Loeb Music Library

The Music Treasures Consortium proudly announces a new site designed to give access to selected music manuscripts and printed editions from six institutions in the United States and United Kingdom. The site is hosted by the Library of Congress on its Performing Arts Encyclopedia, and is available at:

http://loc.gov/musictreasures

(The scores pictured in this post represent a tiny fraction of the items available on the Music Treasures Consortium site; click any thumbnail to view the uncropped images.)

The Consortium’s goal is to further music scholarship and research by providing access in one place to digital images of primary sources for the performance and study of music. Two examples may help to demonstrate the connections researchers can make through the site:

• The 1741 autograph manuscript of Handel’s Messiah, from the British Library, can be easily compared with both the first published edition of the score, from the Loeb Music Library, and a copyist’s manuscript, ca. 1743-46, from The Morgan Library and Museum.
• Scores from the Loeb Music Library’s extensive collection of Schubert first editions can be studied in tandem with manuscripts from the Library of Congress, the Morgan, and the Lila Acheson Wallace Library at Juilliard (Schubert in the Music Treasures Consortium).

In this initial launch, online items range from the 13^th century – the British Library’s manuscript Harley 978, Musical, medical and literary miscellany, including ‘Sumer is icumen in’[...] – to the 20^th, by composers including Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Richard Wagner, Claude Debussy, Georges Bizet, Arnold Schoenberg. The site will continue to grow as Consortium members add more items.

Read more about Harvard’s contributions to the Music Treasures Consortium in this Harvard College Library News article.

Members of the Consortium include:

• The British Library
• Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library at Harvard University
• Lila Acheson Wallace Library at the Juilliard School
• The Library of Congress
• The Morgan Library and Museum
• New York Public Library

Initial planning for the Consortium was funded by Bruce Kovner. The MTC Advisory Board includes Christoph Wolff, Jeffrey Kallberg, Philip Gossett, and Laurent Pugin.

-Kerry Masteller

Andrea Bohlman, a doctoral candidate in Historical Musicology in the Harvard University Department of Music, works on socialist and post-socialist music cultures, European popular song and hymns, musical media, and music in politics. In this guest post, she describes some of her discoveries in the stacks of the Harvard libraries, and their importance to her research:

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Though the bulk of my dissertation research brings me to archives housed in basements of private homes, government organizations, and academic institutions across Poland, generous support from the Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library, Houghton Library, and the Music Department at Harvard has helped to make some of the most unusual materials available on this side of the Atlantic: a selection of rare cassette tapes. The digitization of these materials, which were collected among members of the Polish opposition in the 1980s, makes radio programs, audiobooks, news montages, and more available to any user at Houghton Library. The creative sound documents recorded on the tapes had previously been inaccessible because of their fragile media. Now we have the opportunity to listen to the sounds of organized dissent and to understand the significance of music for Polish activists.

The Solidarity Collection itself (to which these tapes belong) is unique outside of Poland. It contains a variety of materials assembled from private collections of Polish-American supporters of the independent Solidarity trade union (Solidarnosc), and other dissident organizations from the late 1970s to the end of the Cold War. Members of Polish opposition depended on a variety of means of communication to organize meetings, discuss their demands, critique the ideologies behind the Peoples’ Republic of Poland, and create a culture of dissent. In scores of news bulletins and written documentation of organizational matters, “dissident culture” supported the publication of literature censored by the government and promoted its own agenda through stamps, posters, and other iconographic media.

The Solidarity Collection, because it represents not the record of a single organization, but the collections of individuals invested in the movements’ politics, speaks volumes about the way in which documents printed by the Polish underground presses—Polish samizdat—were actually disseminated and received. The Solidarity Collection offers a snapshot into the diverse means of expression at the heart of the Polish opposition, the local efforts in what came to be a nationally triumphant political party.

My dissertation concerns music and activism in Poland during the 1980s. It was when I was perusing the Solidarity Collection for songbooks that I noticed a reference to 38 cassette tapes. When I inquired about them, a Houghton librarian, Joseph Zajac, was kind enough to take me into the bowels of the stacks, where I got a sense for the richness of the sound materials. I began to talk with Richard F. French librarian Virginia Danielson about listening access, since Houghton has neither the digitization facilities nor the audio technology of the Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library.

