(Revised from an article published in the Autumn/Winter 2000 issue of Brio, the journal of the British and Irish branch of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Information Centres.)

To the Victorian theatre, music was as indispensable as costume and scenery. Even the most modest touring company would include two or three musicians, while in the theatres of London and other cities, sizeable orchestras, perhaps thirty strong, were regularly employed. It was not simply the specifically musical forms, such as opera, operetta and ballet, that required them. Music played a greater or lesser role in the whole range of theatrical entertainments, from pantomime and burlesque to melodrama, comedy, and the 'legitimate' drama.

Music and drama, wedded together by the Ancient Greeks, have a long association. Music cues abound in Shakespeare and, by the eighteenth century, overtures, 'act tunes', and incidental songs and dances had become established elements of theatrical production. The early nineteenth century saw the continental melo-drame, in which speech is heightened by sometimes continuous musical accompaniment, adapted to create a particular English variant, the melodrama. Essentially aimed at an unsophisticated popular audience, these exaggeratedly dramatic plays relied on music to colour the spectators' response to a situation or character. The musical means were usually simple, even crude - as David Mayer's and Matthew Scott's Four Bars Of 'Agit'¹ shows, but by demonstrating music's power to heighten dramatic effect, popular melodrama encouraged the use of music in more sophisticated productions.

It has become common to describe all music written for or performed at a production of a play as 'incidental music'. Strictly speaking, however, the term applies only to music incidental to the action and not to overtures, entr'acte pieces, act-preludes, etc. played before the curtain. The use of incidental music proper increased considerably during the nineteenth century and associated techniques were developed and employed with more or less subtlety. Not that incidental music was always considered desirable. Overture, entr'actes, etc. over, it was by no means exceptional for an orchestra to remain silent - and even leave the pit! - during the play itself. However, some incidental musical contribution was usual and selective underscoring of dialogue (melos) became common practice. So, too, did the use of short musical tags identifying individual characters or locations that might recur at appropriate points - the leitmotifs, referred to by George Bernard Shaw, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as "the modern improvements".² For the elaborate spectacular productions, such as the treatments of Shakespeare by Irving and Beerbohm Tree, musical support was provided on the kind of grand scale now associated with epics of the cinema.

Attitudes to musical copyright were considerably more casual in the nineteenth century than they are today. All kinds of music - ranging from the symphonic repertoire to the latest dance-tune - was played in theatres. Music before a performance and during intervals and scene changes was expected and might be selected to complement the drama or simply to entertain the audience. Material was also borrowed for incidental pieces and adapted to suit particular theatrical purposes. It was common, too, for borrowed material to be freely mixed with made-to-measure music by the musical director / conductor. To these hard-pressed musicians, published collections such as The Album Bijou, offering a range of music specifically for theatrical use, could be invaluable. Sometimes an entire score was newly commissioned from the musical director or an independent composer. Many who wrote regularly for the theatre were specialists - like film composers - whose names are mostly forgotten: Meredith Ball, Hamilton Clarke, Adolf Schmid, Raymond Roze and countless others. But many distinguished composers of concert music also accepted theatre work. Elgar, Stanford, Mackenzie, Parry, Sullivan, and Coleridge Taylor all wrote for plays. Henry Irving, in particular, understood how the artistic impact of a production could be enhanced by music expressly written by the finest contemporary composers - and he was by no means alone in this. Certainly by the later part of the century, musical scores tailored for particular plays and productions had become common and often were supplied complete to companies who revived them on tour or in the provinces.

A vast amount of music was written and arranged for the Victorian and Edwardian theatre, mostly to pass into oblivion. Often musical material became the property of the director who had commissioned it, and much seems to have disappeared along with scenery, costumes and the other paraphernalia of productions long past - theatre fires and Word War II bombs having undoubtedly claimed much. Where it does survive, it is often in primarily theatrical rather than musical collections, such as those at Bristol and Manchester Universities and the Theatre Museum in London. Very little was published and complete full scores that include all melos and incidental pieces, such as those for Sullivan's The Tempest and Henschel's Hamlet issued by Novello in 1891 and 1892 respectively, are rarities. Usually publication was limited to self-contained movements such as overtures, entr'actes and dances by composers established in the concert hall - who, no doubt, were often encouraged to accept theatrical commissions by the prospect of concert performance. As Bernard Shaw observed, "the composer submits to become a musical tailor as far as the melodrame is concerned, but throws over the manager completely in the overture and entr'actes by composing with a view to performance as "an orchestral suite" at the Crystal Palace or London Symphony concerts, laying himself out frankly for a numerous orchestra and a silent audience, instead of for a theatre band contending feebly with the chatter of the dramatic critics."³ Certainly it was primarily for the musical rather than theatrical market that the orchestral material was published.

