Tag Archive: 0music

It’s been a while since I wrote anything here, but things have been busy. After an enjoyable summer break, visiting Nîmes amongst other places (including one of the best-preserved Roman amphitheatres in the world, c.100 AD), September saw me in York, teaching at the annual York Antiquarian Book Seminar, before heading off to Berlin, for […]

Last week, I delighted to read the following five-star review of the new album of my choral music from Choir & Organ magazine: The musical world of Simon Beattie is, in the main, lush, chromatic and lyrical. An antiquarian bookseller by profession, he has clearly taken great care with his choice of texts, translating some […]

There is something about orange publishers’ bindings that has always appealed, for some reason. It’s not a common colour and perhaps that’s why they always leap out at me. I blogged about this example, from 1851, back in 2012: But when did such orange covers start? The question occurred to me recently when I was […]

I’m delighted to announce the release of an album of my choral music recorded by the critically acclaimed London Choral Sinfonia under Michael Waldron: https://orchid-music.lnk.to/theworldtome In the sleeve notes, he writes: ‘I first came across Simon’s music several years ago. I was initially grabbed by a setting of Advent Calendar – a setting of a […]

This is a copy of the first published edition (c.1817) of the twelve romances Hortense de Beauharnais (1783–1837) wrote for her brother, Eugène, originally privately printed (with French text only), in limited numbers for presentation while she was still Queen of Holland, after which the plates were destroyed.  What may be a proof copy, inscribed […]

Some of you may be familiar with The Triumphes of Oriana, the famous book of madrigals by various Elizabethan composers compiled by Thomas Morley in 1601 in honour of Elizabeth I. The late Queen Elizabeth II received a similar choral compilation in 1953: A Garland for the Queen, with pieces by the likes of Bliss, […]