The tapes represent the bulk of the output of two major underground presses. From 1983-1990 these presses used cassettes as a primary means of disseminating political cabaret, political anthems, and audiobooks (such as George Orwell’s 1984), as well as editorial essays read by their activist authors. Cassettes not only recorded the sounds of the opposition, they afforded journalists, workers, and literary figures the opportunity to create a sound object. The digitization of these tapes has made the material more accessible and has transformed the nature of my work with the cassettes: I can return to listen to interviews and audio montages repeatedly. But, most importantly, engagement with their form and content can alter historians’ understanding of music in the Polish opposition by underlining the vitality of sound and music at a crucial moment of Cold War history in Poland.

- Andrea Bohlman

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Notes: David Ackerman, Bruce Gordon, and Darron Burke, of the library’s Audio Preservation Studio, digitized the tapes, which are stored in the University Library’s Digital Repository Service, a state-of-the-art permanent digital storage facility.

The Music Library acknowledges the continued, valuable support from the Andrew W. Van Houten Audio Preservation Fund for our work with rare and unique electroacoustic and ethnomusicological recordings.

Our latest collection of digitized scores focuses on early 20th century works of musical modernism: operas by Busoni, Schreker, and Zemlinsky. As always, these and many other scores from our special collections can be found in our collection of Digital Scores and Libretti.

Ferruccio Busoni

1. Die Brautwahl. Klavier-Auszug von E. Petri [Leipzig? Breitkopf & Härtel? 1914?]. Mus 633.5.621

Busoni’s first opera, with a libretto by the composer based on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s short story of the same title, from Die Serapions-brüder. This copy of the vocal score contains numerous cuts, corrections, and annotations – some pasted over the original score – which may represent a conductor’s revisions for performance.

2. Die Brautwahl: Orchester-Suite: Op. 45. Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel [c1917]. Mus 633.5.623

3. Arlecchino: ein theatralisches Capriccio in einem Aufzuge. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, c1917. Mus 633.5.615

A vocal score of Busoni’s Mozartian one-act number opera, centered on the acrobatic Harlequin figure of the Commedia dell’arte: his first stylistic foray into Junge Klassizität (Young Classicality). The work premiered on May 11, 1917, with Busoni’s Turandot.

Franz Schreker

4. Das Spielwerk und die Prinzessin: Oper in einem Vorspiel und zwei Aufzügen. Wien: Universal-Edition, c1912. Mus 800.42.621

Schreker’s third opera, strongly influenced by Symbolism and later extensively revised to become Das Spielwerk. This copy of the score includes the spoken interlude “Des Burschen Traum in der Hütte des Meisters Florian” (“The Boy’s dream in the cabin of Meister Florian”), performed only for radio broadcast and not included in the libretto published in 1913.

Alexander Zemlinsky

5. Eine florentinische Tragödie: Oper in einem Aufzug : Op. 16. Wien: Universal-Edition, c1916. Mus 887.575.621

As he would do several years later in commissioning Georg C. Klaren’s libretto for Der Zwerg, Zemlinksy based his own libretto for Eine florentinische Tragödie on a work by Oscar Wilde: in this case, his unfinished play A Florentine Tragedy.

6. Kleider machen Leute; musikalische Komödie in einem Vorspiel und zwei Akten. Wien, New York, Universal-Edition, c1922. Mus 887.575.616

A vocal score of the revised version of the comic opera, based on Gottfried Keller’s novella Kleider machen Leute. Originally produced as a three act opera in 1911, this two-act revised version premiered in Prague in 1922.

- Kerry Masteller

Though the weather report promises but little joy, though due dates for theses and applications loom menacingly over us like steadily advancing diplodoci, though the ice and snowdrifts cling to the pavement as clings the tritone to Vitellio Scarpia, though we are, if not actually disgruntled, far from being gruntled, yet be of good cheer, gentle library patrons, for a brief escape to the enchanted land of Bolton, Wodehouse and Kern is but a mouseclick or two away.

Between 1915 and 1924 Jerome Kern, often in cahoots with P. G. Wodehouse (brilliant lyricist as well as brilliant novelist; life is not fair) and Guy Bolton (the wizard of plot and pun) wrote several musicals for the small, stylish Princess Theater in New York.    Their intricate, tuneful scores  and believably nonsensical books distinguished the Princess shows from Ziegfeld’s extravaganzas and Cohan’s revues.  Kern and Wodehouse created songs which advanced the plot and illuminated the characters, rather than a series of interchangeable numbers for interchangeable soubrettes and juveniles.  The world of these shows is long, long gone, but the songs are as fresh as ever.

