English Musical Renaissance Research Articles

Британская хоровая музыка на рубеже XIX и XX веков: феномен английского музыкального ренессанса

The article is devoted to the phenomenon of the English musical renaissance, little studied in Russian musicology — a movement under which presently the formation of the British national compositional school of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries is comprehended. The author turns to the musical heritage of the leading composers of that period — Alexander MacKenzie, Hubert Parry, Charles Stanford and Sir Edward Elgar — with the aim of demonstrating the sources of the English musical renaissance and determining, what significance was exerted by the choral heritage by its main representatives on the subsequent evolution of choral music in Great Britain. Among the chief factors which influenced the English musical renaissance, the following are highlighted: the development of the choral festival movement, the establishment of the Royal College of Music, the directedness of the British professional education on the formation of the national school of composition, as well as Parry’s and Stanford’s active work in musical criticism and research. The peculiarities of the choral writing of each of the aforementioned composers are analyzed on the example of the most well-known works in the genres of the cantata and the oratorio. The author brings to light the general tendencies in the organization of the choral texture and timbre and the unique techniques the discovery of which is capable of making adjustments to the existent perceptions about the evolution of the choral music of the early 20th century. In particular, study of Elgar’s choral works makes it possible to confirm the composer’s interest in the textural and timbral techniques typical for the composers of the first and the second avant-garde in Europe, such as diagonal texture and non-standard unisons. The author’s conclusions make it possible to form a perception of the works by the composers of the “first renaissance trio” (Parry, Stanford, MacKenzie) and their younger contemporary Elgar as the greatest impulse of the formation of 20th century British choral music, which in the second half of the century became among the most on demand in world performance.

The Victorian Salon and Pre-Raphaelite Melopoetics

The Victorian Salon and Pre-Raphaelite Melopoetics Mary Arseneau (bio) Phyllis Weliver's Mary Gladstone and the Victorian Salon breaks new ground in describing the political, intellectual, aesthetic, and social history of the important semipublic space of the Victorian salon. As Weliver's book illustrates, Mary Gladstone's influential weekly gatherings assembled political, intellectual, musical, artistic, and religious leaders and facilitated a network of liberal thought and activity. I believe that this very convincing approach and argument can be expanded to include another circle—the Pre-Raphaelites and their associates. Whereas in the Gladstone home illustrious and prominent statesmen, Anglican clergy, Oxbridge intellectuals, and artistic geniuses gathered,1 the Fitzroy Square set was decidedly more bohemian and unofficial: as Justin McCarthy describes in his Reminiscences, during the period contemporaneous with the Gladstones' salons, an artistic London Bohemia developed around Fitzroy Square, "the home of many painters and sculptors, authors and actors, journalists and politicians."2 As we shall see, Pre-Raphaelite associate and painter Ford Madox Brown was hosting regular gatherings at his Fitzroy Square home, "brilliant parties"3 that were held "[f]ortnightly from 1866 for about 8 years"4 and were regularly attended by the core group of the Pre-Raphaelite circle including Dante Gabriel, William Michael, and Christina Rossetti; William Holman Hunt; Algernon Charles Swinburne; William Morris; and many more. In Ford Madox Brown: A Record of his Life and Work, Madox Brown's grandson Ford Madox Ford (born Ford Madox Hueffer) goes on to say that "Music was represented by Theo Marzials and Dr. Hueffer, who championed the music of the future in those past days."5 In addition, there were a substantial number of social and artistic events that involved music—many of which have been largely overlooked in Pre-Raphaelite records and scholarship—events that gathered key figures in the Pre-Raphaelite circle as well as a broader network. It must be acknowledged that there is a pattern of omissions that resulted in a failure to record and include musical events in the Pre-Raphaelite [End Page 215] history; also ready to be acknowledged is a synergy between the Gladstone and Fitzroy Square salon circles, the individuals who moved between both these sets, and the important cultural outcomes fostered by both. Indeed, there were many intersecting salon circles in the 1870s, and many of these included music in their gatherings. There were certainly religious, aesthetic, poetic, and musical areas of convergence between the interests of these sets, such as, for instance, a July 6, 1887, concert of music based on Shelley's poetry, hosted in William Michael Rossetti's home for the Shelley Society, organized by his wife Lucy Rossetti and her friend, composer and professional musician Mary Grant Carmichael (who also set poems by Christina Rossetti and Oliver Madox Brown),6 and featuring an instrumental ensemble under the direction of Sir C. Hubert H. Parry performing his choral cantata, Scenes from Prometheus Unbound, among other works. Parry, in addition to being a regular and significant presence in the Gladstone salon, was a leading composer and later head of the Royal College of Music, who also set poetry by Christina Rossetti. Parry's composition Scenes from Prometheus Unbound (a work in which Shelley, music, and political circles and ideals coalesced in fascinating ways, as Weliver has demonstrated7) has been identified as the inaugural moment of the English Musical Renaissance.8 The English Musical Renaissance and the Royal College of Music, significant developments that were instrumentally supported by the Gladstone set, had enormous impact on the immediate and long-term presence and visibility of Pre-Raphaelite poetry, owing to the English Musical Renaissance goal of setting excellent English poetry to music and the Royal College of Music's mission to train excellent native musicians and composers. Pre-Raphaelite poetry enjoyed serious and continued attention, participating in this wave of musical development. There is a significant overlap too between the two salon circles' involvement in the English folk music revival. The Pre-Raphaelites also continued the vision shared by the Gladstone set of music as instrumental in civic and spiritual health—a movement that began in the 1840s as the rational recreation movement and blossomed...

