Classical music of the United Kingdom

Classical music of the United Kingdom is taken in this article to mean classical music in the sense elsewhere defined, of formally composed and written music of chamber, concert and church type as distinct from popular, traditional, or folk music from the eighteenth century onwards, specifically from the creation of Great Britain by the Acts of Union in 1707. The term in this sense emerged in the early nineteenth century, not long after the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland came into existence in 1801. Composed music in these islands can be traced in musical notation back to the thirteenth century, with earlier origins. It has never existed in isolation from European music, but has often developed in distinctively insular ways within an international framework. Inheriting the European classical forms of the eighteenth century (above all, in Britain, from the example of Handel), patronage and the academy and university establishment of musical performance and training in the United Kingdom during the nineteenth century saw a great expansion. Similar developments occurred in the other expanding states of Europe (including Russia) and their empires. Within this international growth the traditions of composition and performance centred in the United Kingdom, including the various cultural strands drawn from its different provinces, have continued to evolve in distinctive ways through the work of many famous composers.

Early Music

Main article: Early music of the British Isles

Music in the British Isles, from the earliest recorded times until the Baroque and the rise of recognisably modern classical music, was a diverse and rich culture, including sacred and secular music and ranging from the popular to the elite. Each of the major nations of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales retained unique forms of music and of instrumentation, but British music was highly influenced by continental developments, while British composers made an important contribution to many of the major movements in early music in Europe, including the polyphony of the Ars Nova and laid some of the foundations of later national and international classical music. Musicians from the British Isles also developed some distinctive forms of music, including Celtic chant, the Contenance Angloise, the rota, polyphonic votive antiphons and the carol in the medieval era and English madrigals, lute ayres and masques in the Renaissance era, which led particularly to English language opera developed in the early Baroque period of the later seventeenth century.

Music of the eighteenth century

George Frideric Handel was a leading figure of early 18th century British music.

The leading figure in British music of the early 18th century was a naturalized Briton, George Frideric Handel. Although he was born in Germany, he played a defining role in the music of the UK. His orchestral music (such as the Water Music, and the Music for the Royal Fireworks) and his opera, sacred drama and choral music (above all, the Messiah) virtually set the British taste in music for the next 200 years. Today, they remain among the most popular concert works; still account for significant album sales; and are widely performed by amateur ensembles as well as the top professional performers.

In the same period, John Gay wrote his best-known work, The Beggar's Opera (1728), although the music was actually written by Johann Christoph Pepusch. Thomas Arne composed a notable body of work, largely for the theatre, of which his song Rule Britannia is probably the best-known. The light opera and ballad tradition of the mid and later 18th century was continued in famous style by William Shield, Charles Dibdin and his family into the early 19th, and in the same period the 'Irish Melodies' of Thomas Moore, nationalistic in sentiment, found their way into national musical consciousness and fed the Romantic movement in music and literature.

Throughout the eighteenth century, and into the nineteenth, there existed a fashionable preference for Italian and German music, and performers, over the native British. Nonetheless there were many very accomplished British performers, both amateur and professional: among singers the names of Nancy Storace, Michael Kelly and (later) John Braham are especially prominent.

Music of the nineteenth century

With the Act of Union 1800 passed by both the Parliament of Great Britain and the Parliament of Ireland, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was formed, and it becomes possible to speak of classical music in the United Kingdom.

In the early 19th century, the Irish composer and virtuoso pianist John Field was highly influential in his style of playing which is thought to have been an inspiration to Schumann, Chopin and Liszt. He is credited with having invented the nocturne as a musical form. Between 1801 and 1810 Mrs Billington, the great operatic soprano, was back in England and performing at Drury Lane.

