Three songs from a new song cycle using Virginia Woolf’s letters to her sister, painter Vanessa Bell, are available online via SoundCloud.
Composed by Richard Barnard, they are titled ‘As A Writer‘, Nessa and Duncan, and A Dancing Light. They were recorded by Rhys Maslen at St Augustine’s Chapel, Bristol, and this part of the project was supported by Arts Council Wales.
Here are the descriptions of the songs, as copied from Barnard’s blog:
‘As A Writer’: Woolf frequently used Vanessa’s art as a metaphor for her own work. Here she describes the writing process as feeling beauty “which is almost entirely colour”, condensing ideas like pouring “a large jug of champagne over a hairpin”.
‘Nessa and Duncan’: A brilliantly teasing letter in which Woolf imagines a scene at Vanessa and Duncan Grant’s home as they discuss her recently published novel To The Lighthouse (clearly nervous of their judgement!)
‘A Dancing Light’: Part of a letter of 1937 written soon after the death of Vanessa’s son Julian in the Spanish Civil War.
Woolfians around the globe have succeeded in saving the view of the lighthouse — for now.
Screenshot from 7/222/15 BBC Entertainment & Arts page
They used email and social media to temporarily halt action on the ill-conceived construction plan that would destroy the view of Godrevy Lighthouse from Talland House, Virginia Woolf’s childhood summer home in St. Ives, Cornwall. The lighthouse is also a key element in Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse (1927).
Cornwall Council was scheduled to vote on the plan, which calls for building a block of six flats and a car park in front of Talland House, on July 14. But according to stories in the Western Morning News and BBC Cornwall, that vote will take place at a later date.
The IVWS put Western Morning News reporter David Wells in touch with Woolf scholars and connected BBC reporter Miles O. Davis with Cecil Woolf, Virginia and Leonard’s nephew. Cecil spoke out on the plan in today’s BBC story and on Blogging Woolf. The main BBC story is posted on the Cornwall section of the website. A link is also posted on the Entertainment and Arts page. A version of the BBC story also ran in the Observer Chronicle.
Woolfians protested the plan by sending emails to Cornwall Council and St. Ives Town Council, posting comments on the plan, posting messages on the Cornwall Council Facebook page and tweeting to Cornwall Council @CornwallCouncil. They also contacted West Cornwall’s Minister of Parliament Derek Thomas via Twitter and email and tweeted to @EnglishHeritage for assistance.
By this morning, 66 comments against the plan, which would destroy a vital piece of literary history, were posted on the application from developer Porthminster Beach View Ltd. that is now before Cornwall Council. Talland House is considered of historical importance, as it is listed Grade II.
The decision on whether to approve or reject the plans will be made by Cornwall Council on a date to be decided. — BBC Cornwall story, “Virginia Woolf relatives defend view ‘To The Lighthouse'”
Add your voice to protect the historic view
To submit your objections to the plan, send an email to planning@cornwall.gov.uk. Include the planning application number: PA15/04337 in your message.
You can also post a comment on the planning application at this link, but you must register first. To do so, you are required to have a UK postal code. One Woolfian ant the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain suggested using the Talland House postal code, which is TR26 2EH.
Here is a comment posted by Vanessa Curtis, author of Virginia Woolf’s Women and The Hidden Houses of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell.
I’m saddened to read of this latest threat to such an important part of our literary heritage. Already Talland House, the beautiful listed building so loved by Virginia Woolf and her family, is boxed in by other modern developments which should not have had planning permission granted, but this latest application appears to perhaps be the worst of all. The patch of land that the proposed apartments will be built upon was once owned by Leslie Stephen, Woolf’s father. He took out a 100 year lease on the land to prevent anybody building on it and spoiling his view out towards Godrevy Lighthouse. Please, please do not let the greed of developers wipe out our literary heritage and further ruin the spectacularly attractive coastline of this part of the world. As one drives into St Ives now, the dominant view is no longer that of the Victorian buildings around Talland House, but of various high-rise blocks which would look more at home in inner-city London than overlooking the stunning sweep of Porthminster Beach.
Painter Vanessa Stephen and her writer sister Virginia embark on a life of unexpected, post-Victorian freedom in bohemian Bloomsbury. But when they are introduced to flamboyant male admirers, their idyll is rocked and the sisters’ relationship is threatened.
Here are some links to recent stories about the drama, along with the official trailer:
Four Orlando prizes of $1,000 each and publication in The Los Angeles Review are awarded twice yearly for a poem, a short story, a short short story, and an essay by women writers.
Hawk’s assessment? “Woolf could probably take them both.”
The video, which begins with the line “Words… why do we need them?” is part of a quirky series of promotional videos produced by the college titled “Beneath the Beech.”
“I think they show how approachable and engaged Kenyon professors are with the students,” Beech said.