Composing History: National Identities and the English Masque Revival, 1860–1920 by Deborah Heckert

Reviewed by: Composing History: National Identities and the English Masque Revival, 1860–1920 by Deborah Heckert Christopher Little Composing History: National Identities and the English Masque Revival, 1860–1920. By Deborah Heckert. (Music in Britain, 1600–2000.) Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 2018. [ix, 238 p. ISBN 9781783272075 (hardcover), $99.] Illustrations, bibliography, index. Deborah Heckert's Composing History is a valuable contribution to scholarship on English music. As its subtitle indicates, it is an exploration of musical and cultural revival of the masque genre in Great Britain. It is also an interrogation of English nationalism at the turn of the twentieth century. Heckert structures her monograph so that the former becomes a series of case studies of the latter. She succeeds in balancing the two subjects, as well as the format of context and case study in each chapter, so that the monograph feels much longer and weightier than its slim two hundred pages. Heckert intertwines the topics of masque revival and English national identity through the concept of "invented tradition" (p. 4), drawing on the work of Eric Hobsbawm. She applies his idea of the reinvention of tradition for new social or cultural effect within each chapter, first to particular masques either revived or newly composed during the latter half of the nineteenth century and then to the broader revival of British music during the same period, known as the English Musical Renaissance. To untangle these topics for the purposes of review, Heckert's historiography of the masque explains which features were retained and which were reinvented for contemporary British audiences. The masque originated as an Elizabethan court entertainment, a musical and dramatic spectacle centered around dances performed by the professional company of "masquers," then joined by select members of the court in the final "revels." The story, often slight, consisted of historical or allegorical narratives designed to reify the monarchy and reinforce existing social hierarchy. Important characters arrived onstage in grand entrance processions or underwent spectacular transformation scenes. Dangerous progressive elements were put to flight by the restoration of tradition, history, or a goodness mythologically derived. The courtly masque did not survive the seventeenth century, and two hundred years or so separate its "golden age" from its revival. Rediscovery of the masque began in 1840 as a way to celebrate the marriage of Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, and Albert, Prince Consort of Victoria. Heckert notes that this was an opportunity to connect the masque's "impressive pedigree" to the present monarchy as well as to "recapture the masque as a nostalgic, nationalistic genre" (p. 43). Heckert dates the revival of the masque proper to another royal wedding, that of Albert, Prince of Wales, to Princess Alexandra of Denmark in 1863, celebrated by two newly composed—and rival—masques. As performance opportunities and public interest in the historical genre grew, its audience and purpose changed. It became a genre that spoke to the nation as a whole, straddling high and popular cultures through its inclusion in "rational recreation" (p. 140) aimed at uplifting the new—and newly restless—urban working class. By the end of the century, Heckert argues, the now-reinvented genre became a site where conflicting arguments about an increasingly uneasy English national identity could be played out. Economic and naval challenges from Germany, jingoism and military embarrassment in the Boer War, and social unrest, represented by the success of the Labour Party in the 1905 elections, all contributed [End Page 102] to a desire for a stable "English" identity. The status of the masque as a "historical genre" (p. 14) having "traditional associations with nationalism and patriotism" (p. 24) allowed its dramatic and musical representations of England's past to, as Heckert describes, "forcefully [communicate] messages about England's modern, industrial, and imperialistic present" (p. 13). The contemporaneous revival of national music known as the English Musical Renaissance also sought to address these issues. Heckert devotes much of her contextual discussions to a critique of this movement. Perhaps most fruitfully, she explodes the unity of purpose and organic growth attributed to it by later authors, such as Frank Howes and Michael Trend, by tracing how the goals of the Renaissance changed as members of its founding generation...