Disappearance of so much material and the difficulties of locating surviving unpublished sources partly explains why so little is known about the music written for Victorian and Edwardian stage plays. The gap in our knowledge is a sorry one. Whilst the importance of music to dramatic presentation of the period is often acknowledged in general terms, very little work has been done on the music itself and how it functions in relation to the other elements of production. (Nigel Gardener's musical contribution to Henry Irving and 'The Bells'⁴ is a rare excursion into largely uncharted waters.) It is surprising that the interest in film music has not stimulated more study of the theatrical origins of its techniques and methods. Of course, most of the music written to serve now extinct theatrical methods would have no artistic purpose today - indeed, much of it is frankly inconsequential. But, as David Mayer has written in his pioneering article, 'Nineteenth Century Theatre Music', "If we are truly to comprehend [the theatre of "our nineteenth-century predecessors"], we must acknowledge the significance of music in that theatre, for if we describe all else and fail to describe their music, our description is far from complete."⁵

Edward German (1862 - 1936) was one the most celebrated and sought-after composers of music for the theatres of late Victorian and Edwardian London. Investigating the sources of his theatre music throws fascinating light on the peculiar difficulties and rewards of studying the genre in general. Now best-known for his operettas Merrie England (1902) and Tom Jones (1907), before concentrating his attention on the lyric stage German had established a considerable reputation through orchestral works (including two symphonies) and music written for plays. His love of the theatre began during his boyhood in Whitchurch, Shropshire, when travelling players inspired homely family theatricals. A student and later a sub-professor of violin at the Royal Academy of Music during the 1880s, he enterprisingly toured his operetta, The Two Poets (later re-named The Rival Poets) with a company of Academy friends. In the mid-80s, too, he wrote a March and Chorus for a production of Sophocles's Antigone at Wimbledon School, where he taught part-time, but, due to an epidemic among the boys, the performance was cancelled. During this lean period he also deputised as a violinist in London theatres, including the Savoy where his first professional commission was performed in 1888 - a song for R. A. M. friend Julia Neilson to sing in W. S. Gilbert's play Broken Hearts, which the author mounted for a matinee performance largely to show off Miss Neilson with whom he was much taken. The young composer had specified a pizzicato string accompaniment and was horrified when the conductor, Francois Cellier, pronounced the effect weak and performed it arco.⁶

A career in theatre music may seem to have been a natural progression for German, but it was chance that led him to it. Alberto Randegger had been asked by Richard Mansfield, the American actor-manager, to look out for someone to direct the music for his London season at the Globe Theatre. Soon after, he met German on the steps of the R. A. M. and told him of the opening. Mansfield found his musical director and German never looked back. Installed in the theatre with an excellent orchestra, he rapidly established a reputation for discriminating choice and tasteful performance of the entr'acte and other music. It was not long before the young conductor was asked to write an original score. The music he composed for Mansfield's production of Shakespeare's Richard III in 1889 brought him considerable acclaim and established him as a star in the ascendant. Three years later, in 1892, his position in the firmament was confirmed by his highly successful music for Henry Irving's production of Shakespeare's Henry VIII. The set of Three Dances from this became extremely popular and were the first pieces to explore the distinctive 'Olde English' style, a species of musical mock Tudor with which German came to be particularly associated.

It was German's sister who chivvied him into writing to Irving offering his musical services. The great actor, who had admired the Richard III music, took little persuading. Anxious for historical accuracy in his production, Irving mentioned some traditional airs to German, apparently with the suggestion that they might be incorporated into the music. The composer's response to what he referred to as 'musical archaeology' is interesting:

If . . . you will have confidence in me, I will give you music that will have the necessary touches of old English colour in keeping with the play . . . without the baldness,  bareness and lack of colour that music had in those days. . . .  As long as it has the character of the time it seems to me the end is met.⁷