If you are stuck in your room with the cold that’s going around,  Music Online streams an utterly beguiling album of Wodehouse lyrics (mostly set to Kern’s music) called “The Land Where the Good Songs Go.” Sylvia McNair (she of the voice like silver honey), joins forces with pianist Steven Blier and tenor/Wodehouse buff Hal Cazalet for songs like “You Can’t Make Love By Wireless” and “Non-Stop Dancing” (“Father pluckily continues, though he’s sprained eleven sinews, since we got the non-stop dancing craze.”)  Those interested in the evolution of singing styles might want to listen to the vintage recordings of many of the same songs on “The Theatre Lyrics of P. G. Wodehouse”.  Some of these tracks date back to 1905, and there’s an interview with Wodehouse about working with Kern.

For the full Bertie Wooster experience, try visiting the UCLA Archive of Popular American Music, printing out a .pdf of the original sheet music for “The Sirens’ Song” or “Sir Galahad” and playing through it on the nearest keyboard.  You never know what might summon up Jeeves, tray in hand and mammoth brain at the ready to solve all your problems.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dinah Washington… The fabulous Miss D!

We recently received this fine Hip-O-Select collection that brings together in one place all of Dinah Washington’s Keynote, Decca and Mercury singles from 1943 to 1953. The book/CD package has great photos, reproductions of record labels and album covers, and detailed discographical notes for each single. The introductory essay was written by Marc Myers, who pens the Jazz Wax blog.

Find it here: Loeb Music Library AC 36777

The Rake’s Progress

Just in on CD is this landmark recording from 1953, the first complete Rake’s Progress conducted by the composer. Stravinsky leads the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus and a cast including Hilde Gueden as Anne, Blanche Thebom as Baba the Turk, Eugene Conley as Tom, Mack Harrell as Nick Shadow, Martha Lipton as Mother Goose and Norman Scott as Trulove.

Find it here: Loeb Music Library CD 38218

Menotti in German

We recently acquired an Arthaus DVD that contains 1960’s German-language studio recordings of Menotti’s The Old Maid and the Thief and The Medium. Elisabeth Höngen and Hilde Konetzni are featured in both operas, along with the Orchestra of the Vienna Volksoper. The DVD also includes an interview with stage director Otto Schenk.

Find it here: Loeb Music Library DVD 1780.

Venus Records

Over the past few years we’ve received a number of jazz titles on Japan’s Venus Records. This label has primarily been marketed to a Japanese audience, but is becoming more visible here in the U.S. Cambridge-born pianist Eddie Higgins, who died in the summer of 2009, was a favorite of the label’s owner and is featured on many Venus titles. A recent release culls “essential” ballads from some of those recordings.

Find it here: Loeb Music Library CD 38226.

- Peter Laurence

We’ve added a number of scores to our collection of Digital Scores and Libretti, including this set of late 18th and early 19th century operas:

Johann Christian Bach

Amadis des Gaules: tragedie lyrique de Quinault reduite en trois actes … Représentée pour la premiere fois au théatre de l’Académie royale de musique le quinze decembre 1779. Mise en musique par Jean Chretien Bach. Paris.: Sieber, [1780?].
Merritt Room Mus 627.3.604, RISM A/I, B 167

Johann Christian Bach’s only French tragédie lyrique was premiered by the Académie Royale de Musique on December 14, 1779, to virtually universal distaste. As Friedrich Melchior Grimm wrote in an issue of the Correspondance littéraire, a journal covering the cultural events of Paris,

The Amadis of Mr. Bach…appeared for the first time this Tuesday the 14th and has not fulfilled our expectations….while it’s always good enough, it’s never more, and one cannot hide that, in this work at least, the whole of the composition lacks heat and effect. The Gluckists found it had neither the originality of Gluck, nor his sublime élan; the Piccinists, that his song had neither the charm nor the variety of melody of Piccinni.¹

Luigi Cherubini

Lodoïska : opéra en 3 actes / paroles de Filette Loraux ; musique de Cherubini ; partition de piano et chant. Paris : M. Schlesinger, [1837?].
Merritt Room Mus 637.1.627.5

The first French edition of the vocal score.

Lodoïska, which premiered at the Théâtre Feydeau on July 18, 1791, was a great success. Based on an episode from the popular novel Les amours du chevalier de Faublas, Lodoïska is notable not only for its music but also for its spectacle: the third act ends as a troop of Tatar soldiers burn the castle in which Lodoïska has been imprisoned by the villain Dourlinski.

