Albion's Glory

H. Smith Stephen

Description

What is meant by the term 'English Music'? After discussing the definition and factors for identification involved, Stephen H. Smith explores the shortlist of composers who should be considered, as well as any omissions from such a selection.The book then gives a short history of English music from the nineteenth to twentieth century.The main body of the book - the composer survey - is divided into three subsections: Progenitors of the English Musical Renaissance (Parry and Stanford); Ten of the Best (the author's choice of England's "top" twentieth-century composers); and The Best of the Rest (fifty entries on other English composers, in alphabetical order, including several overlooked ones with a nevertheless powerfully distinctive musical voice). A final section explores alternative ways of accessing the music along with their pros and cons.With a bibliography and discography to accompany each entry, a general bibliography and an appendix on the mystery surrounding the fate of E.J. Moeran's 'Second Symphony', Albion's Glory gives a complete overview of the history of English music and the composers who brought it to life.

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 12 janvier 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781800466968
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2022 Stephen H. Smith


The moral right of the author has been asserted.


Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.


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ISBN 978 1800466 968

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Contents
One
Setting the Scene

1. What Makes a Composer “English”?
2. Choosing the Composers
3. The Omissions
4. A Potted Potted History of Twentieth Century English Music
5. The Survey

Two
The Composers

Progenitors of the English Musical Renaissance

1. Sir Charles Hubert Parry (1848–1918)
2. Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (1852–1924)

Ten of the Best

1. Frank Bridge (1879–1941)
2. Benjamin Britten (1913–76)
3. Frederick Delius (1862–1934)
4. Sir Edward Elgar (1857–1934)
5. Gerald Finzi (1901–56)
6. Gustav Holst (1874–1943)
7. Herbert Howells (1892–1983)
8. Sir Michael Tippett (1905–98)
9. Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958)
10. Sir William Walton (1902–83)

The Best of the Rest

1. William Alwyn (1905–85)
2. Richard Arnell (1917–2009)
3. Malcolm Arnold (1921–2006)
4. William Baines (1899–1922)
5. Sir Granville Bantock (1868–1946)
6. Stanley Bate (1911–59)
7. Sir Arnold Bax (1883–1953)
8. Lennox Berkeley (1903–89)
9. Sir Harrison Birtwistle (b. 1934)
10. Sir Arthur Bliss (1891–1975)
11. Rutland Boughton (1878–1960)
12. Havergal Brian (1876–1972)
13. Arthur Butterworth (1923–2014)
14. George Butterworth (1885–1916)
15. Rebecca Clarke (1886–1979)
16. Arnold Cooke (1906–2005)
17. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (1934–2016)
18. Andrew Downes (b. 1950)
19. Sir George Dyson (1883–1964)
20. John Foulds (1880–1939)
21. Peter Racine Fricker (1920–90)
22. Ruth Gipps (1921-99)
23. Ivor Gurney (1890–1937)
24. Patrick Hadley (1899–1973)
25. Julius Harrison (1885–1963)
26. Joseph Holbrooke (1878–1958)
27. William Hurlstone (1876–1906)
28. John Ireland (1879–1962)
29. Gordon Jacob (1895–1984)
30. John Jeffreys (1927–2010)
31. Constant Lambert (1905–51)
32. Walter Leigh (1905–42)
33. Kenneth Leighton (1929–88)
34. George Lloyd (1913–98)
35. Elisabeth Lutyens (1906–83)
36. Robin Milford (1903–59)
37. Ernest John Moeran (1894–1950)
38. Roger Quilter (1877–1953)
39. Alan Rawsthorne (1905–71)
40. Cyril Bradley Rootham (1875–1938)
41. Edmund Rubbra (1901–86)
42. Cyril Scott (1879–1970)
43. Robert Simpson (1921–97)
44. Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944)
45. Sir Arthur Somervell (1863–1937)
46. Bernard Stevens (1916–83)
47. Sir John Tavener (1944–2013)
48. Ian Venables (b. 1955)
49. Peter Warlock (Philip Heseltine) (1894–1930)
50. William Wordsworth (1908–88)

