The English Musical Renaissance

Question 1

English Musical Renaissance rough time period

Answer 1

1880s-1940

Question 2

English Musical Renaissance definition

Answer 2

Hypothetical development in late 19th/early 20th century when British composers, often composers lecturing or trained at the Royal College of Music, freed themselves from foreign musical influences to create a distinct national idiom.
A development in British music when British composers created a British (national) style free from foreign (international) influences.
Led by Parry and Stanford.

Question 3

Problems of English Musical Renaissance

Answer 3

“Hypothetical development” = an idea
Renaissance = “rebirth”, when was it alive before and when did it die?
Colin Eatok - British music raised itself to “a stature equal to the best the continent had to offer” - controversial, at time of Brahms​, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak
Stradling + Hughes argument that the movement was “self-appointed” as figureheads of movement all based at RCM (Parry, Vaughan Williams)

Question 4

Das land ohne musik

Answer 4

1904 Oscar A.H. Schmitz - Britain is Das Land ohne Musik - excellent “consumers” of foreign music, but lack a “music of their own”

Question 5

First called Musical Renaissance of England when?

Answer 5

1888 by Morton Latham

Question 6

1870s

Answer 6

Emergence of Parry and Stanford

Question 7

When was grove dictionary first published

Answer 7

1878

Question 8

When was Royal college of music founded

Answer 8

1882

Question 9

When was proms festival established

Answer 9

1895

Question 10

London symphony orchestra set up

Answer 10

1904

Question 11

Parry

Answer 11

1848-1918
Prometheus unbound 1880 (English text)
Blest Pair of Sirens 1887 (Kate + Wills wedding, Wagner’s Die Meistersinger opening - manifesto for English Musical Renaissance as a need for British cultural identity)
Symphony No.3 in C ‘The English’ 1889 (developed 2nd mvt)
Director of RCM 1894-1918
Professor at Oxford 1900-1908
Textbooks and biographies - j.s.bach (1909)

Question 12

Stanford

Answer 12

1852-1924
Beati Quotum Via 1890 (polyphony)
Irish Rhapsodies 1901-1923 (Irish folk tunes)
Professor of composition at RCM 1883-1924
Professor at Cambridge 1888-1924
Articles + books - Brahms (1912)
Vice President of Folk Song Society - edited The National Song Book (1906)

Question 13

Elgar

Answer 13

1857-1934
Froissant 1890
Variations on an Original Theme - ‘Enigma’ Variations 1898-1899 - Nimrod Variation (London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony, stiff upper lip), described by Parry as “quite brilliantly clever and genuine orchestral music” and by Rimsky-Korsakov as best variations since Brahms (1904)
The Dream of Gerontius 1900 (Catholic text)
Crown of India (1912)
Pomp and Circumstance Marches (coronation for King Edward VII)

Question 14

Ethel Smyth

Answer 14

1858-1944
The Wreckers 1904, described by Gates as “most important English opera composed during the period between Purcell and Britten”, described by Prague critic as “one of the very few modern operas which must count among the great things in art”
The March of Women 1911

Question 15

Rebecca Clarke

Answer 15

1886-1979
Morpheus 1917 + Viola Sonata 1919 - modelled on Vaughan Williams and Debussy
Piano Trio 1921

Question 16

An English Style

Answer 16

Championed by Hans Richter (Austrian conductor introduced British audiences to Party, Stanford, Elgar)
English symphony Parry

Question 17

Folk song movement

Answer 17

Feb 1898 English Folk Society
1903 Cecil Sharp collector, wrote books, encouraged composers to write music with English folksongs e.g. Holst Somerset Rhapsody 1906

Question 18

Blest Pair of Sirens opening

Answer 18

Minim - dotted crotchet - quaver, semibreve

Question 19

Howes the English Musical Renaissance 1966

Answer 19

Hubert Parry takes chief credit for the “awakening of English music”
Credit also to Stanford

Question 20

Diana McVeagh New Grove 2001

Answer 20

“Elgar’s voice is individual”

“Unlike Vaughan Williams, he was not interested in the revivals of Tudor music or folksong, and his Englishness can more easily be felt than defined”