Monologues for the Curious

On 21 July, 2025, the BBC Proms are presenting 'Monologues for the Curious', a new, 25 minute, contemporary classical work for tenor and orchestra by composer Tom Coult, based on fragments from M.R. James stories. It will be performed by singer Allan Clayton and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall, on a bill with Mahler's Seventh.

 

The composer is no stranger to the supernatural and fantastic. He has written 'Spirit of the Staircase', for 17 instruments (2016), 'Inventions (for Heath Robinson)', for piano  (2019), 'Two Nocturnes and A Maze', for horn, viola and piano (2022), 'Three Pieces That Disappear', for orchestra' (2023) and 'Black Shuck Lament', for tenor and strings' (2025).

 

The last of these "uses extracts from contemporary accounts of 'black shuck', a demonic black dog that seems to have roamed East Anglia from around the 12th century, terrorising locals . . .".

 

Tom Coult's recent debut album, Pieces That Disappear, is available from NMC Recordings.

 

(Mark Valentine)

 

‘Steeped in Antiquity and Fantasy’: Some Esoteric Seventies Music

 

In the late Seventies and early Eighties, when punk, ska, electro-pop and disco were all the rage, the folk-rock and progressive music groups of the preceding years were in disfavour and it was possible to pick up their shunned albums cheap from second-hand record shops pervaded by cigarette smoke and patchouli oil. Already drawn to fantasy and supernatural fiction, I saw some of these bands and artists as in the same tradition, as their very names revealed. The first that I encountered were called Comus, Titus Groan, Heron, Dr Strangely Strange, Third Ear Band and Gryphon. They sounded strange and alluring.

These bands seemed all of a piece to me with my interest in ancient mysteries, part of the same mood that had inspired Janet & Colin Bord’s Mysterious Britain (1972) and a cavalcade of similar books. They belonged with stone circles, flying saucers, ley lines and terrestrial zodiacs. I liked their music too. It was either gentle, wistful and pastoral (at the folk scene end) or adventurous and unusual (at the more progressive reaches). Some of their songs became great favourites: ‘Song to Comus’, with its wild flute and caprine vocals; Titus Groan’s ‘Hall of Bright Carvings’, also flute-driven and with a soaring chorus; ‘The Unquiet Grave’ by Gryphon, a haunting version of a traditional song, augmented with sonorous crumhorn; the plaintive, melancholy minstrelsy of ‘Wanderer’ by Heron.

Such is my affection for these often obscure and off-centre bands that I have recalled this period of discovery fondly in two stories: ‘Goat Songs’, about the elusive album of that title (The Uncertainty of All Earthly Things, 2018) and ‘Lost Estates’, about what happens when The Perpetual Motion Machine Co. get back together again (Lost Estates, 2024). It is a theme that often draws me back. A band called Piccalilli, in red velvet flares and embroidered waistcoats, who regaled village halls in West Northants and thereabouts with a long oboe-led instrumental tribute to Edward Lear’s ‘The Dong With the Luminous Nose’, have yet to become a story. My own ‘band’, The Mystic Umbrellas, though it responded to the d-i-y tape scene of the early Eighties, was musically (if I may stretch that term) and thematically much closer to the ethereal, melancholy, drifting ambience of the soft- progressive style.

A decade or so further on there was a revival of interest in some of these (real) bands, and their records became sought-after and rare, in much the same way as the old books of Machen, Blackwood, Dunsany and Hope Hodgson came back into favour and vanished from the shelves. Some of the bands then got back together again, decades after they had disappeared.

In this revival I found out about bands I hadn’t discovered in the original Seventies afterglow: Jade, who had a wonderfully eerie song, ‘Five Of Us’, set in a haunted Norfolk cottage where they had stayed, all about shadows dancing on the whitewashed walls; Amazing Blondel, a medievalist band whose instruments included theorbo, cittern, archlute and other arcana; Trees, a Fairport-ish band who also had spooky songs such as the uncanny ‘The Garden of Jane Trelawny’; Oberon, whose only album was issued in just 99 copies and whose influences included King Crimson and Debussy; Fuchsia, named after the saturnine sister in Titus Groan, and unusual for being violin-led and chamber music-ish; the pagan and folkloric Forest;  and Dulcimer.