In 1813 the London Philharmonic Society was established, which played an important role in the development of musical life in the kingdom. Founders included Sir George Smart, Johann Baptist Cramer, Muzio Clementi, William Ayrton (musical director of the King's Theatre), William Shield, Henry Bishop, Thomas Attwood (composer and organist of St Paul's Cathedral, and teacher of John Goss), Johann Peter Salomon and Vincent Novello. Under their aegis an annual programme of concerts of international calibre was established. The Society was a commissioning patron of Beethoven's Choral Symphony (No. 9).

Musical training was placed on a newly professional footing by the creation (1822) of the Royal Academy of Music, which received a royal charter in 1830. At its inception Dr William Crotch (composer of oratorios), and the pianist-composer Cipriani Potter (first London performer of Mozart and Beethoven concerti, who wrote 9 symphonies and 4 piano concerti) were among those attached to the staff. Through the Philharmonic Society Felix Mendelssohn seized the national musical taste in a craze which lasted for almost twenty years. The flavour of his choral works, especially Elijah and St. Paul, and of Louis Spohr's Last Judgement (Norwich 1830) and Calvary (1839) permanently influenced English taste. Furthermore, most British piano students of promise were sent to the Leipzig Conservatory established by Mendelssohn.

In the earlier part of the century the British singers Michael Kelly, Nancy Storace and John Braham were prominent and by their example sustained the international opera and oratorio works of Handel, Haydn, Mozart and their successors in the British arena. Braham, whose career thoroughly spanned the opera stage and concert platform, established a tradition in public recital which was continued by his successors down into the early 20th century. In particular he upheld the Charles Dibdin tradition of the declamatory ballad in his own compositions within the ballad concert repertoire, and set the English standard in Handelian and florid singing.

Arias or ballads from the English opera became concert standards in recital. The period 1835-1865 saw the popularity of Michael Balfe, (Irish composer of The Bohemian Girl), the operas of John Pyke Hullah, and the earlier English operas of German-born Sir Julius Benedict (though his best-known, The Lily of Killarney, premiered in 1862). Maritana, most famous and ballad-rich of William Vincent Wallace's operas, was staged in 1845. In the same period composer and performer John Liptrot Hatton, famous for songs To Anthea and Simon the Cellarer, held public attention. The operas and ballads of Frederic Clay were performed with lasting popularity in the 1860s.

Among the greatest forces in British music mid-century was (Sir) William Sterndale Bennett, pianist, composer and conductor, an RAM pupil (of Potter's), composer of five piano concerti, who for eleven years took control of the Philharmonic Society baton. Lucy Anderson and her pupil Arabella Goddard, with Franklin Taylor, were leading native mid-Victorian pianists. After the death of Jane Stirling in the 1850s, Frédéric Chopin's other British pupils Lindsay Sloper and Brinley Richards taught in England. Oscar Beringer, Edward Dannreuther (Leipzig pupils of Ignaz Moscheles) and Ernst Pauer (a Chopin editor) settled in London in the 1850s. Agnes Zimmermann was Pauer's pupil. Dannreuther, who founded the London Wagner Society in 1873, was a great influence on Hubert Parry.

Native singers shared the dramatic stage with international stars in Italian and German opera, notably Clara Novello, Helen Lemmens-Sherrington, Sims Reeves and Charles Santley. After her USA tour accompanied by Benedict, Jenny Lind settled permanently in England in c. 1855 and continued to perform and teach.

This century saw the trend towards larger orchestras and correspondingly larger musical venues, permitting public concerts for mass audiences. The Crystal Palace concerts were inaugurated in 1855, with August Manns as the principal conductor. The Handel Triennial Festival, an older institution involving massed choirs before vast audiences, was transferred there. Covent Garden's Royal Opera House was opened in 1858, on the site of an earlier theatre; the Royal Albert Hall was built in 1878.

