Whatever the woman is actually singing--I like to think the "ee um fa um so" is an imaginative rendering of the German words to bring them close to a nursery rhyme.<div><br></div><div>For what it's worth, here is the footnote I wrote for Scrope Purvis:</div>
<div><br></div><div><span></span><p class="s4" style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font><span style="line-height:normal;background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)"><span class="s10" style="font-weight:bold"><span class="bumpedFont15">Scrope Purvis</span></span><span class="s11"><span class="bumpedFont15"> An imaginative combination of two uncommon names. Scrope Purvis is the first of many Londoners who observe the main characters from the outside. Originally, these figures were to have been anonymous (see Introduction). In an undated entry from the winter of 1922, VW wrote in her notebook: ‘Why not have an observer in the street at each critical point who acts the part of chorus—some nameless person?’ (</span></span><span class="s12" style="font-style:italic"><span class="bumpedFont15">Berg</span></span><span class="s11"><span class="bumpedFont15"> </span></span><span class="s12" style="font-style:italic"><span class="bumpedFont15">MD</span></span><span class="s11"><span class="bumpedFont15">2 n.pag.; </span></span><span class="s12" style="font-style:italic"><span class="bumpedFont15">H</span></span><span class="s11"><span class="bumpedFont15"> 419). See for example </span></span><span class="s12" style="font-style:italic"><span class="bumpedFont15">B1</span></span><span class="s11"><span class="bumpedFont15"> 85:21. George Gordon Noel Byron (1788-1824) had a good friend named Scrope Berdmore Davies (1782-1852). VW was a close reader of Byron from the 1920’s onward. Several Englishmen with the surname Scrope are listed in the </span></span><span class="s12" style="font-style:italic"><span class="bumpedFont15">DNB</span></span><span class="s11"><span class="bumpedFont15"> including Richard Scrope (1350-1404), Archbishop of York and Adrian Scrope (1601-1660), army officer and regicide (a distant relative of the royalist Sir Adrian Scroope).</span></span></span></font></p>
<p class="s15" style="text-indent:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font><span style="line-height:normal;background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)"><span class="s11"><span class="bumpedFont15">The surname Purvis comes from Anglo-French and means ‘dweller at a parvis’ or porch. It may also be a Northumbrian variant of Purves, ‘an occupational name for the official responsible for obtaining the supplies required by a monastery or manor house, from the Middle English</span></span><span class="s12" style="font-style:italic"><span class="bumpedFont15">purveys</span></span><span class="s11"><span class="bumpedFont15">’ (Hanks). The prominent industrialist and buyer of war supplies, Arthur Blaikie Purvis, (1890–1941) rose through the ranks of the Nobel Explosives Company Ltd and on the outbreak of the Great War ‘made one of the largest war purchases, $25 million of acetone, which was in acute shortage in the United Kingdom; he remained responsible for the purchase in America of materials for explosives throughout the war.’ (</span></span><span class="s12" style="font-style:italic"><span class="bumpedFont15">DNB</span></span><span class="s11"><span class="bumpedFont15">) A ‘Mr Purvis’ contributes to Mary Datchet’s art club discussion (</span></span><span class="s12" style="font-style:italic"><span class="bumpedFont15">ND</span></span><span class="s11"><span class="bumpedFont15"> 50). Cf. ‘Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street’: ‘so, Scrope Purvis, C.B., saw her as he hurried to his office.’ (</span></span><span class="s12" style="font-style:italic"><span class="bumpedFont15">CSF</span></span><span class="s11"><span class="bumpedFont15"> 152) ‘C.B.’ indicates Scrope Purvis is a Companion of the Most Honourable [Military] Order of the Bath, a chivalric title and order, founded by George I in 1725, and conferred to British and Commonwealth citizens in recognition of conspicuous service to the Crown. Ksiezopolska notes that the name is an anagram for </span></span><span class="s12" style="font-style:italic"><span class="bumpedFont15">corpus veris</span></span><span class="s11"><span class="bumpedFont15">.</span></span></span></font></p>
<br>On Wednesday, September 18, 2013, Stuart N. Clarke wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">"Allerseelen": I have discussed this at length in the "Virginia Woolf Bulletin": there is no reason to think that she is singing the words in Strauss's setting.<br>
<br>
"Scrope Purvis": he has been discussed at length in VWB28! By Irena Ksiezopolska: "The Secret Life of Minor Characters in 'Mrs. Dalloway'". She thinks his name is an anagram. I'm not especially convinced, but it is a very odd name. My suggestion was "corpus sprevi" = I have rejected the body!<br>
<br>
Stuart<br>
<br>