Dulcimer were a folk trio from the Cotswolds whose first album, And I Turned As I Had Turned As A Boy, was very sought-after. The title sounds like a quotation, but seems to be original to them: it is part of a poem recited (by the actor Richard Todd, who ‘discovered’ them) in the opening piece, ‘Sonnet to the Fall’. Their music is gentle, whimsical, sometimes peculiar, often melancholy. The songs are about the passing seasons, pilgrims and travellers, lost loves, falling leaves and falling snow, butterflies and fairies. ‘Their lyrics were steeped in antiquity and fantasy’ noted music columnist Bruce Eder, and this is true of many of the other bands mentioned here too. In an interview with Psychedelic Baby magazine their lead singer Peter Hodge explained that ‘Most of my songs have been stories set to music’. 

Fantastic literature pervades the ideas and images of many of the bands. Robin Clutterbuck, who designed the sleeve artwork for Oberon's rare LP, explained:  'I was really keen on mythical literature like Beowulf; also ‘The Hobbit’, ‘Lord of the Rings’, Alan Garner and Mervyn Peake.  As for artists, I liked the work of Aubrey Beardsley, Gustave Doré, Richard Dadd and Samuel Palmer.'

The Tolkien and Peake influences are not surprising for the time. When I later looked into all these bands and plotted out the dates of their first albums (see below), I saw that they clustered around a brief period from 1969-1973, and in particular the middle two of those years. By the time I was flicking through the racks of record shops, about a decade later, they were regarded by the trendsetters as quaint and obsolete (er, like the term ‘trendsetters’ too, now I think of it). That was why I was able to pick some of them up, with scuffed sleeves and often grooves too, for very reasonable sums. It was just like the delight of bookshop finds.

It is important to note that though they are known and collected for their Seventies music, this often comprised only a few years of their careers. Some players drifted out of the music scene altogether, others continued to write and perform, and some have resumed after a long gap. Comus, for example, returned after some 40 years, and their singer Bobbie Watson now releases her own work too. Gryphon are still releasing albums and performing. Dulcimer’s Peter Hodge is also actively at work, and has released three albums in recent years, including Pipers Grove (2023) and Too Many Frankensteins (2024). It is cheering to see their vision and virtuosity continuing.

Checklist

Dr Strangely Strange: Kip of the Serenes (1969)

Forest: Forest (1969)

Third Ear Band: Alchemy (1969)

Amazing Blondel: The Amazing Blondel (1970)

Dulcimer: And I Turned As I Had Turned As a Boy (1970)

Heron: Heron (1970)

Jade: Fly on Strangewings (1970)

Titus Groan: Titus Groan (1970)

Trees: The Garden of Jane Trelawney (1970)

Comus: First Utterance (1971)

Fuchsia: Fuchsia (1971)

Oberon: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1971)

Gryphon: Gryphon (1973)

(Mark Valentine)

Image: Oberon's A Midsummer Night's Dream: sleeve art by Robin Clutterbuck

Wands and Scythes

 

At International Times, 'Wands and Scythes', a bookish vignette about paperback marginalia responding to the hermetic verses of H.D., the Imagist poet.  

Earlier, 'Jukebox Days', about the ghosts of dusty crackly discs played on moody machines in the corners of cafes and bars.

 

Meanwhile, at dadakuku, 'Anglo-Venetian', a brief gazette of Venetian words used in English, and at #Ranger magazine, Issue 8, 'The Purple Ray'.

 

(Mark Valentine) 

Image: Detail from Trilogy by H.D. (Carcanet,1997)

Alias Cabochon

  

Upon the extensive vintage hardback fiction shelves at the Cinema Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye I noticed with curiosity the title The Golden Ladies of Pampeluna (1934) and the unusual author name of Francis Cabochon. A glance inside showed a book in two parts, ‘Don Francisco of Navarre’ and ‘Duke Allain of Champerac’, separated by an Interlude, ‘Messire Gaston de Nardac’.

As it was published by Philip Allan and was a title I had not seen before, I thought I would give it a try. I admit I also liked the golden yellow binding, and have at times been swayed to buy a book by the pleasing shade of the boards, even (well, especially) when these are well-worn and marked. I also had a vague idea it might be like Arthur Machen’s The Chronicle of Clemendy (1888), a book for which I have an affection.