Музыка Нидерландов в орбите британских интересов начала XX века

The present work analyzes an article of British journalist and musical critic Herbert Antcliffe (1875–1964) “The Renaissance of Dutch Music” published in 1925. The interest in the cultural life of the Netherlands contemporary to him, a country bordering with Germany, which was hostile to the British, was an expression of the cultural polity of Britain. The development of the musical culture of the Netherlands of the late 19th and early 20th century turned out to be at the center of the critic’s attention. The cited period coincided with the movement of the “New English Musical Renaissance.” Antcliffe indicates the themes which are important to him as a critic, as well as to the ascent of the sense of national identity, premises of the emergence of a new Renaissance of Dutch music, and the advancement of its leaders, the most important events and phenomena in the culture of the country of his interest (foundation of the Wagner Society, the bloom of Dutch national literature, activation of concert life, etc.). Antcliffe characterizes a number of peculiarities of Dutch music, crucial, in his opinion, which reflected the ideal foundation of the New Renaissance in musical culture of “the land of tulips.” In historical perspective the examined article by Antcliffe is viewed not as a local event of his biography, but a manifestation of the tendency of English musical historiography in its juxtaposition to German musical historiography. Antcliffe’s work attracted attention to itself in the Netherlands by its attempt at studying the musical life of the country at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Keywords: Herbert Antcliffe, sense of national identity, the Dutch musical culture, the Renaissance of Dutch music, leaders of the Renaissance of Dutch Music, Alphonse Dipenbrock.

William Sterndale Bennett: Imitator or Original?

Sterndale Bennett has often been characterized as an imitator of Mendelssohn. While it is true and unsurprising that there are similarities in the two composers’ musical language, actual imitation is difficult to substantiate. Bennett’s reputation as a composer has passed through several phases in the last 200 years. It was high in his lifetime in Germany as well as in Britain, when resemblance to Mendelssohn was counted as a positive asset, but later assailed by promoters of the ‘English Musical Renaissance’, who needed a preceding dark age and tended to dismiss early Victorians as copiers of Mendelssohn. Recent writers have shown a more positive attitude to the Victorian period in general. Bennett’s individuality has in fact been fully recognized from the first by such widely differing commentators as Mendelssohn himself, Robert Schumann, Henry Heathcote Statham, Frederick Ouseley, Charles Gounod, Charles Stanford, Geoffrey Bush, Peter Horton and Larry Todd. His style was founded on the Austro-German classical tradition and the London Pianoforte School headed by Clementi and Cramer, through his teacher Cipriani Potter, as is confirmed by early sources. This article surveys some of Bennett’s most characteristic piano pieces, and ends by analysing notably original features of his harmonic style that owe nothing to Mendelssohn, such as the inverted pedal note, evaded resolution of dissonance, and harmonic anticipation.

THE CONDITION OF MUSIC IN VICTORIAN SCHOLARSHIP

Many Victorian commentators, from Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin on, saw music as the most primitive of all the arts, an inarticulate precursor of language, and yet many Victorians, particularly towards the end of the century, also saw music as the purest of all art forms. The tremendous tension between these two views meant that music provided, and provides, an ideal way to understand more completely Victorian ideas about evolution, gender, and race in relation to aesthetics, although scholarship on music has only begun to consider those relationships. But as Vernon Lee long ago pointed out, in a series of thoughtful essays about music published inFraser's Magazineand other periodicals in the 1870s and 1880s, music has always been slower to develop than other arts or fields of study. This is in fact why musicologists speak of “nineteenth-century music,” rather than Victorian music: the Romantic period in music, for example, is starting as the Romantic period in literature had largely ended; the English Musical Renaissance comes after the renaissance period in British literature; and so on. Musicology, likewise, is a comparatively young field, and the study of nineteenth-century British music – long limited to Gilbert and Sullivan, if considered at all – younger yet. Studies of literature that engage with music as an important part of the historical context of a given text depend on developments in musicology for a proper understanding of that context, which is why such works are comparatively few.Whymusic should be slower to develop than other fields is a question outside the scope of this essay, but the good news is that in the past ten years a number of useful and valuable works of scholarship on nineteenth-century British music have appeared, examining not only neglected composers and musical works, but also performers, concert organizers, music publishers, instruments and their history, and evolutionary, Orientalist, and nationalist discourses about music. This scholarship, valuable in itself, not only expands our knowledge of musicology and cultural history; by pointing out some of the deep connections between literature and music in the Victorian period, such scholarship also suggests new ways to think about literary forms, canon formation, and aesthetic theories.

