Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Anthony Burgess archive reveals vast body of previously unseen work

Gifted by the author's widow, the resource includes a great deal of music writing, as well as new literary gems

by  - The Observer, anthony burgess
The archive is testament to the prolific literary and musical talent of Anthony Burgess. Photograph: Jane Bown
A greatly expanded slang lexicon for the delinquent droogs of the novel A Clockwork Orange has been unearthed in a vast archive of the work and life of Anthony Burgess held in Manchester, alongside the libretto and score of an unseen opera about Leon Trotsky, and the script for an unmade TV series about Attila the Hun.
In preparation for next year's 50th anniversary of his notorious novel, one of the most controversial modern works in the English language, the small team at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation have been working to organise and catalogue hundreds of papers, letters and original compositions, ready for an influx of international visitors.
The extraordinary resource, which has been left to the foundation by Burgess's widow Liana, is newly housed in a renovated building in a regenerated area of the city and is a bulging testament to the writer's prolific literary and musical talent. Already, gems unearthed in the archive have provided musical material for a series of concerts and for an operatic version of A Clockwork Orange that had its first studio performance at Manchester University last week. A play about the life of Napoleon will have its premiere on BBC Radio next year.
Manchester-born Anthony Burgess, who died in 1993, wrote at least 33 novels, 25 works of non-fiction, two volumes of autobiography, three symphonies, and more than 250 other musical works including a piano concerto, a ballet and stage musicals.
But more is coming to light every day. "Last week we opened up a case and inside we found a piece of music we didn't know about, a pair of driving gloves belonging to Liana and a tape recording for his music The Eyes of New York, which is not transcribed anywhere," said Andrew Biswell, the director of the foundation and Burgess's biographer. "It is a programmatic work which describes a journey around some of his favourite places in the city."
The 1969 screenplay Burgess wrote for Stanley Kubrick was ultimately rejected by the film director, but he did read it before writing his own version. Although Kubrick's violent rendition was critically acclaimed, it was withdrawn from cinemas by the director himself for 27 years until 2001. Now rediscovered in the archive, Burgess' screenplay is laced with a new words from the language, Nadsat, a melding of English and Russian, that the author gave his droogs in the original novel, published in 1962. So now, as well as cult vocabulary such as 'Moloko' for milk, fans also have phrases like "cheested up" for getting clean, or Zemolchy, which is an exclaimation of delight or wonder.
On Wednesday last week, five song lyrics written by the author and set to music by the University of Manchester's Head of Composition, Dr Kevin Malone, were performed for the first time as A Clockwork Operetta on the campus, the place where Burgess graduated in English Literature in 1940.
Full report at The Observer.

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