Amelia Whiteheart's work was discovered by the late James Keaton, a good friend of mine who lived in San Diego, CA. On 27 October 2008 I received a letter from him, to which he attached bad quality scans of Whiteheart's piano pieces. James, who had no interest in music, informed me that he found the manuscript at an auction, bundled to about two dozen letters. He sent me the scans because he knew of my interest in obscure composers. The photograph to the left was also attached to the letter; it is from an album of photographs that was sold separately, but evidently used to belong to the same circles the music originated from. James identified the woman in the photograph as Amelia Whiteheart.

For a composer active circa 1900, Amelia was surely unique: the music is more akin to 20th century post-war avantgarde, rather than Debussy, Schoenberg, or even Satie. There are 123 pieces. Most of them are four measures long, a few even shorter than that, and some are just one measure long. Whiteheart does not write melodies and does not employ conventional harmony; the works are composed of just four types of sounds:

  • very high staccato 8th notes, always forte or fortissimo,
  • low 8th or 16th notes, pianissimo,
  • narrow, three half note (occasionally longer) chords with chordal acciaccaturas, piano, and
  • wide, four quarter note chords, forte.

    There seems to be no interest in shaping melodies or any kind of a narrative. These sounds are simply dropped on paper. Interestingly, there is at least some kind of method to this. For instance, any acciaccatura to a half note chord is always higher than the chord. If a pianissimo bass note is, for example, an E, then all other pianissimo bass notes of the pieces are also Es. Finally, if there are two quarter note chords, one immediately following the other, the second chord is always higher than the first. Perhaps there are other recurring features that I have missed.

    It is difficult to say exactly how or why Whiteheart composed these pieces, but apparently they were a natural way of channeling her experiences into music. The few titled pieces are clearly inspired by real life: "Boscombe Pier" (piece no. 53) suggests a visit to Boscombe (the pier was built in 1888), and there are three pieces composed between 1898 and 1901 that were apparently inspired by H.G. Wells' famous novella, "The Time Machine". (One is tempted to think that Whiteheart thought at least a little bit conventionally in one of the Wells pieces, "The Palace of Green Porcelain" (no. 75), for it bears the tempo indication "Maestoso". However, it may be a simple coincidence, for there are two pieces with this title, and the second bears no tempo indication.) These pieces are our only clues to Whiteheart's life, the circumstances of which are wholly unknown. I was not able to find any mention of the woman in any archives available on the World Wide Web. The only possibly related Whiteheart I found is Charlotte Amelia Whiteheart, who moved to Canada sometime in early 20th century: see this link at the Famaily Search Ancestral File. She was born around 1877 in South Hampton, whereas the majority of the pieces in the collection date from 1890s, so she could hardly be the composer. But perhaps Charlotte Amelia Whiteheart and Amelia Whiteheart were related. This would mean that Amelia was most probably born in England, and perhaps lived there all her life.

    We will quite probably never learn what exactly prompted Whiteheart to write the way she wrote, or which life experiences she connected to which positions of notes and chords. But at least her music survives, and I think it deserves wider recognition. There is a strange, subtle beauty to some of the pieces that makes the mystery of Amelia Whiteheart's life and work all the more compelling.

    I have typeset the entire collection of 123 pieces in Sibelius 4. The manuscript is most definitely a copy, since the writing is very clean, and there are no fragments, sketches, or anything of the sort on any pages. The 123 pieces form a single collection, which I divided into two parts for convenience.

  • Piano Pieces 1 – 60
  • Piano Pieces 61 – 123

    And here, to give one a taste of the music, are low quality recordings of MIDI playback via a synthesizer:

  • Piece No. 76 ('The White Sphinx')
  • Piece No. 82 ('To a Summer Day')
  • Piece No. 87

    Performers should note that either Whiteheart had large hands and a virtuoso technique, or she never used the piano to test her pieces. Some of the chords may prove a little bit too wide, and some of the acciaccaturas too difficult to execute correctly. In some cases, problems are remedied by a slow tempo. In any case, since the pieces were evidently conceived as independent entities, one may simply select for performance those of them which are less daunting.

    – Jashiin, June 2009.



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