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6 unusual facts about Arthur Bliss


English Music Festival

The Violin Sonatas by Arthur Bliss and Henry Walford Davies have languished in manuscript form for over one hundred years, and were performed at the 2010 English Music Festival by regular EMF artists Rupert Marshall-Luck and Matthew Rickard.

English Musical Renaissance

Mackenzie became principal of the Royal Academy of Music; and at the Royal College of Music, Parry succeeded George Grove as director, and Stanford was professor of composition, with pupils including Arthur Bliss, Frank Bridge, Herbert Howells, Gustav Holst, John Ireland and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Grace Inez Crawford

She continued her own work in singing and in costume design, working with prominent music and theatre figures of the time, including composer Arthur Bliss, Sergei Diaghilev, and Nigel Playfair.

Jennifer Vyvyan

In 1955 she undertook a major tour of the Soviet Union as part of a delegation of British artists organised by Sir Arthur Bliss.

Michael Benthall

Benthall provided the scenario for two ballets by Arthur Bliss: Miracle in the Gorbals (1944), and Adam Zero (1946).

Philharmonic Quartet

The quartet championed works by British composers, giving the first performances of works by Arnold Bax, Cyril Rootham and Arthur Bliss.


Cecil Coles

Cortege also appears on Artists Rifles, an audiobook CD issued in 2004 featuring war poetry read by Siegfried Sassoon, Edmund Blunden, Robert Graves, David Jones, Edgell Rickword and Lawrence Binyon, as well as music by Edward Elgar, George Butterworth, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Maurice Ravel, Gustav Holst, Ivor Gurney, Ernest Moeran and Arthur Bliss.

Edith Coates

While at the Royal Opera, Coates notably sang in several world premieres, including Madame Bardeau in Arthur Bliss's The Olympians (1949), the Housewife in Britten's Gloriana (1953), and the She-Ancient in Michael Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage (1955).

Friedemann Kupsa

With the pianist Wolfram Lorenzen he recorded the great chamber works of Max Reger, and his commitment to 20th-century chamber music is further shown by his recording of the first eight string quartets by Darius Milhaud and the two great quartets by Arthur Bliss.

The Olympians

The Olympians is an opera in three acts by Arthur Bliss to a libretto by J. B. Priestley, first performed at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden on 29 September 1949, conducted by Karl Rankl in a production by Peter Brook.


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