Medea : Oper in drei Akten / Musik von L. Cherubini. Vollständiger Klavierauszug. Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel [1855?].
Merritt Room Mus 637.1.643.3

A vocal score, in German and French, of the opéra comique Médée, premiered at the Théâtre Feydeau, 13 March 1797. While the opera was not especially popular in France, it was given multiple German-language revivals in Berlin, Vienna, and other cities. This edition, though it dates from around 1855, does not include the recitative settings of the dialogue composed by Franz Paul Lachner for the 1855 Frankfurt production. (It may be worth noting that its extended passages of dialogue, not its subject, cause Médée to be classified as an opéra comique.)

Anacréon, ou, L’amour fugitive : opéra ballet en deux actes / par le C.R. Mendouze ; mis en musique par Chérubini. A Paris : Au magasin de musique dirigé par MMrs. Chérubini, Méhul, Kreutzer, Rode N. Isouard et Boieldieu rue de la Loi, no. 268 vis-à-vis celle Ménars ; A Lyon : chez Garnier, Place de la Comédie no. 18, [1803].
Merritt Room Mus 637.1.602, RISM A/I, CC 2028 I, 79

A full score of Cherubini’s first, and unsuccessful, opéra-ballet, premiered at the Opéra on October 4, 1803. While the opera itself is rarely performed (the first revival didn’t occur until 1971), the overture – borrowed from his cantata Amphion – remains a popular concert piece.

-Kerry Masteller

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1. See Friedrich Melchior Grimm, Correspondance, littéraire, philosophique et critique par Grimm, Diderot, Raynal, Meister, etc…., (Paris, Garnier frères, 1880), 12:350.

The Galpin Society Journal of 1955 contains an article by musicologist Gerald Hayes on The Lutes Apology by Richard Mathew, the only English lute book that is known to have been published between 1610 and 1676. The lone copy of the book was discovered in 1936 in Bedfordshire and deposited in the archives of the Bedford County Record Office. Hayes relates how he prepared a lengthy essay on the book, its author, the original owner, and the history of the lute, for what he hoped would be a facsimile edition. Oxford University Press agreed to publish it; lute scholar Diana Poulton provided transcriptions from the tablature into staff notation; the volume was entrusted to the British Museum where the necessary photographs were made. Hayes writes, “By 1940 everything was ready and the letterpress, duffed-out photographs, and engraved music were all photographed together onto glass, from which the zinc lithographic plates were made: at that stage a bomb fell on the printing works and everything disappeared without a trace.”¹

Although Hayes’ edition never saw the light of day, the original volume of The Lutes Apology survived the Blitz, and a microfilm of the British Library’s copy now resides in the Isham Memorial Library, one of 300 new items from the personal microfilm collection of Prof. Emeritus John M. Ward. Now in his nineties, Prof. Ward continues to work as a collector and curator of music, theater and dance material for the Harvard libraries. A few years ago, as part of a general house-cleaning, Prof. Ward donated more than 1400 of his personal microfilms to the Harvard University’s Isham Library, a collection of music primary source material where I work as Associate Keeper. Over a two-year period, I had the pleasure of sorting through all the films in order to identify items that could be added to the Isham catalog; see this Ward Films Inventory (PDF) for a list of these new acquisitions. Duplicate films were claimed by the Music Library at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and the Lute Society of America.

Prof. Ward’s wide ranging research interests include five centuries of British popular and folk music. About 50 of our new items are collections of Scots dance tunes, including manuscripts of McClaren, Webster, Niven and Christie in Aberdeen; Nicoll, Stickle, Anderson and Virtue in Edinburgh; Doig, Stafford Smith and Sutherland in Glasgow. Along with The Lute’s Apology, more than 100 of the new films pertain to early string instruments such as lute, cittern, guitar and viola da gamba. Of particular note are binders containing Ward’s transcriptions from lute tablature (finger notation) into standard keyboard notation, making accessible vast amounts of repertoire previously hidden in the lutenists’ esoteric code. For players and scholars of the viola da gamba, the new acquisitions fill out Isham’s collection of consort manuscripts from Archbishop Marsh’s Library in Dublin; one tablature manuscript in Manchester for viol played “lyra-way,” or chordally, contains 246 pieces with 22 different tunings. In the front-matter of a viol tablature manuscript in the Cheshire Records office, I found this affectionate apostrophe by its owner, Sir Peter Leycester:

