List of works by Julian Raoul Besset

This list is manually maintained, therefore some of the available pieces may not yet be linked from this page. For an automatically generated alphabetical list of all available pieces, please see
Category:Besset, Julian Raoul.
A list of works in the composer category that are not included here can be found on this page.
Please consult the manual of style for creating composer work lists.

The table below gives the following information (where applicable):

JRB. — numbering by Julian Raoul Besset name
WoO — Werk ohne Opus numbering, traditional German nomenclature (cancelled)
Title — (1) as used by composer originally. (2) as used on IMSLP.
Date — the year(s) of the composition, where known.
Scoring — the instrumentation used (see IMSLP:Abbreviations for Instruments).
Genre — as used by IMSLP's categorization system.
Librettists — authors of texts used in the work.
Published — the earliest-known publication (P) of the work. This column includes self-publishing (SP=self-published) and revisions (R1:, R2:, etc...)
Notes — concerning related works, completeness, authorship, circumstances.

List of Works

JRB.	Title	Date	Scoring	Genre	Librettists	Published	Notes
1	(1) 3 Etudes	December 1954	pf	Exercises			Early exercise in crude and laborious although spontaneous Chopinesque style
2	(1) Untitled	1955 ?	pf	Exercises			Various rudimentary Exercises in nearly empty bound family (on the Gunner side) blank music volume
3	(1) Improvisations	1955 or 1956	vn, pf	Improvisations			Inked on 40 irregular sized pages with corrections on pasted on strips of paper
4	(1) Schmetterling (2) Fragment of Time 1	1956?	vn, pf	Fantasias		R1:2016	Dark blue inked on 12 stave music paper. Large sized notes. Very awkward in style. Perhaps worth salvaging in places, together with a complete overhaul. This design carried through in June 2016.
5	(1) Three Preludes (2) Reprises	September 1957 (momentous year : mother died Easter that year of pancreatic cancer, too soon and too late)	pf	Preludes		SP2011 R2:2014	Inked on 16 stave A3 music paper. A notable improvement compared to previous efforts but still lacking in style. Deemed worth salvaging by the composer so typeset in 2011 with considerable alterations.
6	(1) Untitled (2) Left Overs	1958?	pf	Fantasias		SP2013	Page 1 Cleanly inked on undated 16 stave A3 music paper. Page 2 marred by a crossed out passage and various scribbles. A noticeable shift in style.
7	(1) The Blackbird (2) A Bonfire of Songs	1958	v, pf	Songs	Humbert Wolfe (1885-1940)	SP2016	Inked on 14 stave A3 music paper. This piece would seem to represent the first truly idiosyncratic composition penned by JRB. The first of a numerous series of songs, on poems published in French edited English class books, and utilized by the composer for remedial reasons, as a compensation (= music used as a defence against classroom burn out).
8	(1) Wander-Thirst (2) A Bonfire of Songs	1958	v, pf	Songs	Gerald Gould (1885–1936)	SP2016	Unfinished (arrested midway). Terminated in the revised version. Inked on 14 stave A3 music paper together with previous song.
9	(1) Laugh and Be Merry (2) A Bonfire of Songs	1958 or 1959 or 1960	v, pf	Songs	John Edward Masefield (1878–1967)	SP2016	Unpublished with the original words, replaced with the composer's own. Partially inked on 14 stave A3 music paper together with previous songs. Continued and terminated on a different manuscript together with The Seekers.
10	(1) The Seekers (2) A Bonfire of Songs	1958 or 1959 or 1960	v, pf	Songs	John Edward Masefield	SP2012 R2:2016	Partially inked on 14 stave A3 music paper together with previous song. Original lyrics replaced with Thoreau's I am a Parcel to avoid copyright contingencies. Moved to A Bonfire of Songs in 2016.
11	(1) Death by Water	1964	v, pf	Songs	T.S.Eliot (1888–1965)		Complete. Undated. Inked on 16 stave A3 music paper. Studied The Waste Land at the university that year. The idea professed being the reader or listener participated in causing the poetry to exist. JRB's musical rendering was a way of making that creative act even more polycreative.