Making an English Voice: Performing National Identity during the English Musical Renaissance

AbstractThis article examines constructions of national musical identity in early twentieth-century Britain by exploring and contextualizing hitherto neglected discourses and practices concerning the production of an ‘English’ singing voice. Tracing the origins and development of ideas surrounding native vocal performance and pedagogy, I reconstruct a culture of English singing as a backdrop against which to offer, by way of conclusion, a reading of the ‘English voice’ performed in Ralph Vaughan Williams's song ‘Silent Noon’. By drawing upon perspectives derived from recent studies of song, vocal production, and national and aesthetic identity, I demonstrate that ‘song’ became a place in which the literal and figurative voices of performers and composers were drawn together in the making of a national music. As such, I advance a series of new historical perspectives through which to rethink notions of an English musical renaissance.

Opera in the British Isles, 1875-1918. By Paul Rodmell

Opera in the British Isles, 1875–1918 is part of Ashgate’s series on nineteenth-century music, which aims to challenge the notion that Britain during this period was ‘das Land ohne Musik’ (p. xv). Paul Rodmell sets out to show how Britain was far from ‘das Land ohne Oper’ (p. 337) in this, the first major contribution to focus on the history of operatic culture in the British Isles during the period commonly referred to as the English Musical Renaissance. This book explains how opera was produced and received in the British Isles from 1875 to 1918. The first chapter serves as a prologue, presenting a snapshot of operatic life in Britain leading up to 1875. The author begins by presenting a survey of operatic activity in London (especially at Covent Garden and Drury Lane), before introducing the idea of opera outside London’s West End. He has chosen 1875 as a starting point for this study because in that year three significant events occurred: Henry Mapleson attempted to establish his ill-fated Grand National Opera House on the Thames Embankment; Wagner’s operas were beginning to catch on after the first British stage production of Lohengrin, and the founder of one of the longest-running and most successful touring opera companies in the world, Carl Rosa, brought his Company to London for the first time.

The Importance of Cheltenham: Imperialism, Liminality and Gustav Holst

The study of liminality, pioneered by the anthropologist Arnold van Gennep, and reinvigorated by Victor Turner, considers the ambiguity that exists for individuals as they move between defined groups or identities. Reconsidering the relationship between the British composer, Gustav Holst (1874–1934), and his birthplace, the west country spa town of Cheltenham, provides not only a case study of the general liminality of the professional musician, but of a figure who is betwixt and between in almost all aspects of his life. In essence, Holst is the archetype of a liminal being. This study problematizes Holst's place in the received history of British music, arguing that his liminality has been overlooked in various attempts to make his life and music fit a mainstream narrative for English musical culture, the so-called Second English Musical Renaissance. The origins of that liminality are explored by considering Holst's relationship with Victorian Cheltenham, ranging widely from the civic to the religious, from the public to the private, and from the individual to the social. This includes his contact with prominent influences such as imperialism and evangelicalism, but also elements that are seemingly more marginal to the town but central for Holst, such as Theosophy. Doing so clarifies the origins and importance of Holst's relentlessly liminal status in Victorian and Edwardian society, demonstrating how such reconsiderations can reshape the historical narrative of Victorian influence on the twentieth century.

