In the Burgess Foundation collections there are a number of fragments of material relating to an aborted attempt by Burgess to create a film musical based on the life of the escapologist Harry Houdini. Orson Welles was ‘improbably’ (as Burgess puts it) to play the lead, and Burgess was commissioned to write a libretto. Here is a scrap of music, which may begin to sketch the theme for Houdini staging an escape.

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