Introduction

The numerous books, articles and translations produced by Rosa Newmarch (1857-1940) were an indispensable feature of English musical life from the end of the Victorian era until the Second World War. Her works were reviewed in major periodicals such as The Musical Times, The Edinburgh Review, The Bookman and The Academy, and acknowledged as authoritative by other writers in the field. Her productivity was such that Ezra Pound referred to her as ‘the voluble Mrs. Rosa Newmarch’,1 and her eminence earned her a place as the only woman in Kaikhosru Sorabji’s list of ‘writers on music of such brilliant ability and great giĞs’ (the other figures he mentions are Romain Rolland, Georges JeanAubry, Michel Calvocoressi, Ernest Newman, Leigh Henry and Philip Heseltine).2 Her posthumous importance is aĴested by the continued republication of many of her books and translations.3 Alongside her career as a writer, Newmarch played a crucial role in many more practical aspects of English musical life, whether providing analytical notes for the concerts given by Sir Henry Wood and his Queen’s Hall Orchestra,4 bringing the music of Jean Sibelius and Leoš Janáček to the aĴention of performers, critics and audiences,5 or serving as president of the Society of Women Musicians between 1927 and 1930. Her importance as a poet of the Edwardian era – she published two

1 Ezra Pound [writing as William Atheling], ‘Music’, The New Age, 23/23 (3 October 1918): 364-5 (364). 2 Kaikhusru [sic] Sorabji, ‘Mr. Van Dieren and his Critics’, The New Age, 20/23 (5 April 1917): 550. 3 These include: Rosa Newmarch, The Concert-Goer’s Library of Descriptive Notes (Freeport, 1971), The Music of Czechoslovakia (New York, 1978), Tchaikovsky: His Life and Works, with Extracts from his Writings, and the Diary of his Tour abroad in 1888 (New York, 1969; Honolulu, 2002), The Russian Opera (Westport, 1972), and The Russian Song Books: A Selection of Songs from the Words of Russian Composers Old and New (Maastricht, 1988); and translations of Alfred Habets, Borodin and Liszt (New York, 1977), Karel Hoffmeister, Antonín Dvořák (Westport, 1970), Vincent d’Indy, César Franck: A Study (New York, 1965), and Modeste Tchaikovsky, The Life and LeĴers of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky (New York, 1970, 1973; Honolulu, 2004). 4 CharloĴe Purkis, ‘“Leader of Fashion in Musical Thought”; The Importance of Rosa Newmarch in the Context of Turn-of-the-Century British Music Appreciation’, in Peter Horton and BenneĴ Zon (eds), Nineteenth-Century British Music Studies, vol. 3 (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 3-19. On Newmarch’s relationship with Wood more generally, see Arthur Jacobs, Henry J. Wood: Maker of the Proms (London, 1994); Reginald Pound, Sir Henry Wood (London, 1969); and Henry J. Wood, My Life of Music (London, 1938). 5 Erik Tawaststjerna, Sibelius, trans. Robert Layton (3 vols, London, 1976-97); Tomi Mäkelä, Poesie in der LuĞ: Jean Sibelius: Studien zu Leben und Werk (Wiesbaden, Leipzig and Paris, 2007); Zdenka E. Fischmann (ed.), Janáček-Newmarch Correspondence (Rockville, 1986); and John Tyrrell, Janáček:Years of a Life (2 vols, London, 2006-7).