An Imperishable Heritage: British Choral Music from Parry to Dyson: A Study of Selected Works by Stephen Town (review)

Reviewed by: An Imperishable Heritage: British Choral Music from Parry to Dyson: A Study of Selected Works by Stephen Town Joseph Sargent An Imperishable Heritage: British Choral Music from Parry to Dyson: A Study of Selected Works. By Stephen Town. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2012. [xii, 327 p. ISBN 9780754605362. $124.95.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index. Since the late nineteenth century, a number of English composers have endeavored to produce musical works of distinctly national character that can also stand alongside the masterworks of their European peers. This “English Musical Renaissance” remains something of a mantra to this day, inspiring fierce loyalty among its devotees despite some criticism about the music’s merits. Stephen Town’s volume marks the [End Page 93] latest effort to advocate for this music, a study of twelve large-scale choral-orchestral works by a group of composers that embodies the “imperishable heritage” of this British movement. The volume proceeds chronologically across twelve chapters, each of which centers on a single work, assessing its history, sources, influences, and structure. The chapters follow a largely conventional organizational pattern. A general assessment of the composer in question usually comes first, followed by a range of details for each piece that includes source studies, pictorial and/or analytical descriptions of the music, and discussion of potential influences. For those unfamiliar with the works under investigation, Town’s volume provides a valuable introduction to sources and analytical details. His intensive study of manuscript and print sources generates insightful theories about the various stages in certain works’ evolutionary processes. Town’s deep knowledge of the repertory allows him to identify multiple channels of influence for many pieces, one of this study’s most prominent and valuable features. His effusive enthusiasm for this music is plain and often emerges in subjective praise of the music’s beauty and power. Those seeking more probing interpretations may be disappointed by Town’s level of analysis, which, while highly detailed, seldom aims beyond the surface phenomena of the score. Many sections are leavened with anecdotes, biographical details, and pictorial musical descriptions accessible to a wide audience. For deeper interpretations Town relies heavily on existing scholarship, and stronger efforts to critically engage these ideas would be welcome. The volume’s initial chapters concern Hubert Parry, a composer at the vanguard of England’s musical renaissance. After a literature review offering several contrasting interpretations of the composer, his music, and his reception, Town explores The Vision of Life, the fifth of six “ethical cantatas” that reflect Parry’s distaste for more theologically oriented oratorios. Town highlights several gestures notable for their harmonic, melodic, and textual treatment and then catalogs Parry’s scribal practices among several manuscript sources. Presented with both an original and a revised ending, Town favors the latter for its superior poetry and more expansive musical setting. If readers are left wanting greater synthesis of these details into a larger aesthetic assessment, they at least gain an appreciation for Parry’s painstaking compositional process, the musical successes as well as occasional failures, and the complex interworkings of this piece. Two other Parry works, the motet Voces Clamantium and ethical cantata Beyond These Voices There Is Peace, represent in Town’s view “two polarities of Parry’s character and compositional styles … the former soberly constrained, the latter profusely extravagant” (pp. 38, 56). Town draws attention to the intricate motivic construction and large-scale harmonic orientation of the first work. The second, written well after the first during a difficult period in Parry’s life, apes Wagnerian style in its greater harmonic complexities, enriched orchestral role, and dense motivic fabric. Both works survive in two autograph scores (plus drafts for Beyond These Voices), for which Town observes several similarities and documents numerous variants. He offers valuable analytical detail on these little-studied pieces, though the dichotomy he posits between “conservative” and “Wagnerian” might benefit from greater elaboration. Turning next to Charles Villiers Stanford, Town first considers the 1885 oratorio The Three Holy Children, unusual for showing extensive revision among the surviving versions, something Stanford did sparingly. Town’s sketch studies reveal emendations to the original autograph that were omitted from the published version. In a substantially...

The Power of Music: Issues of Agency and Social Practice

This article aims to contribute to the increasingly rich body of ethnographic and sociological studies that focus on processes of musical practice. After a brief introduction to the significance of music in social life, it outlines the advantages of adopting an actor-oriented analysis that gives close attention to issues of agency and emergent socio-cultural forms. This is followed by a brief encounter with the dynamics of musical performance as perceived by members of the Guarneri Quartet, after which two contrasting musical scenarios are analyzed in depth. The first focuses on music and ritual practices in the Peruvian Andes, and the second on the English musical renaissance of the early twentieth century. The article closes with a brief comment on the need to examine in depth the social components of musical composition and performance.

