Although Miriam plays the piano in Mrs. Bailey’s parlor on several occasions in Interim and attends a musical evening hosted by Mr. Bowdoin, music as a whole plays a smaller role in the narrative and only a few pieces are specifically mentioned.
You will find the playlist on YouTube at the following link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN80YcwBugk&list=PLEuwqhzbsAgtMChvergtB2id1WX93JFLh
- 303 “That was The Mistletoe Bough,” bridled Mrs Philps, accepting the mustard.
“Oh, that ’s The Mistletoe Bough” mused Miriam, thrilling. - “The Mistletoe Bough”: A Christmas song by Sir Henry Rowley Bishop (c. 1840), words by Thomas H. Bayly.
- 333 “Moszkowski’s Serenade sounded fearfully pathetic; as if the piano were heart-broken.”
- Moszkowski’s Serenade/Serenata. Moritz Moszkowski (1854-1925), German pianist and composer of Polish descent, frequently performed in England. His Serenata Op. 15 for orchestra was adapted for piano.
- 333 “She could not sit here playing Chopin. It would be like deliberately speaking a foreign language suddenly, to assert yourself. Playing pianissimo she slowly traced a few phrases of a nocturne.”
- Most likely Chopin’s Nocturne in B Flat Minor, Opus 9, No. 1.
- 334 “Beethoven was the answer to the silence of the room. She imagined a sonata ringing out into it, and defiantly attacked a remembered fragment.”
- Let’s say this is the first movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata no.8 in C Minor, ‘Pathetique’, which is mentioned in Pointed Roofs and which opens with some big, loud chords.
- 336 “Cut and dried. I ’ve patriotic ballads cut and dried. I’m cut and dried, everybody thinks.”
- W. S. Gilbert, “A Wandering Minstrel I,” Nanki-Pooh’s song at the opening of Act I of The Mikado. “But if patriotic sentiment is wanted/I’ve patriotic ballads cut and dried.”
- 345 “Sitting down almost the moment Mr Mendizabal brought him into the room and playing Wagner. With many wrong notes and stumbling phrases, but self-forgetfully, in the foreign way…. He could not imagine how extraordinary it was to hear Wagner in the room, suddenly offered to the Baileys.”
- This could be the piano setting of the overture to Tannhäuser, which is mentioned later (see p.371).
- 346 “Other foreign musicians, set apart, glancing, and listening to strange single things, speaking in pain, just out of clear hearing, their speech unfinished. Russian or Hungarian. Dvor-tchak. I will ask him. Perhaps he plays Chopin.”
- For the sake of discussion, let’s say it was Dvorak’s Poetic Tone Poems #7, Furiant (Op.85), which probably did sound like strange single things to English ears.
- 347 “‘If I get a Beethoven*s Sonatas, would you play one ?’
‘I will play one for you. But not this evening, I think.’ He turned back to the piano and Miriam gazed at his undrawn profile.” - Later, in Chapter V, Mr. Bowdoin tells Miriam, “I will give you a sonata of Bytoven.” (p.369)
Lacking any further clues, I will guess this is Sonata No.25 in G Major, “Cuckoo”, which would allow Mr. Bowdoin to show off his ability on the piano. - 385 “That of the fatherland, the happy fatherland, nearly dislocates my jaw,’ she could imagine him heartily and badly singing with a group of Canadian students.”
- Perhaps a reference to “Die Wacht am Rhein” [The Watch on the Rhine](1840), words by Max Schneckenburger (1810-1849), music by Karl Wilhelm (1815-1873) in 1854. This was the most popular patriotic song, often sung by German students in Heidelberg and other university towns.
- 395 “How could he be a composer; looking so . . . vanishing? Strelinsky . . . Morceau pour piano . . . that must be he standing here.”
- According to George Thomson, “The prototype is probably Anton Strelezki (1859-1907). He was born in England and settled in London where he was very popular as a pianist and composer. He published much piano music, including such works as Valse-Souvenir and Valsette.” Strelezki was, in fact, a pseudonym belonging to Arthur Bransby Burnand (1858-1907), who was born and died in London.