PGH visits the Tuscan villa described in Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady
PGH had never shown any interest in early music until she met the wealthy Connecticut-born conductor, linguist and musicologist Newell Jenkins in 1953. He quickly became a close friend, who wrote amusingly quixotic letters referring to Virgil Thomson as “Voigil” and constantly sent her expressions of love and encouragement. In the summer of 1955 she visited Jenkins, living on the Via delle Coste in Fiesole, outside Florence. Among the colony of expatriate composers then living in Florence were Ned Rorem and David Diamond, but Jenkins was there for rehearsals and recordings with his chamber orchestra, Piccola Academia Musicale, managed by another American, Jack Murphy. After a brief stay in Fiesole in June PGH travelled to discuss her operas with publishing houses in Germany and then returned to Fiesole before accompanying Murphy and Jenkins on a visit to the island of Giglio, famous for its coves, caves, shipwrecks and sandy beaches.
For the summer Jenkins had hired the villa to record what PGH called a “lost repertory” of early music by composers such as Sammartini, Hummel, Stamitz and Clementi, all resurrected from the hundreds of microfilms Jenkins had collected from archives in libraries, churches and private collections. In an article published in Hi-Fi at Home, she described Jenkins, his “energy, impeccable taste, scholarship, and that peculiar brand of courage that is part of American know-how”. The orchestra, she said, were some of the best musicians of northern Italy and the soloists Carlo Bussotti, Antonio Abussi and Sidney Gallesi were “well and truly on the musical map for the exquisite musicians they are”. She included photos, of the courtyard filled with tubs of flowers and the cars, bicycles and scooters of the musicians. Recordings were in a great hall with a vaulted ceiling and stone floors which created perfect acoustics; the recording equipment was housed in the chapel. The experience of being present in this exquisite villa, listening to rarefied music played by exceptional musicians was indescribably chic, though overshadowed for PGH herself by the news of the death of her father.
Today the villa still stands in a vacant piazza, still painted a dull yellow with royal blue shutters, its windows too high to see into, the doors to the courtyard closed to cars. In summer it smells of jasmine and traditional cooking, much as it must have done in 1955.