„A work so truly English in its story and its music“. Arthur Sullivans Ivanhoe und die Suche nach einer englischen Nationaloper

In order to overcome the persistent cliché of a “land without music,” considerable efforts were made in Great Britain at the end of the 19th century to establish what is now labelled the English Musical Renaissance. One of the movement’s main concerns was to establish both institutionally and artistically a National Opera for the production of English works. In this context, the opening of a newly built opera house, the Royal English Opera, by the impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte in 1891 created a great stir. The Royal English Opera was inaugurated with Arthur Sullivan’s “Romantic Opera” Ivanhoe. Sullivan tried to give his score an especially English flavour without using folksongs or other overtly national musical characteristics. His composition can be seen as a synthesis of German, French and Italian influences, which intentionally mirrors the fusion of the Anglo-Saxon and Norman elements to form the English nation under King Richard the Lionheart as presented in the opera’s plot. Unfortunately the story of D’Oyly Carte’s enterprise was a short one and Sullivan’s opera quickly passed into oblivion.

The Crystal Palace Concerts: Canon Formation and the English Musical Renaissance

Abstract This article examines the role of London's Crystal Palace in the popularization of “classical music” in Victorian Britain, and in the creation of the orchestral canon in the nineteenth century. The Crystal Palace was originally built in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition of 1851 and was reconstructed in the London suburb of Sydenham in 1854. This popular attraction assumed a musical prominence in British culture when the ambitious conductor Augustus Manns established an orchestra there in 1855, and presented a series of Saturday Concerts until 1900. Central to this discussion of the significance of the Crystal Palace concerts are two audience plebiscites that Manns conducted, in 1880 and 1887, which shed much light on Victorian popular taste and musical values. As well, particular attention is given to his involvement in the “English Musical Renaissance” in both of its aspects: as a campaign to raise British composers to canonic stature (to construct a “British Beethoven”); and as an effort to securely embed classical music within British culture.

'Bonnie Sweet Recorder': some issues arising from Arnold Dolmetsch's early English recorder performances

The work of Arnold Dolmetsch (1858–1940) with the recorder was crucial to the subsequent mass revival of the instrument in England. This article discusses in particular two newly discovered recorder programmes of his, dated 1900; it examines the significance of these and some of his later programmes in terms of overall instrumentation and repertory, and questions some long-held beliefs about the nature of Dolmetsch's work with the recorder. The instrument's renaissance in England is placed within its broader musical and cultural context. From the late Victorian era the recorder developed alongside and sometimes in conjunction with the revival of Shakespeare's plays; there was a clear relationship between the attempts to understand and re-create the English musical successes of the 16th and 17th centuries and the efforts made by the establishment to rejuvenate the nation's culture in terms of new composition. Using Dolmetsch's recorder programmes as a starting-point, it is suggested that the chief figures of the English musical renaissance were more conscious of and indebted to the contemporaneous revival of early music than has hitherto been acknowledged.

Britten, Voice, & Piano: Lectures on the Vocal Music of Benjamin Britten (review)

Reviewed by: Britten, Voice & Piano: Lectures on the Vocal Music of Benjamin Britten Ruthann Boles McTyre Britten, Voice & Piano: Lectures on the Vocal Music of Benjamin Britten. By Graham Johnson . ( Guildhall Research Studies, 2.) Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Co., 2003. [ ix, 270 p. ISBN 0-7546-3872-3. $54.95.] Index, compact discs. The contents of this book began as pre-concert lectures for a series of recitals entitled Let the Florid Music Praise at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in November 2001, and were expanded by the author, Graham Johnson, for the present volume. The concert series was devised by Johnson, a renowned accompanist who is also Senior Professor of Accompaniment for the Guildhall, in order to immerse his student accompanists into the music of Benjamin Britten, one of Britain's premier composers, who was equally notable as a pianist and accompanist. The concerts and lectures were built around specific themes, so while the time span of Britten's compositional output is covered, the entire catalog of vocal music is not. In fact, in order to illustrate a particular theme, Johnson uses other chamber works hand-in-hand with the vocal music. For example, in Lecture 7, "Britten and Russia," Johnson includes performances and discussions of both the Third Suite for Cello, op. 87 and the Sonata in C for Cello and Piano, op. 65. The performers in this concert series were students from the Guildhall, ranging from undergraduates upwards, and used all the talents of the school's student accompanists. The volume includes two compact discs allowing the reader to listen to selected student performances of the compositions under discussion. Graham Johnson's name is a familiar one, particularly to those involved in the study of vocal music. His Hyperion Schubert Edition, along with the French Song Edition on the same label, among countless other recordings are staples of any music library collection. His writings on vocal music provide insights for both the singer and the pianist, and this volume is no exception. Additionally, since the author was so closely associated with Britten and his partner, Peter Pears, he brings an understanding to the music that allows the reader to gain more in-depth access to the music. Perhaps what makes this particular book both appealing and useful stems from the fact that the "chapters" were originally lectures. The overall tone is accessible and clear, an "easy read" while full of insights on background and interpretation. At the same time, Johnson shares personal stories about Britten and Pears, their travels, dinner conversations, and so forth, along with numerous pop culture references, such as Harry Potter and The Talented Mr. Ripley, that reinforce the accessible quality of a set of lectures primarily aimed at students. The first lecture takes the reader through Britten's childhood and youth, highlighting some of his earliest compositions. It also looks at the importance of his time spent studying with Frank Bridge, who impressed upon the young Britten the importance of being "nothing more, nor less, than himself" (p. 15). Lectures 2 and 7 explore the influences of foreign travel on Britten's music and his personal life. In the second lecture, "Britten Abroad: Italy, Poland, France, and Germany," Johnson examines Six Metamorphoses after Ovid, op. 49 and Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, op. 22. The discussion of the Sonnets will prove enormously helpful to any performer learning this song cycle. In looking at how his continental travels influenced Britten's music, the author points to a comparison with Henry Purcell in that "the extravagance of Purcell's style derives in part from that composer's having had a similar openness to Europe as Britten possessed" (p. 35). Johnson's observation is made in light of the English tradition of one syllable per note as opposed to the more florid melismatic writing used by Britten which had been considered, by those composers of the English Musical Renaissance, to be "so affected and insincere as to be unthinkable" (p. 35). Lecture 7, "Britten and [End Page 737] Russia" focuses upon Britten and Peter Pears's friendship with Russian cellist Mistislav Rostropovich and his wife, soprano Galina Vishnevkskaya, as well as offering a travelogue of...

