Victorian and Edwardian Music

English music had for a long while been dominated by the spirit and even style of Hendel. The great German composer had established artistic norms as well as actual forms such as the oratorio which proved as satisfying to musicians and audiences in the mid-nineteenth century as they had done in the eighteenth; England did not possess the state orchestras and opera houses which were a feature of the German-speaking part of Europe, and she had as her state music only that of the Chapel Royal and the Armed Services. Her universities offered a form of teaching which produced church musicians almost exclusively, so that the best music was thought to be sacred. But even here, and in an Anglican environment, the visitors outshone the native composers. Some kind of national inferiority complex was inevitable; perhaps in self-defence, the view came to be held that skill in music was somehow incompatible with “gentlemanliness”.

This was a deadlock; but fortunately it was broken by a group of men born around the middle of the century. These were Arthur Sullivan, Hubert Parry, Charles Villiers Stanford and Edward Elgar (1857 – 1934). Elgar’s style was derived not only from German music – Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms and Wagner – but also from other models, including Rossini, Franck and Tchaikovsky. This mainly self-taught composer gave himself a lengthy course of instruction tailored exactly to his own requirements, creating an individual, highly expressive style. His public career, in the larger sense, began with the orchestral overture Froissart (1890), a tribute to fourteenth-century chivalry expressed in the vigorous, leaping melodies and glowing orchestral colours which were henceforth to be the features of his style. His particular form of pageantry found expression in the Black Knight, King Olaf, The Banner of St. George and others. His marches inevitably caused his name to be linked with a kind of blistering patriotism or “jingoism” which thoughtful Englishmen find distasteful. His concertos for violin and for cello and two “English” orchestral pieces “Cockaigne” and “Falstaff” at last have won a place in the international repertory, for Elgar’s capacity for noble emotional utterance, for vigour not unmixed with sadness, have brought him deserved popularity.

Elgar was a nationalist in some senses. He loved England, her institutions and her history. But he did not draw on her folk music. The heritage of folk music, and also of the compositions of Tudor and later musicians, was to inspire the next generation, led by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

But Frederick Delius (1862 – 1934) should be mentioned first. The son of a German wool merchant and a Yorkshire mother, he received an expensive education, much travelled abroadand at last made France his home. What he called “traditional technique” was, he said, of little use for him for learning killed instinct. “A sense of flow is the main thing, and it doesn’t matter how you do it as long as you master it”. That he did master a compositional technique suitable for his own purposes is undeniable (Mass of Life, A Village Romeo and Juliet).

Ralph Vaughan Williams(1872 – 1958),the son of a clergyman, received precisely the kind of the rough academic training that Delius did without. In 1904 he joined the English Folk Song Society. The bicentenary of Purcell’s death in 1895 with its reawakening interest in that composer and folk song revival were manifestations of a greater musical awareness. Williams wrote operas, ballets and film music; church music of all kinds, many songs, orchestral works as well as nine symphonies. Yet it would be misleading to leave the impression that Vaughan Williams was an austere musician. He is often playful: to write concertos for harmonica and tuba, as he did, is no act of a musical puritan, and the Eighth Symphony (1955), written when he was over eighty, is youthfully lavish in its use of percussion instruments.

Both Williams and Gustav Holst (1874 – 1934) contributed to English musical life by teaching as well as composing. Holst’s talent for brilliant orchestral writing is shown in the highly imaginative suite that he called The Planets (1916). Born the son of a music teacher, with experience of a village church organist and choral society conductor, Holst cared deeply for folk music. But he was equally at home in the Shakespearean world of his opera. At the Boar’s Head (1924), in Thomas Hardy’s country with the orchestral Egdon Heath (1927), and even writing for a military band. Like Williams he was attracted be neo-classicism. In broad terms it represented a rediscovery of counterpoint with its energy and strength, and an alliance of classical form with modern harmony

VaughanWilliams (1872 – 1958) had been thoroughly trained as a composer under Parry and Stanford (he also read history at Cambridge). His name, especially as a song writer, had begun to become known when he was asked to assume the musical editorship of The English Hymnal (he had previously edited the Welcome Odes for the Purcell Society). Under his editorship, the hymnal became the single most influential musical force not only in the English church, but in several American ones. Later hymnals routinely plunder the tunes found, arranged, composed, and commissioned by Vaughan Williams. Interestingly, he hesitated before accepting the position, since he knew that he would have no time for his own composition. It turned out, however, that years’ immersion in some of the greatest tunes in the world had salutary effects on the composer. One of them was his acquaintance with the “Third Psalter Tune”, associated with Addison’s hymn “When, rising from the bed of death” (No. 92 in the English Hymnal). This became the basis of the Fantasia.

In 1908, although Vaughan Williams had some important works to his credit, he took three months to study with Ravel (a younger man, by the way). This led, not surprisingly, to a new interest in sonority. Evidently, Ravel also took a few ideas from Vaughan Williams. Pre-Ravel Vaughan Williams orchestrates like Parry, who orchestrated like Brahms. He also studied Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius intently, even though he later reacted against that piece in his own oratorios. After Ravel, we get an interest in the juxtaposition of distinct colours, as opposed to the “kaleidoscope effect” in Elgar, a line that constantly shifts colours, or the “black-and-white” high relief of Brahms, used mainly to clarify inner-voice counterpoint.

Given the new interest in colour, Vaughan Williams seems almost perverse in writing a piece for string choir, usually thought of as homogenous.

He may have gotten the idea from Elgar’s masterful Introduction and Allegro for string orchestra and string quartet (1905), a work Vaughan Williams certainly knew. However, the two works sound nothing alike, and they take from different sets of procedures. Elgar embraces the language of the late nineteenth century-deriving from Wagnerian and Brahmsian chromaticism. Vaughan Williams finds in the old church modes (also found in folk and Elizabethan music) an escape from what he considered a harmonic cul-de-sac. Elgar uses the forms of the Classical and Romantic Central European tradition: sonata-allegro, overture with two episodes, and fugue. Vaughan Williams bases his piece on the Elizabethan fantasy – an instrumental form which develops, primarily contrapuntally, several related themes in independent sections.

The richness and intense sweetness of the strings carries over into other works of this time – the Phantasy Quintet, the Five Mystical Songs, and the Symphony No. 2 “London”. As Vaughan Williams’s career proceeded, the string sound became leaner, more athletic, mainly because the music had changed.

Many people regard the work as grave or emotionally cool, and I must confess I find myself in the opposite camp. To me, it shares the structure of a great sermon, starting with daily life and leading you to heaven by degrees.