Seamarks, Colin: Six Mehitabel Magpies (Soprano and Double bass)

Six Mehitabel Magpies was written in 1972 when the composer was working as a night porter in a London hospital. The work was brought to my notice by the bass player Barry Guy who had tried it through with the late Jane Manning in Durham that year. It received its official première at London’s Purcell Room on 9 March 1973 when Barry Guy performed it with Noelle Barker. There is no biography of Colin Seamarks on file other than that he was born on 13 June 1943. Correspondence was returned from his Romford address in Essex in 2012 marked ‘deceased’.

The composer supplied the following programme note when the work was being published:-

Six Mahitabel Magpies is based on the Archy and Mehitabel characters created by Don Marquis in the New York Sun. Archy is a frustrated cockroach who writes free verse on an office typewriter to satisfy his human soul, whilst Mehitabel, his alley-cat friend who cannot type is nevertheless determined to also lay claim to a fairly important human soul, namely, CLEOPATRA. Archy a wit, a scandalmonger and a philosopher is forced to be Mehitabel’s reporter.

There are six songs.

1. Introduction – a virtuoso double bass introduction for Mehitabel.
2. March of the 12-note cat – is really Mehitabel’s theme in life – “I do not
   give a damn how moral other people are.”
3. Night Porters’ Song – Colin Seamarks the composer is a night porter in a London hospital. In this song he is saying (in translation) “You must look for another flat. Because you’ve become so big and fat” “Dear Cat”.
4. Manifesto – this is part of Archy’s autobiography.
5. Cataclysm – is “cat talk”.
6. From a pink and white striped paper bag – Mehitabel muses on her past life.
   “I often look back on my life and think how romantic it has all been”
   “Oh what the hell, o toujours gai
   I never had time to fret
   I danced to whatever tune was played
   And there’s life in the old dame yet.”

Rodney Slatford
Yorke Edition October 2024