Review: The English Musical Renaissance and the Press 1850–1914: Watchmen of Music

The English Musical Renaissance and the Press 1850–1914: Watchmen of Music Meirion Hughes vi + 248 Music in 19th‐Century Britain. Ashgate Aldershot 2002 £49.50 0‐7546‐0588‐4

Lennox Berkeley: A Source Book (review)

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.

The British piano sonata, 1870-1945

Part 1 Introduction - the English musical Renaissance: Piano music in England in the early 19th century the role of the piano in British musical life - the piano in the concert hall, the piano in the home the dawn of a new era. Part 2 The piano sonatas 1870-90: William Sterndale Bennett George Alexander Macfarren Charles Hubert Hastings Parry Charles Villiers Stanford Ethel Smyth Edward German. Part 3 The piano sonatas 1890-1910: Algernon Ashton a comparison between the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music John McEwen William Yeates Hurlstone Benjamin Dale York Bowen Dorothy Howell Leo Livens Cyril Scott. Part 4 Piano sonatas by Bax, Ireland, Baines, Bush and Britten: Arnold Bax John Ireland William Baines Alan Bush Benjamin Britten. Part 5 Piano sonatas by Sorabji and Bridge: Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji Frank Bridge. Part 6 The African-American influence: African-American influences in Britain Constant Lambert Sir Michael Tippett. Part 7 Observations drawn from selected piano sonatas, 1930-45: Howard Ferguson Malcolm Arnold Antony Hopkins Arnold Cooke Lennox Berkeley. Part 8 Conclusions - interview transcriptions: Alan Bush, Geoffrey Bush, Howard Ferguson, Alan Frank, Antony Hopkins, Sir Michael Tippett catalogue of piano sonatas, 1870-1945 discography - recordings of piano sonatas, other recording referred to in the text.

The Oxford History of English Music, vol. 2, From c.1715 to the Present Day (review)

The period of the second volume of John Caldwell's history of English music, ca. 1715 to the present day, has already been covered by volumes 4-6 of The Blackwell History of Music in Britain ([Oxford: Blackwell, 1988-]; vol. 5 originally published as The Athlone History of Music in Britain [London: Athlone Press, 1981]), but a study of this kind has not been attempted by a single author since Ernest Walker's A History of [End Page 600] Music in England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907; 2d ed., 1924; 3d ed., 1952) first appeared almost a century ago. Caldwell freely admits in his preface that the completion of the three Blackwell volumes "has been a particular convenience," and a general indebtedness is acknowledged (p. vii), but he has also had the benefit of a number of other studies, particularly studies of the "English Musical Renaissance," from which to develop his own perspective. Frank Howes's now somewhat dated The English Musical Renaissance (New York: Stein and Day, 1966) and Peter J. Pirie's generally poor and badly planned book by the same title (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979) are two that spring to mind, while Robert Stradling and Meirion Hughes's more controversial The English Musical Renaissance, 1860-1940: Construction and Deconstruction (London: Routledge, 1993) appeared relatively recently. Moreover, in the last twenty years there have been a considerable number of other, more detailed works of scholarship on English music of the last three centuries that Caldwell has been able to draw upon, and these he has attempted to bring together to form a larger purview of music's role in England--a thesis confirmed by the presence of the last chapter, "England and its Music" (pp. 537-53).

