Sensibility and English Song: Critical Studies of the Early Twentieth CenturyThis highly acclaimed study of English song is the first detailed account of an unusually fruitful interrelationship between English music and English poetry. The period covered is known as the English Musical Renaissance and runs from the last years of the nineteenth century to the Second World War. Stephen Banfield traces the late flowering of Romantic impulses in solo song during these years, surveying it from critical, analytical and historical angles. He plots the growth of the English stylistic sensibility in song in the decades leading up to the First World War, discusses in detail the plateau it reached between the wars (particularly in the 1920s), and shows how and why it declined as other musical concerns took the field. Poets whose verse was set to music most frequently, including Housman, Hardy, de la Mare and Yeats, are treated at length, as are pre-eminent song composers such as Butterworth, Finzi, Gurney, Ireland, Quilter, Somervell, Stanford, Vaughan Williams and Warlock. In all, more than fifty composers are discussed, and numerous individual songs. In the final section of the book, besides providing an extensive bibliography, Dr Banfield catalogues over 5,000 songs, giving dates of composition and publication and much other detail, listed by composer. This comprehensive survey will prove an invaluable reference guide to all students of the subject. |
Contents
The condition of English song in 1900 | 1 |
Reticent Victorians Elgar Parry Stanford and Wood | 15 |
Narrative songcycle and dramatic scena Somervell and Walford Davies | 42 |
Three postVictorians Hurlstone Bridge and Vaughan Williams | 65 |
The Edwardian age I | 88 |
The Edwardian age II | 106 |
The first world war its effect and its victims | 133 |
The lyrical impulse between the wars | 157 |
Henry Walford Davies | 437 |
Frederick Delius | 438 |
Bernard van Dieren | 439 |
Edward Elgar | 440 |
Ernest Farrar | 443 |
Gerald Finzi | 444 |
John Foulds | 447 |
Henry Balfour Gardiner | 449 |
Introduction the uses of technique style and personal symbolism in John Ireland | 159 |
The music of Ivor Gurney | 179 |
Georgian poetry and Georgian music | 208 |
Housman and the composers documentation and evaluation | 233 |
The Celtic twilight | 248 |
Time and destiny the Hardy songs of Gerald Finzi | 275 |
The uses and abuses of technique | 301 |
the pursuit of detachment | 319 |
Rethinking the accompaniment | 324 |
the later Vaughan Williams Rubbra and Hoist | 328 |
the later Bridge Goossens and others | 340 |
Escape into Warlock | 356 |
Bliss Walton Berners and the breaking of the image | 365 |
Britten and his period | 382 |
The story of The Joyce Book | 397 |
C W Orr on Housman settings | 399 |
On Interpreting Housman | 400 |
Song Lists | 407 |
Arnold Bax | 415 |
Lennox Berkeley | 419 |
Gerald Berners | 420 |
Arthur Bliss | 421 |
Rutland Boughton | 423 |
Havergal Brian | 425 |
Frank Bridge | 426 |
Benjamin Britten | 428 |
William Denis Browne | 430 |
Benjamin Burrows | 431 |
Alan Bush | 433 |
Samuel ColeridgeTaylor | 434 |
Eugene Goossens | 453 |
Percy Grainger | 454 |
Ivor Gurney | 456 |
Patrick Hadley | 462 |
Fritz Hart | 463 |
Michael Head | 474 |
Joseph Holbrooke | 476 |
Gustav Holst | 479 |
Herbert Howells | 481 |
William Hurlstone | 483 |
John Ireland | 484 |
Frederick Lambert | 487 |
Norman ONeill | 489 |
Charles Wilfred Orr | 491 |
Hubert Parry | 492 |
Roger Quilter | 496 |
Alan Rawsthorne | 500 |
Edmund Rubbra | 501 |
Cyril Scott | 503 |
Francis George Scott | 506 |
Arthur Somervell | 510 |
Charles Villiers Stanford | 513 |
John Sykes | 517 |
Michael Tippett | 519 |
William Walton | 523 |
Peter Warlock | 524 |
Charles Wood | 528 |
Bibliography | 531 |
543 | |
Other editions - View all
Sensibility and English Song: Volume 2: Critical Studies of the Early ... Stephen Banfield No preview available - 1985 |
Common terms and phrases
accompaniment Aeolian Hall Andante anon ballad Bantock baritone bass Bredon Hill Bridge Butterworth cadence Celtic chord chromatic cresc cycle Cyril Scott Delius Dieren dominant dream Elgar emotional English song Finzi Fiona Macleod Five Songs flat folksong Four Songs fragment GB-Lbl Add GB-Lcm Georgian Gerald Finzi Gervase Elwes Grainger Gurney Gurney's Hall Hardy harmonic heart Herrick Holst Housman Howells Ireland Ivor Gurney Joyce later Leslie East London lost lullaby Lyrics Mare Mark Raphael melody Moderato Moeran molto night orchestra Parry perf phrase piano poco poem poet poetry published Quilter rhythm Romantic Rossetti Scott setting Shakespeare Shelley Shropshire Lad solo Somervell Sonnet soprano Stanford stanza string quartet style sweet Tennyson tenor Thomas thou Three Songs tonal trans Vaughan Williams verse vocal voice and piano W. E. Henley W. H. Davies Warlock Wigmore Hall Williams's wind words written Yeats