The Golden Ladies proved to offer historical stories with a light, blithe and cynical air and mild amorous content, somewhat in the style of James Branch Cabell. Indeed, the Interlude, in a footnote, is ‘Dedicated, without any permission at all,to the author of the immortal Jurgen, by whom I conceived this story.—F.C.’ The tales are smoothly done, with a sort of sardonic wit, and in a crisp, modern diction, avoiding gadzookery. There might be a touch of Baron Corvo in the tales too, though without his arcane vocabulary.

Philip Allan was the publisher of numerous thriller anthologies in the Thirties, generally under succinct one-word titles such as Thrills, Creeps, Shocks, Shivers, Shudders etc. Contributors included H.R. Wakefield, H.D. Everett, Elliott O’Donnell and Tod Robbins.  At least the reader knew exactly what they were getting from the series.

They could also contribute themselves. In Tales of Dread, a Philip Allan anthology from 1936, the publisher breezily invites readers to join in: ‘If you have enjoyed the stories in this popular series—why not write one?’, he urges, as if this were an entirely natural sequence. ‘It is very probable that further volumes will be added’, it cajoles. Send MSS, it adds, to 69, Great Russell Street, London, WC1. The publisher’s offices were at a distinguished address, opposite the British Museum and not far from where Arthur Machen (and his Mr Dyson) once had rooms. Even so, the books are not quite what literary critics think of when they use the term ‘Bloomsbury’.

The notice adds the immortal final line: ‘Mark envelopes “Creeps”’. As there were not, in fact, that many more titles in the series, it is tempting to speculate that the staunch employees of the Royal Mail regarded this superscription in somewhat of a personal light, and treated such correspondence accordingly. The premises in Great Russell Street now seem to be occupied by a fine art gallery. I wonder if they ever get any belated torrid manuscripts from fervid authors.

The catalogue that follows at the back of the book is also rather diverting. One learns that ‘The Famous “Creeps” Series’ also includes Vampires Overhead by Alan Hyder, The Air Devil by Barrington Beverley and The Butterfly Murder by Charlton Andrews. Some of these authors are never heard of again and their names sound distinctly like pseudonyms, leading to the suspicion that the publisher had several house authors on tap.

Another strand of Allan’s output was horse-racing novels, almost all by J. Fairfax-Blakeborough, of whom it had apparently been said, and one can quite see why, that ‘he fills the late Nat Gould’s place’.  With yarns such as Who Maimed Spurto? and Beating the Nobblers, to say nothing of the more laconic A Turf Mystery (‘with Rupert St. Cloud’), who could gainsay such a claim?  Fairfax-Blakeborough was clearly sufficiently industrious to sustain Allan’s racing line alone—with the occasional help of Rupert St Cloud, of course—and so there is no invitation to join in here. Perhaps it is just as well, really. The fate of envelopes marked ‘Nobblers’ is scarcely to be imagined. 

However, the publisher was also an occasional author. This copy of the Golden Ladies was signed to a friend, Frank Mayhew.  Perhaps this was the Nineties song lyricist of that name, who wrote ‘Once in the Golden Past’, ‘A Life-Story’, ‘A Spring-Time Parting’ and ‘Drifting Apart’ (the latter with music by the Nineties poet and songwriter Theo Marzials). The autograph has the author’s name in quote marks, implying a pseudonym, and underneath is a pencilled note that this was Philip Murray.

In fact, Philip Murray was also Philip Allan: the British Library has him as Philip Bertram Murray Allan (1884-1973). As Murray, he contributed a story, ‘The Charnel House’ to Creeps (1932). Evidently, he had decided to take a version of his own advice. Having enjoyed publishing books, why not write one? This was the only book issued under the Cabochon alias, as far as I can discover, but it makes me wonder how many of the other titles were by Allan himself. It might explain why he was so keen to hear from other authors: perhaps he was feeling rather wan from all his own writing exertions. I think it is a pity we did not hear from Cabochon again. Still, Machenites (of the medievalist tales and translations), Cabellians and Corvines might all enjoy this pleasing if elusive volume.

(Mark Valentine)