Lost Hearts is a 1973 supernatural gothic drama produced by the BBC as part of its A Ghost Story for Christmas series. Running at 35 minutes and directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark, it was written by Robin Chapman [1] [2] and was based on the 1895 short story "Lost Hearts" by M. R. James.
The drama tells the story of Stephen Elliott, a young orphan aged 11 years and of an inquiring frame of mind, who is sent to stay with his much older cousin, the scholarly Mr Abney, at a remote country mansion, Aswarby Hall, in Lincolnshire. His cousin is a reclusive alchemist obsessed with making himself immortal. Abney’s library "contained all the then available books bearing on the Mysteries, the Orphic poems, the worship of Mithras, and the Neo–Platonists." [3] Stephen is repeatedly troubled by visions of a young gypsy girl and a travelling Italian boy with their hearts missing.
Lost Hearts was adapted by Robin Chapman in 1973 as part of the BBC's A Ghost Story for Christmas strand, directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark. The shortest of the adaptations, it was first broadcast on Christmas Day 1973 at 11:35 pm. [4] It starred Simon Gipps-Kent as Stephen and Joseph O'Conor as Mr Abney.
Most music from the film is taken from Hyperion III, a 1966 avant-garde piece by Bruno Maderna. The 25-minute recording was performed by the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra, Baden Baden, with Severino Gazzelloni on the flute. [5] Also featured is My Bonny Boy from Ralph Vaughan Williams English Folk Song Suite , performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. [6] This piece accompanies the scene of Stephen flying his kite. Two pieces from The Minstrel of Clare, a collection of Irish folk music by Willie Clancy, also feature: The Templehouse and Over the Moor to Maggie, and Caoineadh an Spailpín (The Spalpeen's Lament). [7] These are used during the flashbacks to Phoebe’s arrival at, and disappearance from, Abney’s house.
The adaptation is noted for the distinctive hurdy-gurdy music that accompanies appearances of the two ghostly children. This has been wrongly identified as L'amour de Moi, a 15th Century French folk song, [8] but BBC copyright documentation confirms that this title is instead the tune hummed briefly by Joseph O'Conor. The actual hurdy-gurdy tune is listed as an instrumental folk song; no title, performer or recordist are given.
Grade II* listed Ormsby Hall in South Ormsby in Lincolnshire stood in for the exterior shots of Aswarby Hall, while the churchyard of the nearby St Leonard's church in the village featured in the final scenes including the ghostly children waving to Stephen.
Harrington Hall in Harrington, Lincolnshire was used for the interior of Aswarby Hall, as well as a few outside scenes. The interiors seen in the film were all destroyed by a fire which occurred in 1991.
The Pelham Mausoleum near Brocklesby in Great Limber near Grimsby also featured in the production.
Sir Adrian Cedric Boult, CH was a British conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family, he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. His first prominent post was conductor of the City of Birmingham Orchestra in 1924. When the British Broadcasting Corporation appointed him director of music in 1930, he established the BBC Symphony Orchestra and became its chief conductor. The orchestra set standards of excellence that were rivalled in Britain only by the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO), founded two years later.
The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) is a British orchestra based in Birmingham, England. It is the resident orchestra at Symphony Hall, Birmingham in Birmingham, which has been its principal performance venue since 1991. Its administrative and rehearsal base is at the nearby CBSO Centre, where it also presents chamber concerts by members of the orchestra and guest performers.
The BBC Symphony Orchestra is a British orchestra based in London. Founded in 1930, it was the first permanent salaried orchestra in London, and is the only one of the city's five major symphony orchestras not to be self-governing. The BBC SO is the principal broadcast orchestra of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
Donovan Phillips Leitch, known mononymously as Donovan, is a Scottish musician, songwriter and record producer. He emerged from the British folk scene in early 1965, and subsequently scored multiple international hit singles and albums during the late 1960s. His work became emblematic of the flower power era with its blend of folk, pop, psychedelic rock, and jazz stylings.
The London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) is one of five permanent symphony orchestras based in London. It was founded by the conductors Sir Thomas Beecham and Malcolm Sargent in 1932 as a rival to the existing London Symphony and BBC Symphony Orchestras.
George Sainton Kaye Butterworth, MC was an English composer who was best known for the orchestral idyll The Banks of Green Willow and his song settings of A. E. Housman's poems from A Shropshire Lad.
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Bruno Maderna was an Italian composer, conductor and academic teacher.
The BBC Symphony Chorus is a British amateur chorus based in London. It is the dedicated chorus for the BBC Symphony Orchestra, though it performs with other national and international orchestras.
Gordon Percival Septimus Jacob CBE was an English composer and teacher. He was a professor at the Royal College of Music in London from 1924 until his retirement in 1966, and published four books and many articles about music. As a composer he was prolific: the list of his works totals more than 700, mostly compositions of his own, but a substantial minority of orchestrations and arrangements of other composers' works. Those whose music he orchestrated range from William Byrd to Edward Elgar to Noël Coward.
Aswarby is a village in the civil parish of Aswarby and Swarby, in the North Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England. It is 3.5 miles (5.6 km) south of Sleaford and 750 yards (690 m) east of the A15 road, between Sleaford and the point near Threekingham where it crosses the A52 road. In 1921 the parish had a population of 90.
Ralph Vaughan Williams dedicated his Symphony No. 4 in F minor to Arnold Bax.
Simon Gipps-Kent. 20th-century English theatre and film actor in the 1970s–80s, known for his teenage portrayals of British royalty and nobility. He was born into a show business family in Kensington, London. His television debut was on the BBC in 1971 followed with a London West End theatre debut in 1972. He continued to act on stage, film and television until the year before his death in 1987.
Bernard Rands is a British-American contemporary classical composer. He studied music and English literature at the University of Wales, Bangor, and composition with Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna in Darmstadt, Germany, and with Luigi Dallapiccola and Luciano Berio in Milan, Italy. He held residencies at Princeton University, the University of Illinois, and the University of York before emigrating to the United States in 1975; he became a U.S. citizen in 1983. In 1984, Rands's Canti del Sole, premiered by Paul Sperry, Zubin Mehta, and the New York Philharmonic, won the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He has since taught at the University of California, San Diego, the Juilliard School, Yale University, and Boston University. From 1988 to 2005 he taught at Harvard University, where he is Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music Emeritus.
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A Ghost Story for Christmas is a strand of annual British short television films originally broadcast on BBC One between 1971 and 1978, and revived sporadically by the BBC since 2005. With one exception, the original instalments were directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark and the films were all shot on 16 mm colour film. The remit behind the series was to provide a television adaptation of a classic ghost story, in line with the oral tradition of telling supernatural tales at Christmas.
"Lost Hearts" is a ghost story by British writer M. R. James, originally published in 1895. It was later collected in his 1904 book Ghost Stories of an Antiquary.
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A Warning to the Curious is a 1972 supernatural drama produced by the BBC as the second instalment of its A Ghost Story for Christmas strand. As with the previous instalment, The Stalls of Barchester (1971), it was adapted and directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark and was first broadcast on BBC 1 at 11pm on Christmas Eve 1972. Running at 50 minutes, the drama was based on "A Warning to the Curious", a ghost story by British writer M. R. James, included in his book A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories first published in 1925.