12	(1) Chamber Music	1964	v, pf	Songs	James Joyce (1882–1941)		Incomplete. Undated. Beginning measures sketched out. Same presentation as above.
13	(1) Across the Door	1964	v, pf	Songs	Padraic Colum (1881–1972)		Complete. Undated. Beginning measures sketched out. Same presentation as above.
14	(1) The Lake Isle of Innisfree	1964	v, pf	Songs	William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)		Complete. Undated. Beginning measures sketched out. Same presentation as above.
15	(1) I Hear an Army	1964	v, pf	Songs	James Joyce (1882–1941)		Incomplete. Undated. Beginning measures sketched out. Same presentation as above. Last piece before the composer's being called up for military service (Too late, too long, K'lautern, 5° Cuirassiers, Nov.64-Feb.66), hence the choice (could be).
16	(1) The World of Nowhere	17 September 1968	v, pf	Songs	Alan Hodge (1915-1979)		Barely commenced measurelessly on said date with pencil and ink on 18 stave A3 music paper. Continued with second date (22.8.69 with mention of English school book page holding the poem : 'p.243') in blue ink on another page (again unfinished) and a third time, more completely, with mention "Revised Nov. 1970".
17	(1) Time, You Old Gipsy Man	1968	v, pf	Songs	Ralph Hodgson (1871–1962)		Inked on 18 stave A3 music paper.
18	(1) The Bells Of Heaven	1968?	v, pf	Songs	Ralph Hodgson		13 measures inked on 18 stave A3 music paper, the rest pencilled in.
19	(1) Postlude (2) Fragment of Time 2	1969	org	Postludes		R1:2016	Composed in Thionville (near where the composer had been appointed as a teacher of English : 1969-1972) between 13.11.1969 and 16.11.1969. Performed by the composer at the Protestant Temple of Thionville at the end of a concert featuring the Kedroff Quartet. Sketched out in blue ink on 14 stave A5 music paper, then copied in black ink on two pages of 15 stave A3 music paper. Considerably altered for the 2016 revision.
20	(1) Prelude	1970?	org	Preludes			Blue inked on 12 stave music paper at an uncertain date, possibly as a counterpart of previous work.
21	(1) Echo	8 October 1971	v, pf	Songs	Thomas Moore (1779–1852)	SP May 2019	Black inked with fountain pen on 12 stave A3 paper. Clean script on p.1 with barlines, less clean on p.2 (no barlines), and gets worse and worse after. The date attached - a rare instance - proves it was sketched in Voiron (Isère) where we were living at the time for professional reasons (our first child was one month old).
22	(1) Life	1971	v, pf	Songs	Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743–1825)	SP May 2019	Complete, but like in many instances, commenced cleanly but sloppy ending. Inked on 12 stave A3 music paper. Reconstructed.
23	(1) A Wish (2) Wayside Songs	11.2 (year date missing, probably 1971)	v, pf	Songs	Samuel Rogers (1763-1855)	R1:1998 R2:2012	Incomplete, black inked on 12 stave A3 music paper. Marked '11.2' (no year). Revised and completed in 1998. Further revised in 2012.
24	(1) The Vagabond	1971	v, pf	Songs	Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)	R1:1998	Incomplete, black inked on 18 stave A3 music paper.
25	(1) Elegy for Margaret	1971	v, pf	Songs	Stephen Harold Spender (1909–1995)	R1:1998	Incomplete, black inked on 18 stave A3 music paper. Revised and completed in 1998.
26	(1) The Midnight Skaters	1972	v, pf	Songs	Edmund Charles Blunden (1896-1974)		Unfinished. Black inked on 14 stave A3 music paper.
27	(1) The Bride	1972	v, pf	Songs	John Suckling (1609–after 1641)	SP June 2019	Unfinished. Inked on 12 stave A3 music paper. Taken up again and published in its entirety.
28	(1) A Vision or A World	September 1972	v, pf	Songs	Henry Vaughan (1621–1695)	SP May 2019	Unfinished. Black inked on 16 stave A3 music paper, pursued measurelessly on 12 staves. Reconstructed.
