1 Southend High School song
2 Letter with instructions for playing Evensong at St Oswald's Church, Durham
3 Address by Professor Peter Evans at 1990 Memorial Concert
4 Obituary by Anthony Payne
5 Bill Strang remembers a lecture and his Durham interview
6 Hutchings - General Advice circulated to music students, early 1960s
7 Concert programme 1963 - the Principal of St Aidan's College as pianist
8 Magnificat [page 1] & Nunc Dimittis - Hutchings (1934)
9 From a 1975 edition of the Delius Journal - a talk about the composer
and the visit to Delius in Grez-sur-Loing 1928 or 1929
10 Instructions for playing Parish Communion & Evensong at St Oswald's, Durham
11 Letters commenting on committee work for New English Hymnal 1980s
12 References to Cyril Rootham, one of his teachers
13 Hutchings - Programme Note for 1967 production of "Plumber's Arms" operetta
Courtesy of Old Southendian Organ Society
2 Letter from Hutchings to John Peace 1961 with instructions for deputising at Evensong at St Oswald's Church, Durham. Obviously hastily typed before leaving for an exam tour. "Meuxine Basilica" is a humorous conceit referencing the name of the Vicar, Fr Meux.
3 Former student and colleague Professor Peter Evans delivered the following address in 1990
4 Obituary by the composer Anthony Payne, a student 1958-1961 https://www.durham.ac.uk/departments/academic/music/about-us/news/anthony-payne/
5 Royal High School of Edinburgh Club in London
https://www.royalhigh.org.uk/event-photographs/reflections-on-musical-life/
From Bill Strang who went up to Durham in 1967 only to find that Prof Hutchings left the following year on his appointment to Exeter. First he describes a talk at the Royal High School during his time as a pupil, then his interview when he applied to study music in Durham
"The lecturer was Arthur Hutchings, renowned Professor of Music at Durham University, who spoke about “Borodin and Benzene” - the Russian chemist who was only a composer in his spare time. Hutchings was the flamboyant opposite of the restrained William Bowie. I don’t actually remember much of what he said; but I do remember the huge sheaf of papers which he affected to dispose of as too boring, and him toasting the female members of staff and blessing the first row of gytes with sprinkled water. [Wm Bowie MMus Dunelm was music master 1946-1970]
I was already keen to go to Durham University and this sealed my fate. At my interview a few months later I sailed through most of the tasks – I couldn’t believe how easy they were – and played my prepared piano solo. Then Hutchings asked if I had ever played the harpsichord. No. He rifled in his shelves and found the score of a Bach cantata, took me downstairs to the concert hall, set the stops on the harpsichord and gave me a moment to look at the music. So far, fairly predictable. But once I was ready he launched into this soprano recitative and aria at pitch and with great dramatic flourish and much falsetto squawking. A test of nerve as much as it was of musicianship.
Later, when I had a crisis of confidence in the wake of disrupted family circumstances, Hutchings pointed out that I had had an unusually secure musical grounding. ‘I have people wanting to come here who know all about Rachmaninov and nothing else,’ he said. And he was right: by the time I left school I was writing exercises in Renaissance polyphony, which seemed a natural extension of already having been singing the style in the choir for several years".
6 Hutchings issued this General Advice list to music department students in the early 1960s.
How might he best have edited the document for 21st century students?
7 The grand finale in the 1963 June Week Orchestral Concert conducted by the professor, who wrote the programme notes. The Principal of St Aidan's College Miss Scott is the very same lady who features in the best known Hutchings anecdote (true or not, who knows?) concerning a meeting on Prebends' Bridge one evening - Miss Scott: "Ah, drunk again Professor!" Hutchings: "Yes Miss Scott, so am I"
8 Hutchings - Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis in B minor (1934, composed at age 28)
The opening of the Magnificat and the entire Nunc Dimittis. The Gloria of each is identical.
9 The visit to Delius's home in Grez-sur-Loing in 1928 or 1929
10 Instructions to Martin Jackson deputising at St Oswald, Durham for Parish
Communion and Evensong
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11 Letters to Fr Graham Marshall commenting on 'interminable' committee meetings to select material for the New English Hymnal, finally published 1986
12 From a university orchestral concert 1963 - programme notes by the Prof where
he mentions having had orchestration lessons c1937 from Cyril Rootham
[composer, Cambridge and Royal College of Music tutor] who wouldn't accept a fee, and an extract from a 1975 BBC talk about the composer himself.
In the broadcast Hutchings said "I’m not a Cambridge man myself, but I was invited by my young friends there to see the dramatised versions of ‘Jephtha’, ‘Saul’ and other Handel oratorios in the old Guildhall, and the masques, the Purcell works and the Mozart operas in English. Then to my delight Harvey Grace, the editor of ‘The Musical Times’, sent me to report some of these musical events and to remember him to Rootham. Alas, only for one year was I able to enjoy Rootham’s company before the fatal stroke which confined him into a bath chair, just as there seemed to be a prospect of a little more time for composition. He was only 62 when he died".
13 "Plumber's Arms" - the composer's programme note for the 1967 Durham production