BOOK REVIEW: Bernard Benoliel.PARRY BEFOREJERUSALEM: STUDIES OF HIS LIFE AND MUSIC WITH EXCERPTS FROM HIS PUBLISHED WRITINGS.Aldershot and Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1997.

Reviewed by: Parry Before Jerusalem: Studies of His Life and Music with Excerpts from His Published Writings Nigel Burton (bio) Parry Before Jerusalem: Studies of His Life and Music with Excerpts from His Published Writings, by Bernard Benoliel; pp. x + 233. Aldershot and Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1997, £49.95, $84.95. E. J. Dent once wrote of Sir Hubert Parry: “He differs from all other historians of music in that he approached musical history as a composer” (qtd. 177). Herein precisely lies the strength of the present volume: Bernard Benoliel has consistently adopted the composer’s standpoint in assessing Parry’s musical achievements. Thus one ignores the tiny flaws (the missed full stops, quotes without footnotes, and musical examples without tempo markings) as one is swept along in the maelstrom of the author’s passionate enthusiasm for his eponymous hero, and buoyed up by his shrewd and perceptive critical judgements. Parry was an artistic polymath, and to estimate his stature in the history of British music is no easy task. Benoliel makes the point that he was a Victorian through and through, despite his distrust of the upper classes (of which he was a member), his radical politics, and his “avid agnosticism” (4). As a man, he really was the near-saint that his pupils at the Royal College of Music made him out to be; yet “for all [his] many-faceted gifts—his warmth, generosity, [and] exalted nobility of feeling—he lacked the heart of darkness necessary to create tragic art” (68). Therein lies the root of the problem, for Benoliel is right in saying that if Parry now has any claim to immortality, it is on account of his compositions. Here, though, the author is in something of a cleft stick: he objectively and unsparingly identifies the causes of Parry’s limited powers, but subjectively cannot always accept them. Lavish praise is sometimes bestowed on music which is, frankly, ordinary; this is particularly true of the opening theme of the Piano Quartet in A flat (1879): the author calls it “a great tune” (43), adding that, with it “we hear for the first time since Purcell an authentic English voice” (41). This will not do, on two counts: firstly, the “great tune” turns out to be bowdlerized Robert Schumann, to which a coat of brown varnish from Johannes Brahms’s workshop has been applied; secondly, it takes no account of the many authentic native voices which existed in English music between 1695 and 1879. Benoliel takes this stance because he believes in the old shibboleth of the “English Musical Renaissance,” of which he calls Parry “the seminal creator” (116). This view—that Parry, Charles Villiers Stanford, and their followers were responsible for a sudden rebirth of British music from the 1880s onwards—is one that the perspective of time is failing to endorse. Evolution, not revolution, has been continual; it was this process which Parry enhanced (both as composer and musical historian), so that to claim he endowed British music with “a new vitality” (74) is just. Parry believed that the composer should be a public servant and moral instructor (Parry never needed to compose for money). As the author says, this was “not a wholly positive role-model for later English composers” (4). He makes a convincing case for concluding that Parry (subconsciously) “lacked love” (14), as a result of which he equated being solitary with being lonely. Here Benoliel the composer makes a vital point: solitude, for the artist, is sine qua non, since a precondition for “the [creative] process is concentrated self-removal from everyday life” (39). Moreover, Parry’s multiple duties did not permit enough time for dedicated composition, and he was scrupulously careful financially. The outcome was “a life that never focused around composition” (30). [End Page 556] Considering all this, it is perhaps remarkable that Parry the composer achieved as much as he did. Benoliel suggests that he was “capable of composing an effective opera” (36), but this seems highly unlikely, since Parry had little sense of the theatrical. Poetry was another matter, however; it always acted as an effective stimulus to his musical imagination, even though he believed (correctly) that “it...