To his Viole

Come Sweete Companion, Solace of my life,
Asswager of my Cares, another wife,
Let us retire into some Shady Place,
Where with my circlinge thighs I may embrace
And gently hugge thee, till thy trembling strings
Cause the Sweete friskind ayre to dance & singe:
Whiles I bestride thy belly, sweetest Mate,
It is expected we should propagate:
The numerous issue of thy pleasinge mirth
Are all Abortives, perish[ed] in the Birth.
Oh I could with the Sportes of all our leasure
Might like the Spheres move in Eternall pleasure.
Embleme of Heaven! Fit for the feasts of Jove,
Where’s nothinge else but harmony and Love.²

- Douglas Freundlich, Associate Keeper, Isham Library

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1. Gerald Hayes, Music in the Boteler Muniments, The Galpin Society Journal 8 (1955): 44. Requires Harvard ID/PIN for access.

2. Peter Leycester, Poems & characters by me P. Leycester, [16--], Leicester of Tabley Archives, DLT/B70, Cheshire Record Office. Isham Lib. 3519.889.24.3

The latest release of Harvard’s Page Delivery Service (PDS) – the system through which we share our digital scores with the world – is live, and there are a few enhancements to share with you.

We spend a lot of time writing a structural outline for every score we digitize, to make it easier to find works, movements, scenes, and even single arias. While we’ll keep adding that full indexing, it’s now possible to navigate using thumbnail images of each page, as well: when you’re looking at a digitized book or score, click “Expand All,” then “Show Thumbnails” in the left-side navigation frame. This might be an interesting way to get a simple visual overview of a work’s structure, and I have to admit that for some scores, it’s just fun; take a look at the thumbnails for this copy of Debussy’s La Boîte à Joujoux: Ballet pour Enfants, and I think you’ll see what I mean.

The next addition is a “Cite this Resource” button: click this to get descriptions and persistent links for both the entire score and the single page you’re looking at. These aren’t perfectly-formatted citations, but they gather a lot of the information you’ll need in a bibliography or caption. Here’s a screenshot, using a page from La Boîte à Joujoux as an example:

Screenshot: PDS "Cite This Resource" Tool (click to enlarge)

And finally, the full print-to-PDF option is back! Requests for 10 or fewer pages are delivered in real time; if you request more than 10 pages, you’ll be sent a link to the PDF once it’s been processed (those links remain available for 7 days).

Ready to start exploring? Digital Scores and Libretti is, of course, my favorite, but check out other Digital Collections of Harvard College Library and Web-Accessible Collections at Harvard University for photographs, pamphlets, manuscripts, books, maps, and other rare materials ranging from Digital Papyri to Latin American Pamphlets.

- Kerry Masteller

Our project to digitize first and early editions of Verdi continues apace, with works selected from two of the library’s special collections of 18th and 19th century scores, the Packard Humanities Institute Collection and the Ruth Neils and John M. Ward Collection of Opera Scores. These five operas have been recently added to our collection of Digital Scores and Libretti:

Erminia Frezzolini / Charles Vogt (1855)
Image courtesy
Bibliothèque nationale de France

• I Lombardi alla prima crociata: dramma lirico in quattro atti di Temistocle Solera; riduzione per canto con accompagnamento di pianoforte dei maestri L. Truzzi e P. Tonassi. Milano, G. Ricordi [1843?]. Merritt Mus 857.1.690.5 PHI

  Hopkinson 40A(a): though not dated, this first complete edition was probably printed in June of 1843. The hugely successful I Lombardi premiered at La Scala on February 11, 1843, with Erminia Frezzolini in the prima donna role of Giselda.

• Ernani: dramma lirico in quattro parti di Francesco Maria Piave; posto in musica da Giuseppe Verdi; riduzione per canto con accompagnamento di pianoforte del maestro L. Truzzi. Milano: Tito di Gio. Ricordi, [1844]. Mus 857.1.504.5

  Hopkinson 41A(c): a variant of the first complete edition, advertised for publication by Ricordi in August of 1844. The first of Verdi’s operas to premiere at a house other than La Scala, Ernani opened at La Fenice on March 9th, 1844.

