Music is somewhat less prominent a feature in Backwater than in Pointed Roofs, with most of the mentions being found in the recital and dance in Chapter Two.
You can listen to the majority of the musical pieces mentioned in Backwater on this YouTube playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEuwqhzbsAgt0xO1TAo4x8mm2BYdKzCX2
It includes the following:
- “Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay”
- Words and music by Henry J. Sayers
- Klassiche Stücke:
- In George Thomson’s Notes on Pilgrimage, he comes up with candidates for the pieces mentioned during Margaret Wedderburn’s violin recital. However, I think Margaret has brought the first of a four volume collection published in the early 1890s known as Sammlung klassischer Stücke aus Werken berühmter Meister, which included 45 pieces of music by Gluck, Beethoven, Handel, Bach, and others. If this is true, the pieces mentioned would be:
- Gluck, “Dance of the Blessed Spirits” from Act II of Orfeo et Euridice.
- Cavatina: the 5th movement from Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 130.
- Romance: Hummel’s Romanze, Op. 56
- In George Thomson’s Notes on Pilgrimage, he comes up with candidates for the pieces mentioned during Margaret Wedderburn’s violin recital. However, I think Margaret has brought the first of a four volume collection published in the early 1890s known as Sammlung klassischer Stücke aus Werken berühmter Meister, which included 45 pieces of music by Gluck, Beethoven, Handel, Bach, and others. If this is true, the pieces mentioned would be:
- “Abide with Me”
- Words by Henry F. Lyte, Music by William H. Monk
- “Bitter Sweet”
- Waltz by Caroline Lowthian
- Die Lorelei
- A poem by Heinrich Heine set to music by Friedrich Silcher
- “Daisy Bell”
- Popular song by Harry Dacre, better known as “Bicycle Built for Two”
- Stabat Mater
- An arrangement by Franz Liszt of a melody by Rossini
- Funeral March
- Music by Frédéric Chopin (Marche Funèbre)
- Anitra’s Dance
- Music by Edvard Grieg from the Peer Gynt Suite
- “The Moon and I”
- Music by Arthur Sullivan, words by W. S. Gilbert, from Act II of The Mikado
- “Fight the Good Fight”
- Hymn by John Monsell and William Boyd. Source of the words “Faint not nor fear, his arms are near. He faileth not and thou art dear.” (Which Miriam considers “Awful.”)