The English Musical Renaissance was a hypothetical development in the late 19th and early 20th century, when British composers, often those lecturing or trained at the Royal College of Music , were said to have freed themselves from foreign musical influences, to have begun writing in a distinctively national idiom, and to have equalled the achievement of composers in mainland Europe. The idea gained considerable currency at the time, with support from prominent music critics, but from the latter part of the 20th century has been less widely propounded.
40-525: John Herbert Foulds ( / f oʊ l d z / ; 2 November 1880 – 25 April 1939) was an English cellist and composer of classical music. He was largely self-taught as a composer, and belongs among the figures of the English Musical Renaissance . A successful composer of light music and theatre scores, he directed his principal creative energies into more ambitious and exploratory works that were particularly influenced by Indian music . Suffering
80-479: A Symphony of East and West for Oriental instruments and Western symphony orchestra .) Foulds' daughter deposited some of the surviving manuscripts by her father in the British Library . Foulds became a footnote to English music after his death, but from 1974 Malcolm MacDonald, editor of the music journal Tempo under the alias Calum MacDonald, conducted an often lonely campaign for Foulds after he came across
120-457: A book on contemporary musical developments, Music To-day . In 1935 he travelled to India , where he collected folk music , became Director of European Music for All-India Radio in Delhi , created an orchestra from scratch, and began to work towards his dream of a musical synthesis of East and West, actually composing pieces for ensembles of traditional Indian instruments . He was so successful that he
160-484: A daily basis. This was a source of irritation to Foulds; in 1933 he complained to Adrian Boult at the BBC that his serious music was not being performed: "[My light works] number a dozen or so, as compared with the total of 50 of my serious works. This state of affairs is rather a galling one for a serious artist." Foulds also wrote many effective theatre scores, notably for his friends Lewis Casson and Sybil Thorndike . Perhaps
200-412: A music critic mocked the notion of an English musical renaissance led by Parry, Stanford and Mackenzie, describing their works as "sham classics" and characterising them as a "mutual admiration society": [W]ho am I that I should be believed, to the disparagement of eminent musicians? If you doubt that [Stanford's oratorio] Eden is a masterpiece, ask Dr Parry and Dr Mackenzie, and they will applaud it to
240-459: A place beside Beethoven or Schubert" for earlier British composers such as Macfarren and Sterndale Bennett , it was not absurd to do so for his favourite British composers of the late 19th century. The Royal College of Music , the centre of the renaissance theory, was founded explicitly "to enable us to rival the Germans". Fuller Maitland regarded Stanford and Parry as the pre-eminent composers of
280-588: A setback after the decline in popularity of his World Requiem (1919–1921), he left London for Paris in 1927, and eventually travelled to India in 1935 where, among other things, he collected folk music , composed pieces for traditional Indian instrument ensembles, and worked in radio and became Director of All India Radio in Delhi in 1937. Foulds was an adventurous figure of great innate musicality and superb technical skill. Among his best works are Three Mantras for orchestra and wordless chorus (1919–1930), Essays in
320-418: A stature equal to the best the continent had to offer"; among the continental composers of the period were Brahms , Tchaikovsky , Dvořák , Fauré , Bruckner , Mahler and Puccini . That idea was controversial at the time and later, though it retained its adherents well into the 20th century. Eatock notes that as late as 1966, Frank Howes , successor to Hueffer and Fuller Maitland at The Times , stated that
360-528: A symposium on Swiss Composers, and another on Scottish composers to a symposium on musical nationalism in Great Britain and Finland . He also compiled catalogues of the works of John Foulds, Shostakovich, Luigi Dallapiccola and Antal Doráti and contributed articles to many musical encyclopaedias such as the New Grove . He was editor of the modern-music journal Tempo , which he joined in 1972 as assistant to