Thus German's 'Olde English' style was born. It became so popular that something in the manner was expected and supplied in most of the theatre works he wrote thereafter. It would be quite wrong, however, to suggest (as Grove V does⁸) that this kind of writing dominated the scores. Their range and variety is far wider. Undoubtedly, though, German had an eye to the popular market when he agreed to provide George Alexander with music for the final act of As You Like It in 1896. "These new dances . . . within a few months will, in my opinion, be played by most of the orchestras in the kingdom.", he wrote to Novello rejecting their initial terms.⁹ It was the charm of his period manner that persuaded another former R.A.M. student, Marie Tempest, to suggest that German should write music for English Nell, a new play for 1900 by Anthony Hope and Edward Rose in which she was to star as Nell Gwyn. Between this and Henry VIII he had composed two other Shakespeare scores, Romeo and Juliet in 1895 for Forbes-Robertson and Much Ado About Nothing in 1898, again for Alexander. The previous year Alexander's plans to produce Hamlet had fallen through but German was able to use the music he had written in a Hamlet tone-poem for the 1897 Birmingham Festival.

Two plays by the contemporary dramatist Henry Arthur Jones also received German's musical attentions. The Tempter, produced by Herbert Beerbohm Tree in 1893, was a somewhat heavy-handed blank verse period melodrama. It had reasonable success at the box-office but not so Jones's Michael and his Lost Angel. Johnston Forbes-Robertson's production closed within a fortnight. German, who had written music for the play's Church Scene, returned his fee but Forbes-Robertson refused to accept it.¹⁰ The composer probably did not repeat the gesture for another Forbes-Robertson failure, The Conqueror, for which he provided the score that was to be his last for a stage play. Written by Millicent, Duchess of Argyle, the piece had been chosen to open the new Scala Theatre in 1905, but neither spectacular staging nor German's music could keep this limp blank-verse drama, set vaguely in the Dark Ages, open for more than twelve performances.

Although much of German's music for plays remained in manuscripts, a considerable amount was published. Michael and his Lost Angel is the only theatre commission from which definitely nothing was issued. According to the composer's records the Antigone movements were brought out by Novello.¹¹ However, they were probably not commercially issued: Novello printed the programme for the ill-fated production that contained German’s music for male voices and piano. (A list of orchestral players contained in the programme suggests that the music was scored for strings and piano.). Unfortunately none of German's music for Antigone or Michael and his Lost Angel has been traced in manuscript. Excepting the single song for Broken Hearts (Lady Hilda's Song), and possibly Antigone, German's play music was never published complete. However, most of what appeared was issued for orchestra, sometimes with expanded instrumentation and other revisions. German also prepared various transcriptions for publication, especially piano duet - a favourite medium, solo piano, and violin and piano. The market for such arrangements was, of course, much larger than for orchestral sets and arrangements of lighter movements from German's theatre music sold well - they are still among the most likely items to turn up in stocks of second-hand music. A format peculiar to music for plays was the so-called 'Selection of Themes' and something of the kind was issued for most of German's play scores. These presented the characteristic leitmotifs and other prominent thematic material as a series of self-contained sections or interlinked in continuous sequence. Either way, their purpose was essentially to provide a guide to the musical content of the incidental music to be played at home.

Although the music for Richard III was much admired, only the Overture and Processional March were published for orchestra. German prepared new full scores for concert purposes, increasing the trombones from one to three. (An ad lib. contra-bassoon also appears in the Overture.). The Intermezzo Funebre was similarly expanded and transposed, probably to make up a suite with the Overture and Processional March and perhaps with the hope of publication. A piano duet arrangement of the Overture was published along with solo piano transcriptions of the two other movements but without mention of a suite. A solo piano Selection also appeared. The appearance of a differently arranged Selection in 1920, thirty years after the first, reflects German's lasting affection for his first professional success: his will named the Richard IIII entr'actes and the orchestral Marche Solonnelle as the only manuscript works he wished to be published.