Orchestras which were founded in this period include the Hallé Orchestra (at Manchester under Sir Charles Hallé), the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. The rich vein of Irish musicianship was fostered through the Royal Irish Academy of Music, the Instrumental Music Club of Dublin and (later) the Royal Dublin Society, under such figures as Sir Robert Stewart

The increasing scale of operatic and dramatic productions, and the increasing taste for sacred drama, oratorio and cantata, marked the later 19th century and characterised the provincial Festivals. Sterndale Bennett in The May Queen (1858), the harmonist Ebenezer Prout in his Hereward and King Alfred, George Macfarren in his Robin Hood (1860), John Francis Barnett's Ancient Mariner cantata (1867), Frederic Hymen Cowen (The Rose Maiden, 1870; Harold 1895) and Sir Arthur Sullivan, in his works with Chorley libretti such as The Sapphire Necklace or The Masque at Kenilworth, or later in his Ivanhoe (1891), developed national mythic, literary and historical subjects. The operas of Arthur Goring Thomas, including Esmeralda and Nadeshda, possessed distinctive lyrical and dramatic qualities.

The religious drama (controlled by censorship) found expression on the concert platform. The Handel, Mendelssohn and Spohr repertoire had become integral to British musical life. Sir Michael Costa's Eli (1855) and Naaman set the pace for the later development in the works of Sullivan (e.g. The Martyr of Antioch, The Light of the World, and The Golden Legend (1886)), Hatton's Hezekiah (1877), Alfred R. Gaul's The Holy City, the Gideon of William Cusins, the Rebekah of Joseph Barnby, the incensed religiosity of Charles Gounod's Redemption (1882) and Mors et Vita (1885) (produced expressly for the British public), and Sir John Stainer's The Crucifixion.

Sullivan, pupil of Goss, won fame in the 1860s with Shakespeare incidental music (The Tempest (1862), The Merchant of Venice (1871), his Irish Symphony (1863-66) and the In Memoriam). His later Savoy opera collaborations with W. S. Gilbert began in 1875, reached their heyday in the 1880s (e.g. The Pirates of Penzance (1880), The Gondoliers (1889)), and concluded in 1896. In the British light opera tradition with spoken dialogue, airs like 'Take a pair of sparkling eyes' entered the concert repertoire. These works formed a distinctive group, but had rivals in Alfred Cellier's Dorothy and The Mountebanks.

Between 1880 and 1887 the London Guildhall School of Music was established. The Royal College of Music, originating in a training school under Arthur Sullivan, was founded (1882-83) under Sir George Grove, and became home to the genius of Sir Hubert Parry (1848-1918). His reformation of British music progressed along several fronts, not least in anthems, cantatas (e.g. Prometheus Unbound, Gloucester 1880, King Saul 1894), in four symphonies (including the English, 1889), in chamber music and in song.

His great contemporary in this revival was the Irish-born Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924), who from Cambridge University extended his influence throughout the national musical life. Frederick Delius, Arthur Somervell and Edward Elgar were joining Stanford and Parry in the renewal of English song in the 1890s, and Delius and Walford Davies were also taking their lead in chamber composition. Tobias Matthay became a leading teacher of English pianoforte method and interpretation.

The last of the great English Victorian composers to emerge was Edward Elgar, who during the 1890s produced his Caractacus and King Olaf cantatas, the Enigma Variations in 1899, and the revolutionary Dream of Gerontius in 1900. The prolific composer Sir Alexander Mackenzie celebrated his native Scotland in three Scottish Rhapsodies for orchestra (1880-81, 1911), and in various concerted works for piano or violin and orchestra composed during the 1880s and 1890s.

The emergence of a 'national' style in late nineteenth century classical music in the United Kingdom paralleled similar developments in most European countries, for instance in the music of Smetana, Dvořák, Grieg, Liszt, Wagner, Nielsen and Sibelius. English folk-music connections were more widely rediscovered and reinfused into the classical materials mainly after 1900, though the work of Sabine Baring-Gould and Cecil Sharp had already borne fruit before the end of the century.