Three
Accessing the Music

1. Compact Disc (CD)
2. The MP3 Format
3. YouTube
4. Live Concerts

Appendix
Moeran’s Unfinished Symphony
General Bibliography


Abbreviations
BBC NOW
BBC National Orchestra of Wales
BBC PO
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
BBC SO
BBC Symphony Orchestra
BBC Scottish SO
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
BMS
British Music Society
CBSO
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
CUMS
Cambridge University Music Society
DRP
Deutsche Radio Philharmonie
ECO
English Chamber Orchestra
ENO
English National Opera
ISCM
International Society for Contemporary Music
LFO
London Festival Orchestra
LPO
London Philharmonic Orchestra
LSO
London Symphony Orchestra
LSSO
Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra
Malta PO
Malta Philharmonic Orchestra
NLO
New London Orchestra
Northern CO
Northern Chamber Orchestra
NPO
New Philharmonia Orchestra
Phil O
Philharmonia Orchestra
RAM
Royal Academy of Music
RCM
Royal College of Music
RLPO
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
RNCM
Royal Northern College of Music
RPO
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
RSNO
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Scottish CO
Scottish Chamber Orchestra
Scottish NO
Scottish National Orchestra
Welsh Nat Op O
Welsh National Opera Orchestra



One
Setting the Scene
1. What Makes a Composer “English”?
The vexed question of what makes a composer distinctively “English” is ever with us, for different people will answer it in different ways, and the arguments seem interminable. Some of those who made their name here and were happily absorbed into the English musical scene were born elsewhere. Arthur Benjamin (1893–1960), Hubert Clifford (1904–59), Percy Grainger (1882–1961), Frederick Kelly (1881–1916) and Malcolm Williamson (1931–2003) all hailed from Australia and in most cases came here to study, while John Joubert (1927–2019), born in South Africa, arrived in England in 1946 for the same purpose and remained here for the rest of his life. Do we still regard these composers as “colonials”, or have we adopted them as our own? After all, one of them, Malcolm Williamson, eventually rose to receive that most British of accolades, Master of the Queen’s Music (or is it still “Musick”?). And if we do choose to adopt such musicians, why not the New Zealander Douglas Milburn (1915–2001), who also joined the pilgrimage of budding musical talent to our shores? Do we exclude him from the list because he consciously sought to create a distinctively “New Zealand” style of music? If we do, we are surreptitiously bearing testimony to the view that it is not simply one’s place of birth that counts; the aura of the music does too. But then, what do we do with composers like Colin Matthews (b. 1946), Peter Racine Fricker (1920–90), Harrison Birtwistle (b. 1934), Robert Simpson (1921–97) and Peter Maxwell Davies (1934–2014) (another former Master of the Queen’s Music) who were all born in England, but whose music sounds far more cosmopolitan than that of English stalwarts like Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Holst?
The same dilemma embraces other composers who were born in this “sceptred isle” but who chose to ply their trade in foreign fields – W.H. Bell (1987–1946), Edgar Bainton (1880–1956), Eugene Goossens (1893–1962) and, most notably, Frederick Delius (1862–1934), among others. It happens that I have excluded the first three from consideration in this book (actually, economy of space has much to do with it), but eyebrows would certainly have been raised had I excluded dear old Frederick! Yet his initial training was undertaken in Florida, and his formal training in Leipzig, while his music was influenced by an eclectic mix of Negro spirituals, French cultural life, German literature and the mountains of Norway, with the merest deferential nod to the old country (as in Brigg Fair and the North Country Sketches , for example). It is easy – almost obligatory – to think of his exquisite miniaturist gems such as On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring , A Summer Night on the River and In a Summer Garden as depicting quintessentially English landscapes, but the cuckoo is likely to have spoken French, the garden to have been his own in the French village of Grez-sur-Loing, and the river the one which ran past the bottom of it.
The question of what makes music “English” even has repercussions for the work of who