Concert suites were extracted from the music to Henry VIII, The Tempter and Romeo and Juliet. All were published complete for piano duet but only The Tempter had all parts and a full score available on sale from the publisher (Ashdown). For the others Novello printed string parts of each movement but other parts and / or full scores remained in manuscript for several. (It was common for publishers to engrave and sell string parts, of which multiple copies were required, but hire other material in manuscript if demand was low.) The Three Dances from Henry VIII appeared as a set in parts and full score and sold extremely well - apparently A.E. Jaeger told Havegal Brian that the score was the only one on which Novello had recouped its costs.¹² Sets of dances were similarly published for orchestra from other theatre works: the Masque from As You Like It (essentially another set of three dances), the Bourree and Gigue from Much Ado About Nothing, the Romance and Two Dances from The Conqueror, and the three Nell Gwyn Dances which came to rival closely their Henry VIII models in popularity. Of these, only the movement from The Conqueror did not appear in full score. The same publisher, Chappell did, however, issue a full score, as well as parts, to the Nell Gwyn Overture, although only parts were printed by Novello for German's other overture to a play, Much Ado About Nothing. Both overtures were published for piano duet.

A singing chorus, on stage or behind the scenes, often featured in the kind of large-scale production on which German worked. Quasi-ecclesiastical choral music was required in Richard III, Henry VIII, The Tempter, Michael and his Lost Angel, and Romeo and Juliet. Only an unaccompanied Grace written for a 1910 revival of Henry VIII was published - unless one includes the Coronation March and Hymn, arranged from the music to the same play for the coronation of King George V, which included unison voices as in the play for the ceremony but otherwise treated them as optional, no parts being issued with the published material. Of the other vocal settings written for plays, several were published and took on independent existences: the song from Gilbert's Broken Hearts that inaugurated German's professional career as a theatre composer, the trio for female voices from Henry VIII, 'Orpheus with his lute', which the composer arranged for a variety of vocal groupings, and the duet for soprano and contralto, 'It was a lover and his lass', from As You Like It, which also appeared in solo guise. Three Songs from The Conqueror were issued as a set. Two male-voice choruses appeared with them in the Selection but none gained particular popularity. All these vocal pieces were issued with piano accompaniments arranged by the composer, although Novello also hired orchestral material for the two Shakespeare settings.

Like those of other composers', German's overtures, preludes and entr'actes draw extensively on material heard during the plays themselves but his published editions of these movements rarely relate the music to the drama. When they do, it so only in a general way through titles such as 'The Death of Buckingham' (Henry VIII) and 'Intermezzo Funebre - played as King Henry's funeral procession approaches (Act II)' (Richard III). The selections of themes, with their identified leitmotifs, etc., are more specific. However, to discover in detail how musical and dramatic elements were interwoven we must turn to manuscript sources. Autograph full scores of the majority of published movements are extant, having been returned from the theatres to be used for concert performances and/or engraving. Although proportionally less autograph and other manuscript sources have been traced for the unpublished music, a considerable quantity does survive. It provides valuable and fascinating insight into the techniques of composing for the English stage in the last part of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth and the art of the one of the genre's most celebrated exponents.

The majority of German's extant autograph manuscripts are held by the Edward German Archive at Aberystwyth. Established with the co-operation of the composer's heirs, who inherited most of German's manuscripts, it is in the author's private ownership. As well as autograph material, it contains extensive holdings of printed music and contemporary copyists' manuscripts (many items carrying the composer's annotations and amendments), letters, papers, recordings, photographs, and other memorabilia.

The Archive's holdings of material for Richard III are particularly rich. Unusually, it would seem, German retained ownership of the full scores and most survive. One act-prelude is lacking; otherwise Overture, entr'actes and preludes (each comprising an individual gathering of hand-stitched bifolia) are complete. Of the incidental sections - leitmotifs, melos, etc.(each a discrete and appropriately labelled manuscript) - seemingly only one, probably for solo organ, is lacking. Mansfield published his own 'acting version' of the play for sale in the theatre. This, together with an autograph conductor's guide part (mostly little more than the Violin I line on a single stave), enables almost all the music to be collated with the dramatic text. A couple of short sections do not appear in the conductor's copy (which seems to have been discarded before it was used) but these can be placed from other sources - including a partly annotated copy of another edition of the play. Even the fanfares and calls played by the stage trumpeters are preserved on grubby and flaking lyre-cards. Interesting, too, are several autograph solo piano versions of entr'acte and other music that fortunately include the prelude missing in full score.

