“A missing symphony by an Oscar-winning English composer was rediscovered by his daughter on eBay, more than 30 years after he is thought to have given it away,” writes Sophie Jamieson in Monday’s (4/26) Daily Telegraph (U.K.). “Sir Malcolm Arnold, who died in 2006, wrote his Seventh Symphony in 1973, but a few years later the original hand-written manuscript went missing. It is thought that Sir Malcolm, a manic depressive, schizophrenic and alcoholic, could have given the work away in lieu of payment to a plumber or repairman, after the Court of Protection stopped him accessing his bank account. The 40-minute symphony survived … in published form, but the original score in his own hand has not been seen since. [In 2014] his daughter Katherine … found out the 190-page manuscript … for sale … on auction website eBay…. ‘it was in its original box with the tissue paper from when he had it bound’ she said. … The Seventh Symphony is now open for the public to view for the first time after being loaned to Eton College as part of a special archive of 113 manuscript scores, along with autograph letters, press cuttings, scrapbooks and photographs.”
Posted April 29, 2016