-----Original Message----- From: Martin, James<br>
Sent: Wednesday, September 18, 2013 9:48 AM<br>
To: Toni McNaron ; woolf list<br>
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] larks<br>
<br>
When I first read it, I thought of "The Lark Ascending" - thus a motion going up - and then the plunge, which is, of course, Septimus's fate. The duality of the two main characters is there from the start. Septimus dies so that others might live. The high priestess role of Clarissa at her party has been written about in the secondary literature.<br>
Ralph Vaughn-Williams's "The Lark Ascending" was composed in 1914 but, on account of WWI, wasn't performed until June 14, 1921 under Adrian Boult. Marie Hall was the solo violinist, a "very charming woman, very small and jolly and with a great sense of humour." Did VW know her? Did she go to that concert? Did she know the music? I'll bet she did.<br>
In the poem on which the tone poem was based, one finds the lines:<br>
[...]And ever winging up and up,<br>
Our valley is his golden cup,<br>
And he the wine which overflows<br>
To lift us with him as he goes:<br>
- this reference is intoned in the opening bars of the piece, in which the melody in the violin soars upwards.<br>
Also found in the poem are these lines, which make me think of Virginia's demise:<br>
All intervolv'd and spreading wide,<br>
Like water-dimples down a tide<br>
Where ripple ripple overcurls<br>
And eddy into eddy whirls;<br>
<br>
Being interested in music history, I have found numerous other references in Mrs. Dalloway to works from the classical catalog. There is the woman near the Tube singing "Allerseelen" by Richard Strauß, a direct reference to the day of the year when spirits from the past (Sally, Peter) walk the earth.<br>
In The Voyage Out, there is a reference to Opus 112 by Beethoven. Look in the catalog of his works and you will see that it is "Calm Sea & Prosperous Voyage" and follows directly the composer's last three piano sonatas (Rachel was playing a late sonata - probably the opening of op. 109). Remaining for a moment in the late opus numbers of the mad king Ludwig van, we see Op. 117 "King Stephen" (more than just "incidental music" for Virginia Stephen?).<br>
Op. 113 is "The Ruins of Athens" - could this have sparked Woolf's naming of the passing warship, Euphrosyne (one of the Greek charities)?<br>
Then there is Op. 128, "Der Kuß". The lyrics refer to a woman being kissed against her will by a man. She threatened to scream if he did it. He did it and did she scream? Yes, long afterwards. The girl's name was Chloe, a Greek name.<br>
<br>
Ich war bei Chloen ganz allein,<br>
Und küssen wollt ich sie:<br>
Jedoch sie sprach,<br>
Sie würde schrein,<br>
Es sei vergebne Müh.<br>
<br>
Ich wagt es doch und küßte sie,<br>
Trotz ihrer Gegenwehr.<br>
Und schrie sie nicht?<br>
Jawohl, sie schrie,<br>
Doch lange hinterher.<br>
<br>
And need I mention that this reference comes right before Rachel and Richard (Dalloway!) talk about love, "a word that seemed to unveil the skies for Rachel"? Please remind me, someone, when he kissed her!<br>
<br>
Such fun!<br>
Jim<br>
<br>
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----<br>
Von: <a>vwoolf-bounces@lists.service.ohio-state.edu</a> [mailto:<a>vwoolf-bounces@lists.service.ohio-state.edu</a>] Im Auftrag von Toni McNaron<br>
Gesendet: Dienstag, 17. September 2013 15:27<br>
An: woolf list<br>
Betreff: Re: [Vwoolf] larks<br>
<br>
I agree with Michael Davis in that both the bird and the playful gaminess is going on in the reference. I also think about the fact that larks, when they flourished, were often the very first birds to greet the dawn, hence they were seen as excited about another day in which they could make beautiful music, fly around, eat bugs, etc. So a imagine larks as exuberant, hence perhaps how the verb "to lark" came into existence in the first place.<br>
<br>
Toni McNaron<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
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</blockquote></div><br><br>-- <br><div><span style="font-family:sans-serif"><a href="http://www.fordham.edu/academics/programs_at_fordham_/english/faculty/english_faculty/anne_fernald_28537.asp" target="_blank">Anne E. Fernald</a></span><br>
<span style="font-family:sans-serif">Director of Writing/Composition at Lincoln Center,</span><br><span style="font-family:sans-serif">Associate Professor of <a href="http://www.fordham.edu/academics/programs_at_fordham_/english/index.asp" target="_blank">English</a> and <a href="http://www.fordham.edu/womens_studies" target="_blank">Women's Studies</a></span><br>
<span style="font-family:sans-serif">Fordham University</span><br><span style="font-family:sans-serif">113 W 60th St.</span><br><span style="font-family:sans-serif">New York NY 10023</span><br><font face="sans-serif"><br>
</font><span style="font-family:sans-serif">212/636-7613</span><br><a href="mailto:fernald@fordham.edu" style="font-family:sans-serif" target="_blank">fernald@fordham.edu</a><br><br></div><span></span><br>