400-628: The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO), to huge critical acclaim. In November 2005, the CBSO, with Peter Donohoe , gave the first live performance for more than 70 years of Foulds' piano concerto , the Dynamic Triptych (1927–1929). The orchestra has issued two well-received CDs of Foulds' music. On Armistice Night, 11 November 2007, the Royal Albert Hall staged the first performance for 81 years of
440-558: The Tudor and early Stuart periods , which Fuller Maitland and others were enthusiastically propagating. Those identified as leading composers of the musical renaissance theory achieved positions of power and influence in the musical world. Mackenzie became principal of the Royal Academy of Music ; and at the Royal College of Music , Parry succeeded George Grove as director, and Stanford
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#1733085347071480-704: The World Requiem under the auspices of the BBC , with the Trinity Boys Choir and Leon Botstein as conductor. The performance was recorded live and released in Super Audio CD format by Chandos Records in January 2008. Foulds' Keltic Lament has once again become popular due to its regular playing on Classic FM , and BBC Radio 3 plans to revive a tradition of performing A World Requiem on Armistice Day. John Foulds
520-540: The music of the East , especially India . Foulds moved to London before World War I , and in 1915 during the war he met the violinist Maud MacCarthy , one of the leading Western authorities on Indian music . His gigantic World Requiem (1919–1921), in memory of the dead of all nations, was performed at the Royal Albert Hall, conducted by Foulds, under the auspices of The Royal British Legion on Armistice Night, 11 November, in 1923 by up to 1,250 instrumentalists and singers;
560-401: The 1906 Queen's Hall Proms . In some respects ahead of his time (he started using quarter-tones as early as the 1890s, while some of his later works anticipate Messiaen and Minimalism ), Foulds was in others an intensely practical musician. He became a successful composer of light music – his Keltic Lament was once a popular favourite and in the 1920s the BBC scheduled his music on
600-920: The English Musical Renaissance are: Malcolm MacDonald (music critic) Malcolm MacDonald (26 February 1948 – 27 May 2014), also known by the alias Calum MacDonald , was a British author, mainly about music. MacDonald was born in Nairn , Scotland and educated at the Royal High School , Edinburgh, and Downing College , Cambridge . He lived in England from 1971 until his death, first in London and from 1992 in Gloucestershire . He died at Leckhampton Hospice. He wrote several books, notably volumes on Brahms , Schoenberg , John Foulds , Edgard Varèse ,
640-508: The English musical renaissance was "an historical fact". In 1993, Robert Stradling and Meirion Hughes argued that the proponents of the movement were "a self-appointed and self-perpetuating oligarchy" based at the Royal College of Music in London. Grove, Parry, and Vaughan Williams were "the dynastical figureheads of the renaissance establishment." Stradling and Hughes contended that this élite
680-608: The Foulds scores deposited in the British Library. MacDonald tracked down Foulds' daughter, who took him to a garage and showed him two coffin-sized boxes full of sketches and manuscripts she had been left by her mother. Unfortunately, many of the manuscripts were damaged: apparently, rats and ants had got at them while they were in India, where Foulds' wife stayed after his death. An acclaimed recording of Foulds' string quartet music, including
720-771: The Modes for piano (1920–1927), the piano concerto Dynamic Triptych (1927–1929), and his ninth string quartet Quartetto Intimo (1931–1932). John Foulds was born in Hulme , Manchester, England, on 2 November 1880, the son of a bassoonist in the Hallé Orchestra . Prolific from childhood, Foulds himself joined the Hallé as a cellist in 1900, having already served an apprenticeship in theatre and promenade orchestras in England and abroad. Hans Richter gave him conducting experience; Henry Wood took up some of his works, starting with Epithalamium at
760-474: The Scottish composer-pianist Ronald Stevenson and a three-volume study of the 32 symphonies of Havergal Brian . Other books include a tourist guidebook to the city of Edinburgh and a multi-volume edition of the musical journalism of Havergal Brian. He contributed chapters to symposia on Brahms, Alan Bush , Erik Bergman , Shostakovich , Bernard Stevens , Ronald Stevenson, Varèse, an essay on Czesław Marek to
