushton, Arlene Sierra and Huw Watkins.^[1]