Examines the trajectories, linearities and paradoxes which have constituted contemporary British music. Provides an account of how British music came to be what it is in the 1990s.

Explores the musical background to Darwinism and the development of the relationship between science and the arts in Victorian Britain.

Music and Performance Culture in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Temperley is the first book to focus upon aspects of performance in the broader context of nineteenth-century British musical culture. In four Parts, 'Musical Cultures', 'Societies', 'National Music' and 'Methods', this volume assesses the role music performance plays in articulating significant trends and currents of the cultural life of the period and includes articles on performance and individual instruments; orchestral and choral ensembles; church and synagogue music; music societies; cantatas; vocal albums; the middle-class salon, conducting; church music; and piano pedagogy. An introduction explores Temperley's vast contribution to musicology, highlighting his seminal importance in creating the field of nineteenth-century British music studies, and a bibliography provides an up-to-date list of his publications, including books and monographs, book chapters, journal articles, editions, reviews, critical editions, arrangements and compositions. Fittingly devoted to a significant element in Temperley's research, this book provides scholars of all nineteenth-century musical topics the opportunity to explore the richness of Britain's musical history.

This book makes a substantial collection of Vaughan Williams's writings widely available to music lovers, students, and researchers alike. It comprises 102 items written by the composer between 1897 and the year of his death, 1958, including articles for musical magazines, transcripts of broadcasts, obituary notices and program notes. The great majority of items in this anthology have been unavailable since their initial publication, some have never been published, and very few have been reprinted. Vaughan Williams reveals the many roles he played during his life in the pages of this book: he was an active supporter of amateur music-makers, a leader in the folksong revival, educator, performer, campaigner for English music, and polemicist. Through all these perspectives, the words are unmistakably those of a composer who came to believe it his duty to build an active and cohesive musical community within his native country.

Articles on English music, from the medieval period to the present day, centred on four of the major areas of scholarly enquiry. The major themes of the essays in this collection reflect the work of the distinguished scholar John Caldwell, professor of music at Oxford University and a composer in his own right. There is a strong focus on early music, with contributions considering the medieval carol, sources for seventeenth- and eighteenth-century harpsichord music, and the transmission of fifteenth-century English music to the Continent; but they range right up to the twentieth century, with an examination of music in Oxford. All are concerned in one way or another with themes which recur in Professor Caldwell's scholarship: sources; style; performance; and historiography. Contributors: SALLY HARPER, DAVID HILEY, EMMA HORNBY, HARRY JOHNSTONE, MARGARET BENT, DAVID MAW, MATTHIAS RANGE, REINHARD STROHM, PETER WRIGHT, MAGNUS WILLIAMSON, JOHN HARPER, SIMON MCVEIGH, CHRISTOPHER PAGE, OWEN REES, SUSAN WOLLENBERG, JOHN ARTHUR SMITH, BENNETT ZON, DAVID MAW. To subscribe to the Tabula Gratulatoria for this volume, CLICK HERE

The aim of this dissertation is to present a study and an historical-musicological analysis of the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra of Sir William Walton, discussing more specifically the shape of the Concerto for Violin in England between 1900 and 1940, taking into consideration the works of Charles Villiers Stanford, Edward Elgar, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Frederick Delius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Arthur Somervell, Arnold Bax and Benjamin Britten. The thesis is divided in three parts: - the first discusses the Concertos for Violin and Orchestra of the composers active in England between 1900 and 1920: Stanford*, Elgar, Coleridge-Taylor, Delius. - the second discusses the Concertos for Violin and Orchestra of the composers active in England between 1920 and 1940: Vaughan Williams, Somervell, Bax, Britten. - The third part discusses the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra of William Walton. At the beginning there is a brief digression on the shape of the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra between the XIX and XX century in Europe, aimed to provide base knowledge of the characteristics of this musical form and to initiate a comparison between the various national composing styles. Each part is introduced by means of a generic historical-musical description of England and presents, after a biographical exposition of the composers, a formal, structural, harmonic and aesthetic analysis more or less extensive of the single concerts, along with a study of the technical aspects of the performance and a reflection on the composer-performer relationship. At the end of each part a comparative compendium is presented. The first and second part are entirely developed in function of the third, that discusses exclusively and in a more detailed manner the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra of William Walton, the work that provoked the most interest in me. To conclude the introduction, in the appendix there are some unpublished quotes, gained during the research work for this dissertation, given by well-known composers, regarding some of the discussed concertos, particularly in relation to Walton's. I believe this to be a precious contribution, that enriches and completes a reflection started in the dissertation, on the purely technical aspect of music for violin of British composers in the first half of the XIX century. * Concerto in D major Op.74 (1899), last concerto for violin and orchestra of the XIX century in England.

Seminal lectures on music education since the 1990s. There is no question that music education is in crisis today. The place of music in the national curriculum is controversial; there have been cuts in the provision of individual lessons; and there have been severe reductions in government funding, with more planned. This book, containing the first five Bernarr Rainbow Lectures, makes an important and timely contribution to the debate on music education. Baroness Warnock brings the perspective of a distinguished philosopher to bear on issues about the nature of music and its study; Lord Moser urges us to maintain and expand what has been achieved since World War II; the late Professor John Paynter, responsible for the 1960s surge in creative approaches to music teaching, presents his case in two contributions; John Stephens discusses structures for music teaching and then, in a second contribution, brings everything up to date; and Professor Gavin Henderson traces his own colourful career and supports music for all ages. Also included is the 2005 Royal Philharmonic Society by the Master of the Queen's Music, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies; an assessment from Bernarr Rainbow himself, written late in his life; an indictment from Wilfrid Mellers; and two reviews of Bernarr Rainbow on Music: Memoirs and Selected Writings, showing the continuing importance of his work fifteen years after his death. This book is part of the series Classic Texts in Music Education, edited by Professor Peter Dickinson, and supported by the Bernarr Rainbow Trust. Peter Dickinson is a British composer, writer and pianist and authorand editor of books on Lennox Berkeley, Copland, Cage, Barber and Berners.