800-471: The best known was the music for the first production of Shaw's Saint Joan (Foulds conducted a Suite from it at the Queen's Hall Proms in 1925). He also wrote the score for Casson's highly successful West End production of Shakespeare's Henry VIII , which ran from December 1925 to March 1926. However, his principal creative energies went into more ambitious and exploratory works, often coloured by his interest in
840-531: The composers championed by proponents of the theory were Hubert Parry , Charles Villiers Stanford and Alexander Mackenzie . Writers who propounded the theory included Francis Hueffer and J A Fuller Maitland , while it received further promotion from the critics Frank Howes and Peter J. Pirie . The term originated in an article by the critic Joseph Bennett in 1882. In his review in The Daily Telegraph of Hubert Parry 's First Symphony he wrote that
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#1733085347071880-518: The latter were called the Cenotaph choir. Performances in 1924 and 1925 took place at the Queen's Hall. In 1926 it returned to the Albert Hall, but this was to be the last performance until 2007, again at the Albert Hall. The performances in 1923–26 constituted the first Festivals of Remembrance. While some critics were not impressed by the work, it was nonetheless popular. One newspaper wrote: "The scope of
920-537: The patronage of Vijayadevji . Foulds' most substantial compositions include string quartets , symphonic poems , concertos, piano pieces and a huge "concert opera" on Dante's The Divine Comedy (1905–1908), as well as a series of "Music-Pictures" exploring the affinities between music and styles of painting. (Henry Wood introduced one of them at the 1913 Proms.) Few of these works were performed and fewer published in his lifetime, and several, especially from his last period in India, are lost. (The missing scores included
960-572: The previously unperformed Quartetto Intimo , by the Endellion Quartet in the early 1980s, began to reawaken interest in him, and this was sustained in the early 1990s by Lyrita Recorded Edition 's decision to issue some of Foulds' works including Three Mantras and Dynamic Triptych on CD. A Proms performance of Three Mantras in 1998 was well received, and soon after the Finnish conductor Sakari Oramo began to champion Foulds' work in concerts with
1000-403: The renaissance. Both were upper-middle-class Oxbridge graduates, like Fuller Maitland, and both were professors at music colleges. The writer Meirion Hughes describes Fuller Maitland's world as one of insiders and outsiders. Fuller Maitland rejected British composers who did not conform to his template, notably Sullivan , Elgar and Delius . Hughes wrote: "Sullivan's frequent forays into what
1040-535: The skies. Surely Dr Mackenzie’s opinion is conclusive; for is he not the composer of Veni Creator, guaranteed as excellent music by Professor Stanford and Dr Parry? You want to know who Parry is? Why, the composer of Blest Pair of Sirens, as to the merits of which you only have to consult Dr Mackenzie and Professor Stanford. The musicologist Colin Eatock writes that the term "English musical renaissance" carries "the implicit proposition that British music had raised itself to
1080-413: The then editor David Drew , until December 2013, and was a copious contributor to other English-language music-journals and magazines. For these and other journalistic purposes he used the nom-de-plume "Calum MacDonald" because at the outset of his writing career, which began with record reviewing for the journal Records & Recording , confusion arose between him and the composer Malcolm MacDonald , who
1120-486: The work gave "capital proof that English music has arrived at a renaissance period." Bennett developed the theme in 1884, singling out for praise a now forgotten symphony by Frederic Cowen (the Scandinavian Symphony ) and equally forgotten operas by Arthur Goring Thomas ( Esmeralda ), Charles Villiers Stanford ( Savonarola ) and Alexander Mackenzie ( Columba ). The idea of an English musical renaissance
1160-522: The work is beyond what anyone has dared to attempt hitherto. It is no less than to find expression for the deepest and most widespread unhappiness this generation has ever known. As such it was received by a very large number of listeners, who evidently felt that music alone could do this for them." However, the work ceased to be performed after 1926. Some commentators have suggested a conspiracy against Foulds – his biographer Malcolm MacDonald has, for instance, implied some sort of "intrigue". It appears Foulds
1200-472: Was a long-established record reviewer for The Gramophone . As Calum MacDonald he also reviewed regularly for BBC Music Magazine and International Record Review . In 1996 he edited for performance, and orchestrated the final portions of, the ballet Soirées de Barcelone by Roberto Gerhard , which was broadcast that year, performed by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra , in a concert to mark