29	(1) Ode on Solitude	September 1972	v, pf	Songs	Alexander Pope (1688–1744)		Sketched out in pencil only on 18 stave A3 music paper.
30	(1) The Ball Poem	September 1972	v, pf	songs	John Allyn Berryman (1914–1972)	Sketched out in pencil only on 18 stave A3 music paper.
31	(1) The Windmill	1972	v, pf	Songs	Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)		Unfinished. Blue inked on 18 stave A3 music paper, continued with pencil.
32	(1) The Leaf Burners	1972	v, pf	Songs	Ernest Rhys (1859-1946)	SP June 2019	Unfinished. Black inked on 18 stave A3 music paper. Attempted to copy the MS but the latter too messy. Reconstructed.
33	(1) Piano Quartet	1973?	vn, va, vc, pf	Piano Quartets			Unfinished. Black inked on 16 stave A3 music paper.
34	(1) Cello Sonata	1973?	vc, pf	Cello Sonatas			Unfinished. Black inked on 18 stave A3 music paper.
35	(1) The Rivals	1974 or 1975	v, pf	Songs	Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)	R3:2018	Blue inked on 16 stave A3 music paper. Very messy. Clean copy attempted but not terminated on 12 stave music paper. Attempted c'puter recopying 04.98 but stopped after 4th measure. Reattempted operation 09.18 with different text (composer's own) without referring to version 1. Added 14th Sept as Mooning Time in Abandoned Songs. Copied the work from the original MS Oct. 2018 with a few minimal changes owing to the difficulty of reinterpreting certain passages.
36	(1) Tamer and Hawk	1974 or 1975	v, pf	Songs	Thom Gunn (1929–2004)		Blue inked on 16 stave A3 music paper. Commenced cleanly, terminated less so.
37	(1) A Song for a Birth or a Death	1974 or 1975	v, pf	Songs	Elizabeth Jennings (1926–2001)		Blue inked on 16 stave A3 music paper. Finished.
38	(1) Wants => Needs	1974 or 1975	v, pf	Songs	Philip Arthur Larkin (1922–1985)	SP May 2019	Blue inked on 16 stave A3 music paper. Last line missing. Reworked with new words with new title ("Needs"). Original wording not preserved (under copyright).
39	(1) Honig (aus Moabiter Sonette)	1974	v, pf	Lieder	Albrecht Georg Haushofer (1903-1945)		Unfinished. Inked on 16 stave A3 music paper. Continued on another page, more fully, at first, with measures, then drops measures, and peters out.
40	(1) Entfesselung (aus Moabiter Sonette)	1974	v, pf	Lieder	Albrecht Georg Haushofer		Finished in blue ink on 12 stave A3 music paper. No year date, just 'Monday 15' at the end.
41	(1) Vom Brot der Sprache (1943)	1974	v, pf	Lieder	Hans Sahl (1902-1993)		Commenced in black ink on 12 stave A3 music paper.
42	(1) Das Opfer (1943)	1974	v, pf	Lieder	Reinhold Schneider (1903-1958)		Commenced in black ink on 12 stave A3 music paper, pursued in pencil.
43	(1) Raben (1943)	1974	v, pf	Lieder	Ruth Klüger (1931)		Blue inked on 16 stave A3 music paper.
44	(1) Sonett von Theresienstadt (1943)	1974	v, pf	Lieder	Kurt Kapper (1899-1943)		Black inked on 12 stave A3 music paper. These German Lieder are due to be reconstructed like the unfinished English songs under the title Gesänge von Fernen. Rehabilitation in process, to be terminated January 2020.
45	(1) Puritan Sonnet (1921)	24.02.1988	v, pf	Songs	Elinor Wylie (1885-1928)	SP May 2019	Black inked on 18 stave A3 music paper. Barely commenced in the clean (the two opening lines), the rest or partly so having been sketched in pencil starting from the bottom up on another page (because more commodious with A3 pages). The "rest" was not checked against this new version, it was completely left out.
46	(1) Curfew	?1970s	v, pf	Songs	Longellow	SP April 2019	Roughly pencilled on 14 stave A3 music paper. Started to retrace in blue ink the opening 4 bars, then gave up, at an unknown date. First page ends by cramming on 2 staves instead of 3. Barely legible. Recomposed April 27-29th 2019 retaining only m.1-4.
47	(1) The Bourne	10th April 1972	v, pf	Songs	Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894)	SP May 2019	Black inked 12 stave A3 paper. Almost terminated. Precise dating. Exists in 2 versions, only one dated. Both retained and reworked consecutively much later.