Cross-Currents and Convergencies: Britten, Maxwell Davies and the Sense of Place

Abstract

Anyone bold enough to claim that the British compositional scene is dominated at present by a mainstream whose principal godfathers are Tippett and Birtwistle might just as well extend the reductive flourish by observing that an alternative duo – Britten and Maxwell Davies – not only have less in common with each other but are also less influential, less ‘significant’. Despite obvious differences of style, Tippett and Birtwistle share a basic predisposition to internationalism and modernism. By contrast, Britten's resistance to modernism and Davies's aspiration to classicism combine with a more direct response from both composers to local, if not exactly ‘national’ features, and, by the criteria for mainstream membership given above, this means that they belong on the margins of contemporary musical life in Britain, not at the centre.