![WARLOCK, Peter [i.e. Philip Heseltine (1894-1930)]. Autograph music manuscript signed ('Peter Warlock') of his song, 'Bethlehem Down', words by Bruce Blunt, for solo voice and organ, dedicated 'For Arnold Dowbiggin', dated at foot Chelsea, 1 December 1930, an elegant fair copy with a few erasures and emendations, pencil annotations apparently in Dowbiggin's hand, 41 bars on four pages, 4to (312 x 233mm), brown paper covers with title and ownership stamp of E. Arnold Dowbiggin.](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2005/CKS/2005_CKS_07098_0085_000(111532).jpg?w=1)
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WARLOCK, Peter [i.e. Philip Heseltine (1894-1930)]. Autograph music manuscript signed ('Peter Warlock') of his song, 'Bethlehem Down', words by Bruce Blunt, for solo voice and organ, dedicated 'For Arnold Dowbiggin', dated at foot Chelsea, 1 December 1930, an elegant fair copy with a few erasures and emendations, pencil annotations apparently in Dowbiggin's hand, 41 bars on four pages, 4to (312 x 233mm), brown paper covers with title and ownership stamp of E. Arnold Dowbiggin.
THE SOLO VERSION OF PERHAPS WARLOCK'S BEST-KNOWN CAROL; HIS LAST CREATIVE EFFORT. The first version of Bethlehem Down, for four unaccompanied voices, was famously written with Bruce Blunt for submission to the Daily Telegraph's annual carol contest in 1927, the prize money for which subsidised an 'immortal carouse' on Christmas Eve; and yet Warlock's return to the carol in the last weeks of his life indicates an emotional response to the piece that places it far above hack-work. His version for solo voice and organ, written for Arnold Dowbiggin's Christmas recital at Lancaster Parish Church, where it had its first performance on 12 December, brings into starker relief the melancholy import of Blunt's text, with a more adventurous approach to the harmony, and an ending in deepest desolation with dying repetitions of the harmony's falling motif. On 17 December, sixteen days after completing the present manuscript, Warlock committed suicide in his flat in Chelsea, at the age of 36.
THE SOLO VERSION OF PERHAPS WARLOCK'S BEST-KNOWN CAROL; HIS LAST CREATIVE EFFORT. The first version of Bethlehem Down, for four unaccompanied voices, was famously written with Bruce Blunt for submission to the Daily Telegraph's annual carol contest in 1927, the prize money for which subsidised an 'immortal carouse' on Christmas Eve; and yet Warlock's return to the carol in the last weeks of his life indicates an emotional response to the piece that places it far above hack-work. His version for solo voice and organ, written for Arnold Dowbiggin's Christmas recital at Lancaster Parish Church, where it had its first performance on 12 December, brings into starker relief the melancholy import of Blunt's text, with a more adventurous approach to the harmony, and an ending in deepest desolation with dying repetitions of the harmony's falling motif. On 17 December, sixteen days after completing the present manuscript, Warlock committed suicide in his flat in Chelsea, at the age of 36.
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