The material tells us much, but it also leaves considerable room for guess-work. How many times were sections repeated? At what points did underscoring of dialogue or action cease and where does it rise or fall in volume? We know from other sources that it was standard practice for sections to be repeated ad lib and broken off or faded out at musically arbitrary moments to suit the dialogue or stage action.¹³ We also know that dynamics were modified during melos to heighten dramatic effect. Although the sources give only occasional pointers as to how such matters were managed in Mansfield's production, we have considerably more information regarding these details in a curious version of the play staged by Seymour Hicks in 1910. Reduced to less than half an hour, the truncated Richard III provided the highlight of a spectacular variety show at the London Coliseum that included Japanese jugglers, performing ponies and a 'Bioscope' moving-picture-show. German adapted the music which Hicks required, re-scoring to suit the apparently string-light orchestra, and also composed a small amount of new music. The Archive's comprehensive material for this bizarre venture includes a prompt-book giving details of the stage production into which German added notes concerning the placing and performance of the music. The tired, well-worn manuscripts take on life again: Richmond, lit by a pencil limelight, is blessed by a Priest to the accompaniment of Prayer Music before beingleft alone on the eve of the Battle of Bosworth - lightening flashes and the leitmotifs for the murdered Princes, the dead Queen Anne and Buckingham play softly as Richard recounts his nightmare - amid the clamour of Bosworth field (heightened by swords clashed off-stage) the soldiers cry "Saint George" and stage trumpet-calls pierce the underscore in unrelated tonalities at musically arbitrary moments. (Ives would have enjoyed this!)

No other play for which German wrote is as comprehensively represented, musically, within one collection as Richard III. The autograph full score of the Masque music from As You Like It is owned by the Worshipful Company of Musicians, to whom the composer presented it when he was made an Honorary Freeman shortly before his death in 1936. The only other surviving autograph full score of music for this play (German's contribution was to Act V only) is the duet 'It was a lover and his lass' held by the Edward German Archive. The Archive also holds other interesting related material. The duet was scored for an accompaniment of strings and two flutes. At some time German appears to have needed orchestral parts of the setting and was sent the part-books of the complete production for the instruments involved. These reveal that he composed a chorus, 'Wedding is great Juno's crown', and other material not preserved elsewhere. They also give a good idea of the music composed or arranged by the theatre's resident musical director, Walter Slaughter, for the first four acts.

Manuscript copies of the full scores of the five act-preludes written for Romeo and Juliet, and which make up the concert suite, are held by the German Archive. Some carry the composer's holograph annotations but the autographs of these movements remain untraced. However, the Archive preserves numerous full scores of melos, leitmotifs, etc. for the play but the material is by no means complete. Hardly any autograph material has been located for the English Nell music - only the Archive's three full scores of short incidental sections, two of which are represented in the solo piano Selection of Themes. From the music for Much Ado About Nothing two autograph full scores of the Overture are known. Both are in private hands (see Checklist of Sources). The Archive holds a contemporary copy annotated by the composer and the autograph full scores of the Bouree and Gigue but no other authoritative manuscript full scores for this play have so far come to light. No authoritative manuscript sources have been located for The Conqueror or the Broken Hearts song and, as previously noted, nothing whatsoever of the music for Michael and his Lost Angel and Antigone has been traced.

Of the music for The Tempter, German's autograph full scores of the Overture, the three act-preludes and the 'Devil's Song' were returned to him. The rest remained with Beerbohm Tree and survive in the Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree Theatre Music Collection at Boston Public Library, Boston, Massachusetts.¹⁴ This extensive archive preserves - in varying states of completeness - manuscript full scores and orchestral parts, and other musical material relating to some sixty-five productions mounted by Tree between 1888 and 1916. Among the most important items are several autograph full scores by Coleridge Taylor (almost all he wrote for the theatre), Bantock and many other, less well-known, names. There are also full scores in German's hand of significant quantities of music for Henry VIII and The Tempter. Together with the material held by the Edward German Archive, those for the latter provide autograph sources for almost all his music for the play.

As well as autograph full scores, the Boston material for The Tempter includes complete orchestral parts and conductor's cue sheets. The band parts yield several cut sections lacking in full score, as well as the isolated sustained or tremolando chords used to point dramatic moments. Only a final choral hymn, probably accompanied by organ, is completely missing. A fair number of notes and verbal cues are pencilled into the scores, but the most detailed instructions regarding the co-ordination of music, dialogue and stage action are to be found in the cue sheets. The pictorial illustrations of the various hand and finger signs with which the conductor signalled instructions to the orchestra are particularly entertaining  - and, as if the conductor was not busy enough, he was also required (as usual in theatres of the time) to operate bells and lights to communicate music cues - including curtain up - to back-stage personnel!

