Reviewed Elsewhere: Tim Rayborn, A New English Music: Composers and Folk Traditions in England’s Musical Renaissance from the Late 19th to the Mid-20th Century.

Tim Rayborn. A New English Music: Composers and Folk Traditions in England’s Musical Renaissance from the Late 19th to the Mid-20th Century. Jefferson, NC: McFarland,  2016. 312 pp. $39.95 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-78649-634-1.

In this book Tim Rayborn provides a narrative history of British art music in the period after 1880. The book concentrates on the network of composers and teachers loosely centred on the Royal College of Music in London. Following the long period from the death of Henry Purcell in 1695 in which Britain seemed to produce no composers of international standing, the work of this group composers and those associated with them has been characterized as a ‘renaissance’ in composition and music making. ...

The book ... begins with two contextual chapters ... These are followed by seven chapters providing ‘life and works’ type surveys of some key composers Vaughan Williams, Holst, Butterworth, Moeran, Warlock, Finzi and Grainger. ...

The period after 1880 is a fascinating time for music historians and musicologists concerned with the location of music making within broader social, cultural, economic and political histories. This period witnessed a flowering of national musical consciousness and culture both within Europe countries and elsewhere. In Britain this was often informed by an elaboration of national culture understood through a lens of social Darwinism set against fears concerning the degenerate qualities of industrialism and commercialism. In turn, this existed within a context of geopolitical manoeuvring within Europe and the consolidation of formal empire. Music was given substance within new institutions and organizations relating to education, local and regional festivals, concert venues, and later broadcasting. ...

The very naming of British art music post-1880 as a ‘renaissance’ is itself a political issue. It is linked with attempts to assert a sense of nationhood and cultural vitality which mobilizes a mythologized and already politicized history of Tudor England. Similarly the appellations ‘English’ and ‘British’ to the renaissance can easily be understood as acts, conscious, or otherwise, asserting a very particular metropolitan perspective on Britishness. ... Rayburn is well aware of this politics but is prepared to dismiss it in a couple of sentences without further consideration (p. 4). This sets the mood which carefully skirts around what might delicately be termed the more contentious aspects of music history. ...

Having said this, the book has many strengths, and it is informed by recent scholarship and provides detailed accounts of selected composers. In this sense, it has to be a welcome addition to the literature. ... The author takes seriously both the folk revival and the early music revival, and it is good to see the work of Arnold Dolmetsch given serious consideration. Yet the book is bound by a predetermined conception of English musical renaissance, and to this extent, it does not take the reader beyond a version of history already more fully present in Howes (1966). There is no substantive place in the book for some of the historically interesting and important renaissance ‘outsiders’. ... In summary, the book serves as a useful introduction to an already established history but does not extend or critically interrogate that history. Nor does it grasp the multiple opportunities for this music to speak into those historical debates which might begin to unpack this fascinating period in British culture.

George Revill. Twentieth Century British History 29, 2 (2018), 326–329.