L’Après-midi d’un faune
Loans are coming in. Nicholas Bell from the British Library brought over music and dance notation scores. The first of two great thrills are Vaslav Nijinsky’s notation for L’Après-midi d’un faunewhich the B. L. generously disbound so that we could display it for the first time as it ought to be seen with two double pages at once. The second is Igor Stravinsky’s manuscript of Pulcinella that he gave to the designer. The music staves in the notebook were drawn with his special ‘Stravigor’ (get it?)– a five point pencil he invented so he could put staves on any paper he chose. We have opened it to display a page with a passage crossed out to show the creative mind at work. This score was actually given by Stravinsky to the designer of Pulcinella – none other than one Pablo Picasso!