Lennox Berkeley: A Source Book (review)

Abstract

In one of the more ironic turns of the whirligig of time, the convenient designation "English Musical Renaissance" has lately fallen into disfavor. Arguably patriotic, this moniker has become a slow moving target for self-professed radical scholars bent on stripping twentieth-century British music of both cultural context and historical fact in order to deconstruct it. Granted that problems must attend the hermeneutics implied by such an imprecise appellation, no better term so aptly identifies this historical episode. During the period roughly covered by the loose description "English Musical Renaissance," a body of distinguished and enduring music was created in England in an efflorescence of musical composition that occurred after a long period of relative desuetude. This rich musical epoch lasted roughly from the premiere of Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations in 1899 to the death of Michael Tippett in 1998. Aside from Elgar and Britten, major British composers during this period included Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, Frederick Delius, William Walton, and Benjamin Britten.