Music of the twentieth century

In the early 20th century Britain produced some notable composers: William Wallace, Frederick Delius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Arnold Bax, Gustav Holst, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and John Ireland, for example. A feature of the music of several of the composers of this era was an interest in the use of British folk music as source material. Examples include Vaughan Williams' English Folk Song Suite for brass band, Delius' Brigg Fair, and Percy Grainger's Molly on the Shore (though Grainger was Australian), as well as subtler references to folk themes in other works.

Under the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, 26 of Ireland's 32 counties, including the city of Dublin, were formally separated from the United Kingdom.

In the second half of the century, William Walton and Benjamin Britten are of especial note as composers, although there are strong contrasts between their individual approaches to music and its part in the national identity. Walton's work featured fanfares and patriotic themes: for instance he composed the ceremonial marches Crown Imperial, written for the coronation of George VI, and Orb and Sceptre, for that of Elizabeth II. Britten, on the other hand, made a conscious effort to set himself apart from the English musical mainstream, which he regarded as complacent, insular and amateurish. However, his works, such as the operas Peter Grimes (1945), and Billy Budd (1951), as well as his instrumental compositions, including his Nocturnal after John Dowland for guitar (1964), place him amongst the most accomplished composers of the century.

The century continued and developed the concert tradition. Sir Henry Wood's name will forever be associated with The Proms, which started life in 1895 as the Queen's Hall Promenade Concerts, but transferred in 1941 to the Albert Hall, where they are still held. The Aldeburgh Festival, founded by Benjamin Britten is another annual musical event of international status.

The advent of broadcasting and recording technologies have opened the possibility of classical music to larger audiences—without the need for ever larger orchestras. It is arguable that this trend may have contributed to the revival of interest in early music which has been led, in Britain, by such figures as Arnold Dolmetsch and David Munrow.

The late 20th century is often characterised as a period dominated by the Cult of personality and this has affected classical music along with the rest of the arts. This has tended to focus British public attention on virtuoso performers such as James Galway (flautist), John Williams (guitarist), Aled Jones (vocalist) and others. This elevation of a relative few to "superstar" status has arguably been at the cost of reducing the "ordinary" orchestral instrumentalist to a poorly-paid and under-rated role.

Music of the twenty-first century

The Royal College of Music from Prince Consort Road, London

In the present era, classical music in Britain must contend and co-exist with a dominant culture of popular music. Specialist music education at establishments such as the Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Royal Northern College of Music and Guildhall School of Music provide world-class music teaching to gifted classical musicians, though the general level of classical music education in Britain is somewhat limited.

In this century, music, like most other aspects of society, has become globalized, and it is increasingly difficult to speak of "music of the UK" as a separate entity. Gifted UK musicians train and perform all over the world: conversely, many of the places in UK music schools are taken up by overseas musicians, and most concerts are international in their content and their performers.

Composition is alive and well: Peter Maxwell Davies, Julian Anderson, Harrison Birtwistle, George Benjamin, Thomas Ades, Jonny Greenwood, Oliver Knussen and to a lesser extent, Andrew Lloyd Webber represent very different strands of composition within UK classical music.

Festivals and venues

The United Kingdom is host to many major orchestras, festivals and venues. The Royal Philharmonic Society (founded 1813) and "The Proms" have presented annual music programmes of international status since the early 19th century.

Timeline

References

This article draws heavily on (and to some extent summarises) other articles from the category of classical music in the United Kingdom. In addition, it references the following sources:

• ^ The Encyclopedia of Classical Music edited by Peter Gammond, Salamander Books, ISBN 0-86101-400-6
• ^ Ibid.
• Percy A. Scholes, The Oxford Companion to Music, Tenth Edition, Oxford University press, 1970
• Latham, R (1983) The Diary of Samuel Pepys. Volume X — Companion, Bell & Hyman, London. ISBN 0-7135-1993-2. See the entry under "Music" by Richard Luckett, for both the Commonwealth and Restoration periods.

See also

• European classical music
• Timeline of trends in British music

External links

• Classical composer biographies at University of Cambridge
• The British Library — Classical music sound archive