John Crook (Was re: Voice split across staves?)

[Joel C. Salomon]

On 09/08/2015 05:35 PM, Simon Albrecht wrote:
> Am 08.09.2015 um 22:47 schrieb Joel C. Salomon:
>> I’m trying to re-create John Crook’s original score to Peter Pan (yes,
>> it’s in the public domain)
> 
> Just a sidenote: I tried to find this John Crook or any detail about his
> life on the web and he seems to be famously obscure – there’s no
> information at all! except that he wrote this Peter Pan music, which was
> published in 1905 <http://hdl.handle.net/1802/24425>. Astounding! Do you
> know anything more?

He was apparently somewhat known in his own lifetime; there’s a short
biography at <https://books.google.com/books?id=9f0sAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA416>.
WorldCat (<http://worldcat.org/search?q=au:John+Crook&fq=x0:msscr>)
references a good number of his works in libraries, but I’ve hardly come
across any recordings of any of this. (There is a CD available, “100
Years of Peter Pan” whose first few tracks include Crook’s music. But
that’s not much.)

The version you pointed to is quite a bit longer than the one on Google
Books, and includes several more songs & lyrics. Thank you for that; I’d
seen reference to this longer version and thought I’d need to find it in
dead-tree form in some library. (I’ve also come across mention of an
80-page instrumental score, but I don’t know if that was ever published.)

It’s beautiful music, and ought not to be forgotten.

—Joel Salomon