• I due Foscari: melodramma lirico di Francesco Maria Piave; posto in musica da Giuseppe Verdi; riduzione per canto con accompagnamento di pianoforte di L. Truzzi. Milano: Dall’I. R. Stabilimento nazionale privilegiato di Giovanni Ricordi, [1845]. Merritt Mus 857.1.536.3 PHI

  Hopkinson 42B(a): the first complete edition of the opera, premiered November 3, 1844, at the Teatro Argentina. Censors rejected Verdi’s original proposal for his first Roman premiere, an opera on the life of Lorenzino de Medici. He substituted instead I due Foscari, with a libretto by Piave based on Byron’s The Two Foscari, a subject which itself had been turned down by La Fenice, in part for its unflattering portrayal of the Venetian Republic.

Giuseppe Verdi. Title page, Giovanna d’Arco. Mus 857.1.540.5

• Giovanna d’Arco: dramma lirico di Temistocle Solera; posto in musica dal maestro cav. Giuseppe Verdi; riduzione par canto con accompagnamento di pianoforte; completa. Milano: Tito di Gio. Ricordi, [1846?]. Mus 857.1.540.5

  Hopkinson 43A(c): The last of Verdi’s five operas composed for Milan’s La Scala, premiered February 15, 1845. A variant of the first complete edition.

• Il corsaro: melodramma tragico di F.M. Piave; musica di Giuseppe Verdi; riduzione per canto con accompto. di piano forte di E. Muzio. Milano: F. Lucca; Londra: Addison e Hodson, [1848?]. Mus 857.1.464

  Hopkinson 49A(e), a variant of the first complete edition. Disputes over the rights to Giovanna d’Arco led Verdi to avoid productions at La Scala for over twenty years, and to publish his next three operas with Lucca, rather than Ricordi. Il Corsaro, which premiered at the Teatro Grande in Trieste on October 25, 1848, was the last work Verdi wrote while under contract to Lucca, and by all accounts it was not a success. One life-and-works article published in 1856, after several revivals, calls the opera “a solemn failure” (Giuseppe Verdi, The Musical World, 34:84 (Nov 29, 1856), p. 758).

For further reference, see:

Hopkinson, Cecil. A Bibliography of the Works of Giuseppe Verdi, 1813-1901. New York: Broude Brothers, 1973-1978.

Loewenberg, Alfred. Annals of Opera, 1597-1940. 3rd ed. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1978.

-Kerry Masteller

Among the Merritt Room’s holdings are several continuity scripts for classic musicals, including one for Les Girls (1957) Cole Porter’s last major work (apart from a children’s television production of “Aladdin”) before his retirement in 1958. In tandem with the DVD, it offers a unique look over the shoulder of director George Cukor (legendary for his skill with “women’s pictures”) as he assembles a movie.

It seems at first ironic that this film is billed as “Cole Porter’s Les Girls“, when Porter himself admitted the Les Girls songs were not up to his usual standard*. Suffering from the cumulative effects of a host of physical ailments and a series of heavy personal losses, Porter had been unable to summon up the sparkle and gleam of the previous year’s “High Society” score. Yet the picture itself, helmed and staffed by some of the most elegant minds in the business and starring Gene Kelly and three beautiful lead actresses (including the blazingly talented Kay Kendall), is redolent of the world of accessible sophistication conjured up by a good Porter song.

Color consultant George Hoyningen-Huene (the man behind the haunting deep blues in Cukor’s “A Star is Born”) fills the frame with glowing blacks and startling pinks and rigs up a feathery collage for the credit sequence (note how he handles the transition between the credit for Porter’s music and that of Adolph Deutsch, who adapted and conducted it); John Patrick’s screenplay offers a clever, Rashomon-like plot (Taina Elg and Kendall play former showgirls with Kelly’s troupe, one of whom sues the other over an allegedly libelous memoir) and some wicked one-liners, and Jack Cole choreographs some lively dances (performed in clothes by Orry-Kelly).  Robert Surtees’ cinematography makes the most of the multiple points of view and flashbacks upon flashbacks.

Even tired Porter is still Porter. Les Girls is set mostly in Paris, in the backstage world of crowded dressing rooms, tiny, shared flats, cheap restaurants and third-class train carriages. In the musical numbers, this tawdry milieu suddenly becomes the scene for dazzling light romance. It’s not a bad last look at the man whose music and lyrics could confer instant urbanity on anyone who sang or played them.

- Sarah Barton

*Eells, George. The Life That Late He Led: a Biography of Cole Porter. Putnam, New York, 1967. p.307