The other Beerbohm Tree production on which German worked, the 1910 revival of Henry VIII, is also well represented in the Boston collection.¹⁵ Consequently we have much more detailed information about the use of music in this than in Irving's 1892 production. From the latter, the Edward German Archive holds autograph full scores of the four published act-preludes. The autograph of the Overture, however, is in private hands (see Checklist of Sources) (the Archive holds a contemporary copy annotated by the composer) and German's manuscript of the celebrated Dances remains untraced. A few sections of melos and other incidental music, fanfares, etc. are also preserved in the Archive - some autograph, others, including a full score of 'Orpheus with his lute', in copyists' hands. A small number of autograph full scores among the Boston material also date from the Irving production, as do a good many conductor's guide parts in the hand of George Baird Snr (who, interestingly, was Sullivan's principal copyist). Nevertheless, pieced together, the musical sources for the 1892 production are incomplete and information relating them to the play is scant. This is not the case with the music for the 1910 production. The Edward German Archive holds a few minor items relating to this - some autograph, but nothing of importance that is not also present in the comprehensive Boston material.

Tree divided Shakespeare's play into three acts, cutting and making free with the text in a manner that was generally accepted at the time. As well as adapting his earlier music to the requirements of the new production, German composed several new items, mostly choral pieces for the singing chorus required for Tree's elaborate and spectacular staging. The Boston material includes a conductor's copy of the complete music for the play gathered for each act within card covers. It comprises a mixture of full scores and melodic guide parts (mostly on two staves). As the majority of the latter relate to material presented in full score elsewhere - an arrangement of a traditional folk-dance tune is the only significant exception - a reconstruction of the music would not be problematic. The majority of the full scores are in copyists' hands. Those in German's hand were mostly prepared for Tree's revival although, as previously observed, a few date from Irving's production along with many of the guide parts. The conductor's part carries various verbal cues and other notes, but it is his heavily marked-up copy of the play that makes detailed co-ordination of music, dialogue and production possible.

The staging of Tree's 1910 Henry VIII is particularly well documented. Michael Booth has discussed the wealth of sources that survive from the production (prompt-books, lighting and scene plots, costume designs, scene plans, photographs, etc. now at the University of Bristol Theatre Collection) and synthesised these to conjure a vivid picture of Tree's stage presentation.¹⁶ The Boston material enables the aural dimension of German's music to be added to the essentially visual evocation created from the other sources. The theatrical experience comes alive in our imagination with a new immediacy. Only the distinctive voices of the actors - Tree as Wolsey, Violet Vanbrugh, Arthur Bourchier, Henry Ainley - elude us. "The world of spectacle has gone, but in its time provided a rich visual feast the like of which the English stage had never known before and has never equalled since", writes Booth.¹⁷ Music, too, was no less a part of that gloriously extravagant theatrical feast.

CHECKLIST OF SOURCES

All 1st performed and published in London (dates in brackets).
Arrangements listed are by the composer.  
Published orchestral material available on hire from Novello, except The Conqueror (available from Concord). See BUCOS for extensive alternative availability.

Manuscript locations

EGA: The Edward German Archive (David Russell Hulme, Aberystwyth)
BPL: Boston Public Library, Boston, Massachusetts.

* : autograph orchestral full score at EGA.
**: autograph ms. of this arrangement at EGA.
(For details of other mss held by EGA and those at BPL, see main text)

Antigone (Sophocles) c.1885 (prod. cancelled): March, Chorus., ?pf./ vv (printed by Novello, c.1885); mss: untraced.

Broken Hearts (W. S. Gilbert), Savoy Theatre, 4 June 1888: Lady Hilda's Song, 1v / pf. (Chappell, 1888); ms: untraced.

Richard III (Shakespeare), Globe Theatre, 16 March 1889, revised with additions, London Coliseum, 1910: Overture* arr. pf. duet (Novello, ?1891), orch. (Novello, ?1892), f/s. (Novello, ?1902); Processional March*, f/s, orch., pf. (Ashdown, ?1890), Intermezzo   Funebre*, pf.  (Ashdown, ?1890), Selection, pf. (Ashdown, ?1890; new arr. 1920); mss: EGA.

