The Neglect of English Classical Music

by David Hamilton (August 2009)

Yehudi Menhuin wrote to the Times in 1995, “English composers will not slavishly follow some arbitrary theory or construction, whether political or musical. They have kept their Englishness intact, whilst the mercantilistic world has gone all-American.”

Why is it neglected? Like other aspects of English culture it is the victim of a negative ideology that devalues it with pejorative labels like “elitist” or “narrow” but the labels do not fit reality. English music is not imitative, but innovative. It has developed significantly from the early twentieth century but is still rooted in the English tradition – it is tuneful, melodic, tonal and recognisably English. English Classical Music is hidden by a cloud of prejudice and ignorance and is stigmatised as “elitist” or “quaint” when in fact it has the tonal qualities that people enjoyed before modernism set out to destroy them.

In 2005, the Proms had a number of all-English programmes and all but one sold-out, whereas other non-English music programmes did not. The Gloucester 3 Choirs Festival in 2001 did a special Festival of only English music and sold out swiftly. The BBC Music Magazine has a Top 20 Best sellers list and there is some really interesting English music discs there, often by obscure composers.

Despite a noble heritage, much of this glorious music is overlooked. “English Music” festivals tend to either fail at the outset for lack of funds or become internationalised and absorbed into the Social Engineering Culture. The Cheltenham Festival was founded as “The Cheltenham Festival of British Music”, but went “international” and now stages the same as everywhere else.

In the Baroque period we produced composers of immense skill like Purcell, Byrd, Arne, Tallis and Blow. The period between Arne and Parry has been dismissed as a “musical Ice-Age” though we had Stainer, Wesley, Potter, Sterndale Bennett, Crotch, who were on a par with their foreign contemporaries, but not progressive enough for international attention. In 1769, Englishman Philip Hayes, who built Oxford’s beautiful Holywell Music Room, composed the world’s first piano concerto! Some great composers died young: Edward Bache, composer of exquisite chamber works, died at 25, and Thomas Linley, died aged 22 in a boating accident in 1777, yet produced wonderful anthems, odes and oratorio, about one of which was written “Neither Purcell nor Mozart ever gave stronger proof of original genius than can be traced in this charming ode”.

Yehudi Menhuin, also stated: “I am drawn to English music because I love the way it reflects the climate and the vegetation which know no sharp edges, no definitive demarcation, where different hues of green melt into each other and where the line between sea and land is always joined and changing, sometimes gradually, sometime dramatically. The music … is a very human music, not given to shattering utterances, to pronouncements of right or wrong, not to abstract intellectual processes, to human emotion in the abstract, but to a single man’s experience of today as related to a particular place…”

In 1927, Holst wrote incidental music to a mystery play “The Coming of Christ” which has never been recorded. As I mentioned, Cliffe’s first symphony, an acclaimed masterpiece, has not had a professional public performance for over 90 years. His second symphony has not been published; none of the symphonies by Walford Davies, Coleridge Taylor and Somervell are available, nor is Bowen’s first symphony which was so popular that The Times devoted a whole column to analysing it; Delius’ opera, “A Village Romeo and Juliet”, considered by many the first great modern English opera, has not been performed at either the Royal Opera House or English National Opera for over half a century.

Contemporary artists have similar repertoires and only a small number of works are considered “acceptable.” Concert managers are not prepared to take risks, so they programme what they know, usually popular classics for government funding. A programme of Brahms, Tchaikovsky or Verdi is familiar and safe but to present say, Moeran, Gibbs and Farrar a risk. English music is not fashionable. It is not politically correct and managers hesitate to promote anything English, as if inimical to other cultures. In an era of “diversity” and “multiculturalism” English culture is shunned. It is not the done thing to seem nationalistic by celebrating our traditions: the ending of Elgar’s Caractacus is stigmatised because it points forward to a great British Empire! We are supposed to be ashamed of our culture and ignore it or apologise. Composers of the early twentieth century are dismissed as the “English pastoral composers,” lesser musicians whose works are put below the Germanic, Russian, or Scandinavian schools. But the pastoral tradition has always inspired composers and poets.

Parry and Stanford had individual voices yet developed their style from the German musical idiom but are often excluded from the pastoral canon though their importance to the English Musical Renaissance is recognised.

Contemporaries like John Ireland and Gustav Holst, despite varied influences and often different styles, played an important part in the development of a recognisably English pastoral style.

The English Music Festival cannot get funding from the Arts Council. The only political organisation to give support was the Campaign for an English Parliament and their name worried some sponsors who wanted it removed from the programme, for fear of political embarrassment. Several high-profile companies declined as they wanted to be associated with pop and rock. Some firms first pledged their support and then declined.

It is up to us to support it. 
The English Music festival booking office for 2010 will soon be open. Their website is:

http://www.englishmusicfestival.org.uk/

http://www.englishmusicfestival.org.uk/programme.html

To comment on this article, please click here.

To help New English Review continue to publish critical and  informative articles such as this one, please click If you enjoyed this article by David Hamilton and would like to read more, please click here.