1240-567: Was asked to open a branch of the radio station in Calcutta . However, within a week of arriving there, he died of cholera on 25 April 1939. Foulds was responsible for banning the use of the harmonium on Indian music broadcast on radio. He published a series of four articles titled The Present and Future of Music in India in 1936-1937. The articles covered harmony, orchestration, and notation and appeared in The Music Magazine, published under
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1280-492: Was hailed by Richard Strauss as "the first progressive English musician." The contention of Fuller Maitland and others that the "English musical renaissance" had brought British music into the world class is in contrast to the title of a 1904 book by the German writer Oscar Adolf Hermann Schmitz: Das Land ohne Musik: englische Gesellschaftsprobleme – "The Land without Music: problems of English society". The classic histories of
1320-438: Was love at first sight. Rather than enter into a clandestine affair, they laid the matter before their respective spouses. The two couples met together and agreed amicably on the divorces that would allow John and Maud to marry, though they did not in fact do so until 1932. They were to have two children: John Patrick born in 1916 and a daughter Marybride (later Marybride Watt ) in 1922. English Musical Renaissance Among
1360-581: Was only 21 when he married librarian Dora Woodcock in 1902. She was seven years his senior and the daughter of a Yorkshire-born bookseller who had settled in Llandudno. Their son Michael Raymond was born in Manchester in 1911. Foulds met his musical soul mate Maud MacCarthy in 1915, after moving to London. She was married to William Mann, with whom she had a daughter Joan, born in 1913. According to Malcolm MacDonald's account, both were in unhappy marriages and it
1400-438: Was professor of composition, with pupils including Arthur Bliss , Frank Bridge , Herbert Howells , Gustav Holst , John Ireland and Ralph Vaughan Williams . The composer Sir John Stainer wrote, "Parry and Stanford are rapidly getting absolute control of all the music, sacred or secular, in England; and also over our provincial Festivals and Concert societies, and other performing bodies." Bernard Shaw in his capacity as
1440-505: Was regarded as an inappropriate composer for the occasion because he had not fought in the war, or because of his suspected Left-wing views. When interest in the World Requiem lapsed, Foulds suffered a grave setback and in 1927 left for Paris, working there as an accompanist for silent films. Here, he was acquainted with the Irish-American composer Swan Hennessy with whom he shared an interest in musical Celticism . In 1934 he published
1480-409: Was single-minded to the point of ruthlessness in promoting its conception of British music, sidelining all native composers who did not conform to its aesthetic views. The composer Thomas Dunhill wrote that when he was a student at the Royal College under Parry "it was considered scarcely decent to mention Sullivan's name with approval in the building". Elgar, about whom Fuller Maitland wrote tepidly,
1520-528: Was taken up by the music critic of The Times , Francis Hueffer , and his successor J A Fuller Maitland . The latter became the most assiduous proponent of the theory. His 1902 book English Music in the XIXth Century is subdivided into two parts: "Book I: Before the Renaissance (1801–1850)", and "Book II: The Renaissance (1851–1900)". Fuller Maitland's thesis was that although "it would be absurd to claim
1560-478: Was the collection and preservation of English folk songs . Stanford, Parry and Mackenzie were all founding members and vice-presidents of the Folk-Song Society from 1898. This was another barrier between the renaissance movement and outsiders. Sullivan and Elgar regarded folk music as neither important nor interesting, and Elgar was further distanced from the renaissance set by his antipathy to English music of
1600-399: Was viewed as the questionable realm of operetta removed him from the equation at once. Elgar was never a contender, with his unacademic, lower-middle-class background coupled with progressive tendencies, while "Fritz" Delius was simply not English enough." The same writer suggests that Fuller Maitland's aversion to Sir Frederic Cowen was due to anti-Semitism. A major concern of the movement
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