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Viewed soberly, the striking thing was the contrast between the two. The human being seemed so capacious, yet the music often seemed so narrow. Admittedly, it is hard to give a fair overview of a large output in two hours; more's the pity, then, that precious time was wasted on a toe-curling \"light\" song cycle based on poems by Stevie Smith. All the other pieces (apart from the Auden setting) were in the lean, angular idiom that [Elizabeth Lutyens] came to quite late, during the 1950s and 1960s. It is an idiom that's tense in its very essence. The characteristic sound of the evening was Melinda Maxwell's plaintive oboe outlining a melody at odds with a tense, held chord on strings.

[Marjorie Klein]'s novel, \"Test Pattern\" (Wm. Morrow, 2000; HarperCollins/Perennial 2001), was a Barnes and Noble \"Discover Great New Writers\" selection. Her narrative nonfiction has appeared for 20 years in \"Tropic,\" the Miami Herald's Sunday magazine. \"The Devil You Know: The Art, Skill and Thrill of Writing Your Memoir\" involves in-class \"lifestorming\" sessions and writing, at-home writing and reading assignments, and, says [Brian Lee Knopp], a chance for \"a daring rescue of the truth trapped inside your life's labyrinth.\" This course, with an emphasis on reading and critiquing each other's work, is for advanced prose writers embarking on new works or with projects in progress. [Tommy Hays], the author of \"The Pleasure Was Mine,\" \"Sam's Crossing\" and \"In the Family Way,\" will respond at length to participants' submissions.

In 1937, [Denis ApIvor] met the critic Cecil Gray, who introduced him to the composer and conductor [Constant Lambert]: an important artistic friendship ensued. Lambert's influence can be seen in ApIvor's first major work, his 1939 setting of TS Eliot's The Hollow Men, a poem which ApIvor felt to be expressive of the impending European catastrophe. This affinity with certain types of poetry became clear in ApIvor's relationship to the work of [Dylan Thomas], whom he came to know personally. In the postwar years, he also met Roy Campbell, Louis MacNeice, fellow composer [Elizabeth Lutyens] and her husband Edward Clark. Lutyens's interest in Webern may have influenced ApIvor, who had been employing serial techniques as early as 1949. In the 1960s, he produced a series of highly innovative works including the orchestral Overtones, inspired by the paintings of Paul Klee, the second of his five symphonies and the opera Ubu Roi, based on the play by Alfred Jarry. He also made vital contributions to the 20th- century repertoire for guitar. My personal experiences of Denis ApIvor date from his final years. A chance discovery in a library basement of his Violin Sonata (1946) led to my performing it at ApIvor's home in Brighton. He spoke with passion of his friendships with Dylan Thomas, Constant Lambert and Edward Clark, and the disappointments of an artistic life governed by the fickle changes of musical fashion.

Elisabeth Lutyens (1906-1983), Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994) and Grace Williams (1906-1977) were contemporaries at the Royal College of Music. The three composers' careers were launched with performances in the Macnaghten-Lemare Concerts in the 1930s - a time when, in Britain, as Williams noted, a woman composer was considered 'very odd indeed'. Even so, by the early 1940s all three had made remarkable advances in their work: Lutyens had become the first British composer to use 12-note technique, in her Chamber Concerto No. 1 (1939-40); Maconchy had composed four string quartets of outstanding quality and was busy rethinking the genre; and Williams had won recognition as a composer with great flair for orchestral writing with her Fantasia on Welsh Nursery Tunes (1940) and Sea Sketches (1944). In the following years, Lutyens, Maconchy and Williams went on to compose music of striking quality and to attain prominent positions within the British music scene. Their respective achievements broke through the 'sound ceiling', challenging many of the traditional assumptions which accompanied music by female composers. Rhiannon Mathias traces the development of these three important composers through analysis of selected works. The book draws upon previously unexplored material as well as radio and television interviews with the composers themselves and with their contemporaries. The musical analysis and contextual material lead to a re-evaluation of the composers' positions in the context of twentieth-century British music history.

It seemed too good to be true. Christie's in London was to auction 18 early 20th-century objects by the British architect Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens at a decorative-arts sale next Wednesday. \"This is the largest group of Lutyens furnishings to be auctioned in recent years,\" Tatiana Marsden, a Christie's specialist in 20th-century decorative arts, said on Monday by telephone from London. On Tuesday, Miss Marsden called again to say one of the three owners of the tables, chairs and lighting fixtures designed by Lutyens (pronounced LUTCH-ens) had withdrawn nine objects from the sale because of \"a difference of opinion with the vendor.\" The nine pieces originally were designed for Reuters's London offices. The nature of the disagreement and the seller's identity were not revealed by Christie's. Lutyens's Neo-Classical version of Art Deco was used for a 1930 waiting room of a London-based bathroom-fittings manufacturer, Messrs. Crane Bennett. The sleekly styled furniture in a caramel-colored finish includes a corner writing table ($15,600 to $19,500) and two oval armchairs and two oval stools, each decorated with carved bells at the tops of their turned legs. The chairs and stools are being sold as two sets, each including one chair and one stool. They are expected to bring $7,800 to $11,700 for each set. The scarcest of Lutyens's designs, Miss Marsden said, is the bell furniture. \"They are extremely rare,\" she said. \"Most of the bell furniture stayed in India.\" The bell images, she said, repeat those Lutyens used architecturally in his design for the Governor's Palace in New Delhi. \"There has not been a sale of French porcelains like this one since I've been in the auction business,\" said Hugo Morley-Fletcher, a porcelain specialist who came to Christie's in London 28 years ago. He said that among the many objects in the sale that are the only known examples of their type is a silver-mounted, house-shaped Mennecy snuff box, a miniature yellow stone mansion with glazed windows and a pitched roof, less than three inches wide. The presale estimate is $4,000 to $6,000. Another one-of-a-kind item is a Chantilly figure of a snarling fox or wolf, depicted upright on its haunches ($20,000 to $40,000). \"I am sure it's a wolf, not a fox,\" Mr. Morley-Fletcher said. \"Whatever it is, it has great ferocity.\"

44-1446 ML1506 2005-18758 CIP Roma, Catherine. The choral music of twentieth-century women composera: Elisabeth Lutyens, Elizabeth Maconchy, and Thea Musgrave. Scarecrow, 2006. 207p bibl index afp ISBN 081085029X pbk, $35.00