Henry VIII (Shakespeare), Lyceum Theatre, 5 Jan. 1892, revised with additions, His Majesty's Theatre, 1910 (Novello): Suite (Overture, Prelude Act II - The Death of Buckingham*, Prelude Act III - Intermezzo*, Prelude Act IV - Coronation March*, Prelude Act V - Thanksgiving Hymn*, Three Dances - Morris Dance, Shepherds' Dance, Torch Dance), orch. pts (Three Dances,1893), str. pts other mvts (?1893; wind, etc.: ms. on hire), wind, etc. pts (Coronation March ?1897), f/s. (Three Dances, 1901; Coronation March, ?1902; other mvts ms. on hire), pf. duet (1892), pf. (Three Dances, 1892; Intermezzo, 1897; Coronation March, 1897), vln / pf. (Three Dances, 1893)  Str. qt / pf. (Three Dances, ?1894); 'Orpheus with his lute', S S A / pf. (1892), 1v / pf. (? arr. German) (1892), S A T B / pf. ad lib. (1921), S S A A T T B B / pf. ad lib.** (1921), Str. qt [with pf., ? or hp], [? with voice(s)]**, unpubd; Shepherds' Dance (from Three Dances) arr. S S / pf. (words: W. G. Rothery) (1920); Grace ('Non nobis, Domine'), 1910, S A T B unacc.(1911), T T B B unacc.** (1921); Coronation March and Hymn* (based on themes from Henry VIII), Westminster Abbey, 22 June 1911, orch. / unis. vv ad lib. (1911); mss: EGA, BPL, Overture: Whitchurch (Shropshire), M. Jones.

The Tempter (H. A. Jones), Haymarket Theatre, 20 Sept. 1893, (Ashdown): Suite (Overture*, Berceuse - Prelude Act III*, Bacchanalian Dance - Prelude Act II*), pf. duet (?1894), orch. pts (?1894), f/s. (?1900), mil. band ** (arr. with Dan Godfrey Jnr) (?1917); Selection of Themes, pf. (?1894); pf. (Berceuse, ?1894), vln / pf. (Berceuse, Bacchanalian Dance, ?1894); mss: EGA; BPL; Suite, pf. duet: Welshpool (Powys), T. Rees.

Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare), Lyceum Theatre, 21 Sept. 1895 (Novello): Selection of Themes, pf. (1895); Suite (Prelude, Pastorale - entr'acte before Act II, Pavane - entr'acte before Act III, Nocturne - entr'acte before Act IV, Dramatic Interlude - entr'acte before Act V), orch. pts (1896), f/s. (Prelude, 1902; Pavane, 1902), vln / pf. (Pastorale,1895), pf. (Pastorale, 1896),  pf. (Pavane, 1895), vln / pf. (Pavane, 1895), pf. duet (Pavane,1895; Suite, 1896); pf. (Nocturne, 1895), vln / pf. (Nocturne, 1909); mss: EGA (incomplete).

Michael and his Lost Angel (Jones), Lyceum Theatre, 15 Jan. 1896: music for Church Scene, unpubd; mss: untraced.

As You Like It (Shakespeare), St. James's Theatre, 2 Dec. 1896, music for Act V (Novello): Masque (Woodland Dance, Children's Dance, Rustic Dance), orch. (1897), pf. (1897), vln./ pf. (1897), f/s. (1902); 'It was a lover and his lass'*, S C / pf. (1897), 1v / pf., (1919) (? arr. German); mss: Masque, London, The Worshipful Company of Musicians; ‘It was a lover and his lass: EGA.

Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare), St. James's Theatre, 16 Feb. 1898 (Novello): Selection of Themes, pf. (1898); Overture, orch. (1898), pf. duet (1898); Bourree and Gigue*, orch. (1898), pf. (1898), vln / pf. (1898), f/s. (1902); mss: Overture (2 mss): New York, John Wolfson;  Warwick, The King's School for Girls.

English Nell (A. Hope, E. Rose) (also known as Nell Gwyn), Prince of Wales's Theatre, 2 Aug. 1900  (Chappell): Selection of Themes, pf. (1900); Three Dances, pf. duet (1900), vln /pf. (1900), orch. (1900), f/s. (1900), pf. duet (1900); Overture, orch. (1901), f/s. (1901), pf. duet (1901); mss: EGA (fragments).

The Conqueror (Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland), Scala Theatre, 23 Sept. 1905 (Chappell): Selection, pf. / solo vv / T T B B; Three Songs, 1v / pf. (1905); Romance and Two Dances, pf. (1905), orch. (1906); mss: untraced.

Notes: