# English Culture and Classical Music



## Forss (May 12, 2017)

Perhaps some of you won't agree, and that's fine, naturally, but I've thought about this a great deal: Why is it, in your opinion, that English culture has not produced _Great_ composers (and/or artists in general) like, say, Austria/Germany, France or Russia? Are they, as it were, more scientifically inclined? They have a strong tradition of great scientists (Newton, Darwin, Russell, etc.), but not so in the Arts. For example, in their neighbouring country, Ireland, one finds great _artists_ such as Berkeley, Shaw, Joyce and Beckett-which must, I think, be attributed to their rather religious constitution-but not in England. Why is this? I'd love to hear your opinion on this issue!


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

I'd love to contribute to your discussion, but my lack of history prevents me from doing so with some sense of expertise. Some criteria that come to mind include:

1. Emphasis on the arts (music in particular)?
2. Amount of musical education provided?
3. Importance of music in the culture?

All three categories interact, but that should stimulate some discussion.


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

That's an interesting one and I'm sure other English members on here will have a view. In fact, it would be interesting to hear the views of any members, whatever their nationality. 

It can't be said that the English have no inclination towards music as some of the all time great rock bands were/are English. However, we do seem to have fallen a little short in terms of classical composition. I think Elgar, Vaughan-Williams and Holst are probably the most highly regarded English composers and there are less well known ones like Bax, Delius etc. but England has never produced a composer to compare with Beethoven or Mozart. Unfortunately, I am uncertain as to why this might be although I would love to hear the views of others on this subject.


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## Animal the Drummer (Nov 14, 2015)

With respect, Forss, my opinion is that your basic premise is flat wrong. I'll give you three great composers straight off the top of my head: Purcell, Handel (check out what he himself said on the subject if you doubt my claiming him for England) and Elgar. As for the bit about "artists in general": while I could quote great long lists of them, I'll simply name Shakespeare and rest my case there. (Nor incidentally do I agree that Ireland's list of great writers has much if any connection with their constitution, but that's another story.)


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

Animal the Drummer said:


> With respect, Forss, my opinion is that your basic premise is flat wrong. I'll give you three great composers straight off the top of my head: Purcell, Handel (check out what he himself said on the subject if you doubt my claiming him for England) and Elgar. As for the bit about "artists in general": while I could quote great long lists of them, I'll simply name Shakespeare and rest my case there. (Nor incidentally do I agree that Ireland's list of great writers has much if any connection with their constitution, but that's another story.)


Oh yes, I'd forgotten Purcell, I don't really focus much on that musical period. Handel was born in Germany and did not come to England until he was nearly 30 but you're right in that he became a British subject and self-identified as such.


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

I don't think it's the English attitude to the arts as such, I think it's more to do with music in particular. I remember reading from somewhere (so yes, it was someone's opinion) that (art) music was even held a bit in suspicion in England, due to its connection with metaphysics, as thus, Germanness. So it was more like a question of the famous English practicality vs. metaphysics than that of science vs. arts. To me it sounds like there is some truth in that.

With folk music (which rock is a brand of) it's a different story.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

chill782002 said:


> Oh yes, I'd forgotten Purcell, I don't really focus much on that musical period. Handel was born in Germany and did not come to England until he was nearly 30 but you're right in that he became a British subject and self-identified as such.


There are many "great" composers of early music, from Tye and Taverner to Byrd and Gibbons; there are plenty of more recent "great" composers, from Cardew and Havey to Birtwistle and Ferneyhough and Finnissy. I don't know enough about the stuff in the middle to comment, though I'd say that Elgar 2 is a "great" symphony and Turn of the Screw is a "great" opera.

I also think you're wrong about 20th century literature, think of novelists Lawrence and Conrad, poets like Eliot and Yeats . . . And clearly in the 19th there are some great novelists and poets, I won't make a list!

I would argue the similarly for painting and sculpture.


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## Animal the Drummer (Nov 14, 2015)

Xaltotun said:


> I don't think it's the English attitude to the arts as such, I think it's more to do with music in particular. I remember reading from somewhere (so yes, it was someone's opinion) that (art) music was even held a bit in suspicion in England, due to its connection with metaphysics, as thus, Germanness. So it was more like a question of the famous English practicality vs. metaphysics than that of science vs. arts. To me it sounds like there is some truth in that.
> 
> With folk music (which rock is a brand of) it's a different story.


Ah yes, "Das Land ohne Musik", the old German stereotype about England. There may have been a period or two in English history when it contained a germ of truth, but it's no more accurate as a general description than such stereotypes usually are, i.e.not at all.


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## Omicron9 (Oct 13, 2016)

Great topic, and one about which I've had much thought. Here's my two cents:

Innovators and composers willing to push and expand art. During the time of visionaries such as Stravinsky, Bartok, and Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School, England had Elgar, Delius, and the English Pastoral School of composers. For me, it seems the prime directive of the English pastoral school was to prolong the 19th century as long as possible. In English music, the 19th century seem to end somewhere in the 1950s. The English composers were stuck in the romantic/diatonic. They seemed adamant about not moving the art forward; one could argue they were the Amish in the classical world. 

Don't misunderstand: I think the English pastoralists produced some very pretty music. Nothing wrong with that. But they weren't innovators. They weren't pushing the boundaries. They weren't moving art forward. 

Art must move forward to expand, develop, and grow.

Of course now there are British artists of note (no pun intended or implied) such as Ferneyhough, who is certainly expanding boundaries with his works for string quartet. I like his work very much, and as a side note, please check out the Arditti set of his complete string quartet works.

Of course if you read Gramophone magazine, a British publication to which I've subscribed for years, they seem to think that the greatest composers in history were all British, including and especially the English Pastoral school. However, they seem to be the only ones who think so. 

Again, all just my observations and theories. None of this is meant as a slam against the English or the English pastoral school.

Carry on.
-09


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Vaughan Williams, Bax, Tallis, Handel are up there with any of the greatest composers I believe.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Do not forget the W. S. Gilbert & Arthur Sullivan collaboration, very British.


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## Heliogabo (Dec 29, 2014)

I think it's not all about "great composers". England has produced some relevant, and uniques, ties between music and culture. Think about spleen and melancholy of renaissance, which is well represented in Dowland, Gibbons, Jenkins, Holborne's (etc) artistry; all of them provided material and participated of artistic movements (poetry, litterature, theatre) were music was essential to the culture.


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## Annied (Apr 27, 2017)

Just a thought, but I wonder if we traded on our reputation for producing great writers and, as a result, composers were left in the shadows.


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## BabyGiraffe (Feb 24, 2017)

Great doesn't mean anything. 
If you mean composers with good music that many people will like - well, there are many great English composers then (just like there are many such composers in every country).
The problem is that they were not famous.
I bet that many obscure compositions would be more popular, if they were wearing the name of a famous composer (noone outside of the academics that research Handel is interested in the names of composers from which he "borrowed" or imitated).


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

_Sehnsucht._. Yearning. The search for a better, higher life or world. The Germans especially, said my German Lit prof, suffered from a bad case of Sehnsucht for a long time, and it often expressed itself in music as both career and as release (or attempt at release). Peoples living in uncertain times, in countries with uncertain boundaries (Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Italy, Russia, etc.) tended to seek a Better World in Art and Music. The English, after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, put away national discord and concentrated on living quietly, making money, and dabbling in science and invention. It was OK to do a little writing, paint a few pictures (Blake and Turner spring to mind, both regarded as misfits) but one hired foreigners mostly if music for some specific purpose was needed. It wasn't something suitable for native-born, proper Englishmen.


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## Myriadi (Mar 6, 2016)

England has produced scores of fantastic composers, and quite a few great ones. It's just that most of them were active during the Medieval and the Renaissance eras - Dunstaple, Power, Tallis, Byrd, Gibbons, Bull, Dowland, Lawes. Since for most people CM is limited to roughly the 18th and the 19th cenutry, they don't get as much attention, and that's all.


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## wolkaaa (Feb 12, 2017)

I think it's really a cultural thing. Why?
1. From all great European and American cultures, only cultural similar UK and USA are weak in classical music. And that regardless of the fact, that UK have a very long classical music history, in contrast to Russia.
2. Cultural similar Germans and Austrians are probably the greatest in classical music. Coincidence?
3. The greatest "English" composer is actually German (Handel). That says a lot. There are even two other famous English/British composers from the small German minority, Holst and Delius. Coincidence?
4. As you know, MANY Americans have British or Irish roots, but not many American composers are of British or Irish descent. The small minority of Russian Jews probably produced more famous composers: Gershwin, Copland, Bernstein, Glass and others.

I'm sorry for possible grammatical mistakes.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

My first question is:

How many great composers are there?

We need to know this first before we can determine how far England has fallen short.


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

Strange Magic said:


> _Sehnsucht._. Yearning. The search for a better, higher life or world. The Germans especially, said my German Lit prof, suffered from a bad case of Sehnsucht for a long time, and it often expressed itself in music as both career and as release (or attempt at release). Peoples living in uncertain times, in countries with uncertain boundaries (Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Italy, Russia, etc.) tended to seek a Better World in Art and Music. The English, after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, put away national discord and concentrated on living quietly, making money, and dabbling in science and invention. It was OK to do a little writing, paint a few pictures (Blake and Turner spring to mind, both regarded as misfits) but one hired foreigners mostly if music for some specific purpose was needed. It wasn't something suitable for native-born, proper Englishmen.


This seems a sensible explanation to me.

Also, it seems to me that it isn't a question about whether there are great English composers or not. It's a question of the relationship between music and culture in England. Did music spring from the very heart of culture, was it the most accurate expression of Englishness, was it the culmination of all English hopes and dreams? I think not. The culture expressed itself more accurately in other ways. Was there music? Of course there was. Was it any good? It doesn't really matter to this question.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

wolkaaa said:


> I think it's really a cultural thing. Why?
> 1. From all great European and American cultures, only cultural similar UK and USA are weak in classical music.
> 2. Cultural similar Germans and Austrians are probably the greatest in classical music. Coincidence?
> 3. The greatest "English" composer is actually German (Handel). That says a lot. There are even two other famous English/British composers from the small German minority, Holst and Delius. Coincidence?
> ...


What descent had Amy Beach, Charles Ives, Elliott Carter and John Cage? They were not Jews and I prefer these even Cage over those you mentioned.
Howard Hanson was of Swedish descent.
I think a reason why there are so many great German composers is because Germany was split for so long time and was decentralised even after having been unified.


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## wolkaaa (Feb 12, 2017)

Sloe said:


> What descent had Amy Beach, Charles Ives, Elliott Carter and John Cage? They were not Jews and I prefer these even Cage over those you mentioned.
> Howard Hanson was of Swedish descent.
> I think a reason why there are so many great German composers is because Germany was split for so long time and was decentralised even after having been unified.


Did I say there are no non-Jewish American composers? Can't understand your objection. 
Decentralisation can't be the reason, it just foster classical music. Russia, for instance, was very centralized. Also there are a far overproportional number of German descendant composers in other countries, while there a far underproportional number of British descendants.


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## Klassik (Mar 14, 2017)

Myriadi said:


> England has produced scores of fantastic composers, and quite a few great ones. It's just that most of them were active during the Medieval and the Renaissance eras - Dunstaple, Power, Tallis, Byrd, Gibbons, Bull, Dowland, Lawes. Since for most people CM is limited to roughly the 18th and the 19th cenutry, they don't get as much attention, and that's all.


I'll certainly agree to this. I'm a big fan of the Purcells, W. Lawes, and John Jenkins. There's probably others I would like too, but they don't get much attention as you say so I have to do a lot of the research on my own. I must admit that part of the reason why I like the early Baroque periods is due to the timbre of viols. There's just something about viols, even modern ones, that sound so rich to me (the bass viol in particular I would say). Of course, some recordings mix viols and violin family instruments so you have to do some research to know what you're getting.

As for why England kind of fell off the classical music map during the Classical and Romantic eras, I'm not sure. Perhaps there were cultural differences that put England at odds with continental European culture? I don't know off the top of my head, it's been a while since I've studied this stuff.

Another German born composer who spent most of his life in England was William Herschel. While Herschel's music is probably not his claim to fame, he did compose some fine music. I don't know if he would have been even more famous had he committed his life to music instead of doing multiple things like he did.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

I'm more familiar with the 18th century. The composers split into two groups - the London theatre composers like Dibdin and Arne and the provincial church organists such as Mudge and Avison. Boyce is unusual in that he continued the Purcell tradition of writing both church music and theatre music. Boyce is now better known as the editor of "Cathedral Music" much used in Anglican services.

The main problem is that we never developed an orchestra as at Mannheim so we never provided the resources for composers to develop. As we move into the 19th century, we have composers such as Stainer a church organist and Sullivan  - yet another pupil of the Chapel Royal!

The problem in England is that we never developed a full blown musical style fully independent of the Anglican Church which also meant that we tended to look down on theatrical music.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Taggart said:


> The main problem is that we never developed an orchestra as at Mannheim so we never provided the resources for composers to develop.


So true. It was the Germans Handel and Johann Peter Salomon who would put together the orchestral resources necessary to perform their (and others') music in England. Plus we have the long love affair of the English for the likes of Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Bruch. Grieg and Sibelius revered also, for that matter, as honorary Germans. This does not demonstrate a great and abiding conviction by the English of that period in the value of their home-grown composers.


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

It occurs to me to turn the discussion around a bit and ask what I think is a different, but related, cultural question: why did the type of nationalistic militarism that developed on the Continent in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - and yes, particularly in Germany and Austria - never develop in England? Is there a cultural correlation there? A drive for order, structure, power, and control (in music and over neighbors) on the one hand, and a more laid-back, "islander" sensibility on the other?


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

Interesting question. I have a background in philosophy and I must agree with Nietzsche who wrote that all English thinkers are superficial thinkers so actually not really thinkers at all. Why is that? Well, I think it has to do with the philosophical tradition to make a distinction between ratio (reason/understanding) and the intellect. Ratio works discretely or logically and is therefore able to conclude B from A (it develops step by step). English thinkers reduce everything to the senses and the reason (you have sense data and then our reason finds patterns in it) which is also the basis of modern science. English thinkers are thus great scientists. But they lack (or neglect) the intellect which is a more dialectical ability so see the bigger picture and to abridge contraries (whereas the reason holds the law of non-contradiction as it's fundament!). The intellect is a more intuitive (or even mystical) capacity. And the truth which artists reveal to us is the truth that can be intuitively seen by the intellect (of the genius). Because the English neglect their intellect in favor of the reason they haven't been very fruitful in producing great art...


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

wolkaaa said:


> I think it's really a cultural thing. Why?
> 1. From all great European and American cultures, only cultural similar UK and USA are weak in classical music. And that regardless of the fact, that UK have a very long classical music history, in contrast to Russia.
> 2. Cultural similar Germans and Austrians are probably the greatest in classical music. Coincidence?
> 3. The greatest "English" composer is actually German (Handel). That says a lot. There are even two other famous English/British composers from the small German minority, Holst and Delius. Coincidence?
> ...


Handel, Vaughan Williams, and Bax are on the same level of greatness as Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, though not quite as prolific. But their best works measure up.

On the US side David Diamond is as great as Brahms. Gershwin as good as Chopin. I could go on


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Agamemnon said:


> Interesting question. I have a background in philosophy and I must agree with Nietzsche who wrote that all English thinkers are superficial thinkers so actually not really thinkers at all. Why is that? Well, I think it has to do with the philosophical tradition to make a distinction between ratio (reason/understanding) and the intellect. Ratio works discretely or logically and is therefore able to conclude B from A (it develops step by step). English thinkers reduce everything to the senses and the reason (you have sense data and then our reason finds patterns in it) which is also the basis of modern science. English thinkers are thus great scientists. But they lack (or neglect) the intellect which is a more dialectical ability so see the bigger picture and to abridge contraries (whereas the reason holds the law of non-contradiction as it's fundament!). The intellect is a more intuitive (or even mystical) capacity. And the truth which artists reveal to us is the truth that can be intuitively seen by the intellect (of the genius). Because the English neglect their intellect in favor of the reason they haven't been very fruitful in producing great art...


P

Was intuition and mystical things a big area of research in 19th and early 20th century German or French mainstream university philosophy? (as opposed to theology or psychology.)


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## Myriadi (Mar 6, 2016)

Thread summary: people devalue, in no particular order and for no good reason, Bacon, Hume, Shakespeare, Defoe, Swift, the pre-Rafaelites, Turner, Constable, Gainsborough, Wright of Derby, the Romantics and the Metaphysical poets, numerous other artists, writers, and poets, not to mention English music in general from the Medieval times up to present day. Then these same people try to justify said devaluation.

In all seriousness though, I had no idea so many people actually consider England produced "little great art", to paraphrase several posters.


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> P
> 
> Was intuition and mystical things a big area of research in 19th and early 20th century German or French mainstream university philosophy? (as opposed to theology or psychology.)


The Germans didn't need to research mysticism and intuition (that would be a typical English thing to do!) because for some reason they have integrated this in their system since it arose in the late medieval times. I think you can say that Luther thus protestantism arose out of this late-medieval mysticism (you don't need the church to become one with Christ!) and so is all of German art and philosophy in modern times. Hegel, Leibniz, etc were all some Platonic mystics who strived to climb up to God himself and see the Absolute Truth (I don't think it is accidental that Hegel was a theology student)...


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

Myriadi said:


> Thread summary: people devalue, in no particular order and for no good reason, Bacon, Hume, Shakespeare, Defoe, Swift, the pre-Rafaelites, Turner, Constable, Gainsborough, Wright of Derby, the Romantics and the Metaphysical poets, numerous other artists, writers, and poets, not to mention English music in general from the Medieval times up to present day. Then these same people try to justify said devaluation.
> 
> In all seriousness though, I had no idea so many people actually consider England produced "little great art", to paraphrase several posters.


Well, then you didn't read either of my posts, where in the first I said that this does not apply to other arts than music, and in the second I said that the question is more about the relationship between music and culture than the quality of music as such. No reason to be so defensive.


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## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

Animal the Drummer said:


> With respect, Forss, my opinion is that your basic premise is flat wrong. I'll give you three great composers straight off the top of my head: Purcell, Handel (check out what he himself said on the subject if you doubt my claiming him for England) and Elgar. As for the bit about "artists in general": while I could quote great long lists of them, I'll simply name Shakespeare and rest my case there. (Nor incidentally do I agree that Ireland's list of great writers has much if any connection with their constitution, but that's another story.)


Those 3 may be good, but (in the case of Handel many will disagree) aren't on the level of a Beethoven, Debussy or a Stravinsky.


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

You can also say: the English are typically modern and thus materialists while the Germans have always resisted modernity and thus have been romantic lovers of the past. As materialists the English 'degrade' all (human) existence to matter: we are nothing more than a bag of bones, blood and faeces, we are just animals. That is scientifically a very sound position but not a very fruitful base for great art... On the other hand the Germans dug up such deep feelings and essences that no one knew we were that deep (read Heidegger). 

At least the English separated religion and philosophy radically (since Ockham or so) and therefore killed all culture because culture is the philosophical and artistic development of religion...


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Myriadi said:


> Thread summary: people devalue, in no particular order and for no good reason, Bacon, Hume, Shakespeare, Defoe, Swift, the pre-Rafaelites, Turner, Constable, Gainsborough, Wright of Derby, the Romantics and the Metaphysical poets, numerous other artists, writers, and poets, not to mention English music in general from the Medieval times up to present day. Then these same people try to justify said devaluation.
> 
> In all seriousness though, I had no idea so many people actually consider England produced "little great art", to paraphrase several posters.


It's like the polar opposite of "Little England"! :lol:


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Agamemnon said:


> You can also say: the English are typically modern and thus materialists while the Germans have always resisted modernity and thus have been romantic lovers of the past. As materialists the English 'degrade' all (human) existence to matter: we are nothing more than a bag of bones, blood and faeces, we are just animals. That is scientifically a very sound position but not a very fruitful base for great art... On the other hand the Germans dug up such deep feelings and essences that no one knew we were that deep (read Heidegger).
> 
> At least the English separated religion and philosophy radically (since Ockham or so) and therefore killed all culture because culture is the philosophical and artistic development of religion...


.

You are not then a big fan of the Enlightenment, I take it. I myself much prefer the Enlightenment (and the subsequent Anglo-Scottish) notion of attempting to See Things As They Likely Are, rather than to become immersed in a viscous mass of heavy and portentous German metaphysics.  Specifically regarding the English "genius", it expresses itself in a small number of supremely gifted individuals in whatever field: Literature: Shakepeare, Blake, the Romantic poets; Painting: again Blake and Turner; Philosophy (writ large): Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Russell, Moore; Mathematics: Hardy; Natural Science: innumerable names. I'll leave it to others to work the music theme.


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

Strange Magic said:


> .
> 
> You are not then a big fan of the Enlightenment, I take it. I myself much prefer the Enlightenment (and the subsequent Anglo-Scottish) notion of attempting to See Things As They Likely Are, rather than to become immersed in a viscous mass of heavy and portentous German metaphysics. Specifically regarding the English "genius", it expresses itself in a small number of supremely gifted individuals in whatever field: Literature: Shakepeare, Blake, the Romantic poets; Painting: again Blake and Turner; Philosophy (writ large): Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Russell, Moore; Mathematics: Hardy; Natural Science: innumerable names. I'll leave it to others to work the music theme.


But there is a German Enlightenment in philosophy, which is different from English Enlightenment, but Enlightenment none the less (and not mysticism, etc.)


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

Forss said:


> Perhaps some of you won't agree, and that's fine, naturally, but I've thought about this a great deal: Why is it, in your opinion, that English culture has not produced _Great_ composers (and/or artists in general) like, say, Austria/Germany, France or Russia?


I deny the premise entirely. You don't have to think too hard or get too esoteric to remember Handel and Shakespeare. Did not even have to resort to Johann Christian Bach.


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

Xaltotun said:


> But there is a German Enlightenment in philosophy, which is different from English Enlightenment, but Enlightenment none the less (and not mysticism, etc.)


Yet I think Kant - the great German Enlightment thinker - is 'mystical' (or typically German) in his firm believe in the a priori synthetic judgement thus his 'idealism' (the thinking subject constructs or creates the world). The English only believe in a priori analytical judgements.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

i think there were British idealists, when I was an undergraduate I wrote an essay on McTaggart's ideas about time in Space, Time and Deity. When I was actively doing philosophy, Chuck Taylor in Oxford was a real inspiration in this field, I remember being knocked out by some graduate classes he gave with Richard Hare and John McDowel on the subject, and I rushed off and read his introduction to his big book on Hegel. Peter Strawson's metaphysics classes too, and parts of Individuals and his book on Kant. Chris Peacocke, David Wiggins, Gareth Evans and John McDowel were very interested in idealism.

Of course we approached it all from a logical point of view, this was a period when Dummett had convinced us of the greatness of Frege. But you know, Hegel had his own ideas about logic, for better and for worse, as did Kant. 

My college was strong in theology, and I remember the students being really inspired to explore idealist metaphysics by John Macquarie, they always had their noses in books by and about Schopenhauer. Not my field really, I observed them from a distance. 

There was also a strong interest in idealism from the Ancient Philosophers, just because Plato scholarship was such an active area. 

I've forgotten it all now! But my point is that the Oxford philosophy scene was more multi-faceted than you may think, and Oxford is / was the main UK centre for philosophy - the department is enormous!


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## topo morto (Apr 9, 2017)

Anything to do with patronage?


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Agamemnon said:


> Yet I think Kant - the great German Enlightment thinker - is 'mystical' (or typically German) in his firm believe in the a priori synthetic judgement thus his 'idealism' (the thinking subject constructs or creates the world). The English only believe in a priori analytical judgements.


This is a good shorthand summary. My favorite form of German _Aufklärung_ is embodied by someone like Lessing.


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

Agamemnon said:


> Yet I think Kant - the great German Enlightment thinker - is 'mystical' (or typically German) in his firm believe in the a priori synthetic judgement thus his 'idealism' (the thinking subject constructs or creates the world). The English only believe in a priori analytical judgements.


There is truth in that, and I was indeed thinking of Kant. But we cannot compare him to, say, someone like Berkeley who is actually a hard-line idealist. Kant always believes in objective reality, even if we cannot access it directly. He believes in subjective universality. Kant's brand of Enlightenment is balanced and sobering, his philosophy shows that man is both capable of great things, and incapable of many things that he thought himself capable of. Kant destroys man's hubris. But he is not a boring empiricist, he's a conceptual thinker who analyzes concepts to their finest points.

If Enlightenment means getting greater awareness of one's own mind and the world, I cannot think of anyone who better embodies Enlightenment than Kant.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Omicron9 said:


> England had Elgar, Delius, and the English Pastoral School of composers. For me, it seems the prime directive of the English pastoral school was to prolong the 19th century as long as possible. In English music, the 19th century seem to end somewhere in the 1950s.
> -09


And who, pray tell, were the English pastoralists? Vaughan Williams? Try listening to Job, the 4th and 6th symphonies. Even the 3rd, the Pastoral, is often totally misunderstood as it is definitely not 'pastoral'. Holst? Bax? Bantock? Britten? Tippett? The whole idea of the 'pastoral school' is one of those dismissive by faint praise terms used to avoid any serious thought about the topic.


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

Omicron9 said:


> [...]
> 
> Innovators and composers willing to push and expand art. During the time of visionaries such as Stravinsky, Bartok, and Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School, England had Elgar, Delius, and the English Pastoral School of composers. For me, it seems the prime directive of the English pastoral school was to prolong the 19th century as long as possible. In English music, the 19th century seem to end somewhere in the 1950s. The English composers were stuck in the romantic/diatonic. They seemed adamant about not moving the art forward; one could argue they were the Amish in the classical world.
> 
> ...


There were and are English (British) modernists too - Frank Bridge, whose music I have from time to time advocated here; Benjamin Britten who would be accounted amongst the very greatest composers of the 20th century; and William Walton, Elizabeth Lutyens, Elizabeth Maconchy, Michael Tippett, Harrison Birtwistle, Brian Ferneyhough, Peter Maxwell Davies, Robert Simpson and Jonathan Harvey to name some of the better known.

I think it's also unfair to categorise Delius as a conservative composer: he developed a style of composition which is quite distinctive and quite unlike anything else.



Strange Magic said:


> The English, after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, put away national discord and concentrated on living quietly, making money, and dabbling in science and invention. It was OK to do a little writing, paint a few pictures (Blake and Turner spring to mind, both regarded as misfits) but one hired foreigners mostly if music for some specific purpose was needed. It wasn't something suitable for native-born, proper Englishmen.


I really can't agree with this - from the 16th century onwards the English and then the British state built a vast colonial empire. This activity may or may not have stimulated music-making, but the British certainly weren't living quietly between 1688 and 1965. We were forcibly seizing other people's lands, ruling, quelling uprisings (or not!) and trading the products of our ill gotten gains.



Totenfeier said:


> It occurs to me to turn the discussion around a bit and ask what I think is a different, but related, cultural question: why did the type of nationalistic militarism that developed on the Continent in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - and yes, particularly in Germany and Austria - never develop in England? Is there a cultural correlation there? A drive for order, structure, power, and control (in music and over neighbors) on the one hand, and a more laid-back, "islander" sensibility on the other?


I refer you to my earlier answer above...  (and - see Gilbert and Sullivan for an affectionate parody of English nationalistic militarism at its late c.19th peak.)


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

By "living quietly, and making money", I meant an end to gross division and civil war internally, and turning those energies toward acquisition instead. Global expansion and colonialism handily fitted right in with that impulse. I did not mean to suggest that the English fell quietly asleep; they surely did not.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Agamemnon said:


> Interesting question. I have a background in philosophy and I must agree with Nietzsche who wrote that all English thinkers are superficial thinkers so actually not really thinkers at all. Why is that? Well, I think it has to do with the philosophical tradition to make a distinction between ratio (reason/understanding) and the intellect. Ratio works discretely or logically and is therefore able to conclude B from A (it develops step by step). English thinkers reduce everything to the senses and the reason (you have sense data and then our reason finds patterns in it) which is also the basis of modern science. English thinkers are thus great scientists. But they lack (or neglect) the intellect which is a more dialectical ability so see the bigger picture and to abridge contraries (whereas the reason holds the law of non-contradiction as it's fundament!). The intellect is a more intuitive (or even mystical) capacity. And the truth which artists reveal to us is the truth that can be intuitively seen by the intellect (of the genius). Because the English neglect their intellect in favor of the reason they haven't been very fruitful in producing great art...


Actually I would dispute this. Before the turn in British philosophy, beginning in the late 19th century, British philosophy was dominated by Hegelian metaphysics. The changes were not entirely of British origin either; it was the logical positivists who had the largest impact early on in the 20th century and that was from Vienna! The push and pull of empiricism/idealism (not ideal terms) is not confined to Britain. Proponents of idealism are found in British philosophy as well on the continent. Analytical philosophy was just as much a German development as British. I don't believe the musical motivations have anything to do with philosophy.

In any case the musical life in Britain has almost never been linked to that sort of intellectual pursuit. It has been more linked to religion, to emotional representations of the landscape, to myths and legends, to nationalism. In this respect it doesn't really differ from the musical motivations throughout Europe.

There are similar questions like: why did ancient Greece blossom in the way it did? I think some of this is just a chain reaction geographically. If something erupts because of opportune circumstances (political, economic, lack of religious domination) it tends to become developed in that same region and further developments are made through cultural interaction. The same can be said about the Industrial Revolution: it developed first in Britain because certain circumstances created fertile ground, but all the developments weren't entirely British in origin. Would we suggest that somehow Germany didn't have the technical or intellectual capacity to generate the industrial revolution?

There is a huge list of British composers from several eras. I think we just have the blossoming of classical era Vienna in our heads when we think about this question.


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

Mandryka said:


> There are many "great" composers of early music, from Tye and Taverner to Byrd and Gibbons; there are plenty of more recent "great" composers, from Cardew and Havey to Birtwistle and Ferneyhough and Finnissy. I don't know enough about the stuff in the middle to comment, though I'd say that Elgar 2 is a "great" symphony and Turn of the Screw is a "great" opera.
> 
> I also think you're wrong about 20th century literature, think of novelists Lawrence and Conrad, poets like Eliot and Yeats . . . And clearly in the 19th there are some great novelists and poets, I won't make a list!
> 
> I would argue the similarly for painting and sculpture.


Conrad, Eliot and Yeats were great Englishmen?


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

SimonTemplar said:


> Conrad, Eliot and Yeats were great Englishmen?


It all depends on their definitions of themselves ... they were all as English as Handel.


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

Becca said:


> It all depends on their definitions of themselves ... they were all as English as Handel.


Who was a German who emigrated to England. They may have contributed to English culture, and been influenced by it, but, not being born there, can't be considered products of England. Same reason why I don't include Alma-Tadema below.


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

England produced several great composers. Holst, Vaughan-Williams, Elgar, and Britten – possibly Walton, too – all qualify. Sullivan may not be weighty, but he’s a first-rate melodist.

England hasn’t “produced great artists in general”? What about Blake, Turner, Constable, Burne-Jones, Rossetti, and Beardsley? 

The English genius, though, is for the word; her literature, drama, and poetry are one of the glories of the world, and she boasts the greatest playwright in the West and some of the greatest novelists and poets.

Shakespeare alone is worth a pantheon – but that pantheon includes Marlowe, Jonson, Fletcher, Beaumont, Middleton, Massinger, Wycherley, Congreve, Goldsmith, Priestley, Coward, and Shaffer.

Dickens, with his panoramic vastness, rich comic spirit, and vitality, is England’s greatest novelist, but he rides at the front of an army of writers that includes Defoe, Peacock, Austen, the Brontës, Eliot, Trollope, Wilkie Collins, Chesterton, Wells, Saki, Galsworthy, Wodehouse, Waugh, Hardy, Lawrence, Woolf, Maugham, Huxley, Greene, Peake, and Pratchett. Many of the classic children's books, ghost stories, adventure stories, and detective stories are English. 

Chaucer, Milton, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, Tennyson, and Browning are all major poets. Her essayists and historians include Dr Johnson, Lord Macaulay, Gibbon, and, yes, Churchill.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I don't care about QUANTITY. I care about QUALITY!
I wouldn't trade Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes and War Requiem; also Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations, for anything!!!


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## juliante (Jun 7, 2013)

Forss said:


> Perhaps some of you won't agree, and that's fine, naturally, but I've thought about this a great deal: Why is it, in your opinion, that English culture has not produced _Great_ composers (and/or artists in general) like, say, Austria/Germany, France or Russia? Are they, as it were, more scientifically inclined? They have a strong tradition of great scientists (Newton, Darwin, Russell, etc.), but not so in the Arts. For example, in their neighbouring country, Ireland, one finds great _artists_ such as Berkeley, Shaw, Joyce and Beckett-which must, I think, be attributed to their rather religious constitution-but not in England. Why is this? I'd love to hear your opinion on this issue!


No 'strong tradition' in the arts? I say dear boy, that's simply not cricket! I cry foul play. You have included literature in your definition and as such I submit: Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Eliot, Woolf, Lawrence, Orwell, Wordsworth, Keats, TS Eliot, Milton. Only the Russians may legitimately stake a claim to a greater tradition, inh and unbiased opinion! As for painting and music, you have a point. Too busy drinking and fighting.


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

Some people in this thread rightly point out to me that idealism was dominant in Britain as well (and on the other hand logical positivism was a continental invention etc). While this is all true, it seems to me that the British tend to be more materialistic, practical, empiricist etc anyway. The great British thinkers are people like Hobbes, Locke, Mill, Russell etc who all produce the same type of philosophy which seems to follow the British medieval thinker William of Ockham in e.g. a focus on empiricism and logics/linguistics. For some reason Aristotle's type of philosophy got a stronghold in England while on the continent Platonism always remained dominant. BTW, in the same way I think pragmatism is the typical American philosophy...


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## RogerWaters (Feb 13, 2017)

Phil loves classical said:


> Handel, Vaughan Williams, and Bax are on the same level of greatness as Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, though not quite as prolific. But their best works measure up.
> 
> On the US side David Diamond is as great as Brahms. Gershwin as good as Chopin. I could go on


Vaughan Williams, on the same level as Bach's Mass in B Minor, Mozart's Requiem or Beethoven's Hammerklavier - not to mention the sheer number of genuis works from these big three composers?!

I think not.

As far as the USA, if David Diamond is as great as Brahms, why have I never heard of him?!


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## RogerWaters (Feb 13, 2017)

Forss said:


> Perhaps some of you won't agree, and that's fine, naturally, but I've thought about this a great deal: Why is it, in your opinion, that English culture has not produced _Great_ composers (and/or artists in general) like, say, Austria/Germany, France or Russia? Are they, as it were, more scientifically inclined? They have a strong tradition of great scientists (Newton, Darwin, Russell, etc.), but not so in the Arts. For example, in their neighbouring country, Ireland, one finds great _artists_ such as Berkeley, Shaw, Joyce and Beckett-which must, I think, be attributed to their rather religious constitution-but not in England. Why is this? I'd love to hear your opinion on this issue!


The right question is why Germany (and to a lesser extent Russia and France) have produced so much good music - not why England has not. Nations full of great composers are the exception, not the norm.


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## cheregi (Jul 16, 2020)

As much as I enjoy this discussion of the differences between the national character of the English and the Germans etc., I think this question may be answered much more simply by looking at geopolitics - as far as I know, in Italy and Germany the sheer quantity of independent small states competing for prestige meant much more opportunity for composers to find patronage. For example, the 1580s court of Ferrara in northern Italy, famous across Europe for its musical innovations which were integral in the development of opera, only managed to reach such heights at the whim of a duke who suffered military defeat and then tried to compensate by investing in culture. Similar situations played out anywhere politically fractured.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

The English--a nation of shopkeepers. The phrase is attributed to several, including Napoleon (see Wikipedia: _Nation of Shopkeepers_). My reading of British history and character, and fiction, shows a strong interest in the practical and also the financially rewarding that may preclude the less immediately useful arts. There are exceptions--Blake, Turner, the Romantic poets. But one does not sense a great popular surge on the part of the British public to attend to or to reward such, historically. Things changed somewhat in the 20th century, in music in Britain.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Don't agree with the premise. Also don't agree with those who keep bringing up Händel or JC Bach. The OP asked why English culture hadn't produced Great composers, not why England hadn't hosted great composers.

But, the same question could be asked of any number of other European countries (or is England once again no longer European? ).

Anyway, I would call Dowland and Purcell great composers. There are some (people are saying) who consider Elgar a great composer. Personally,whenever I have to listen to his music, I just lie there, eyes closed, and do it for the Queen and country. Benjamin Britten is frequently mentioned in the same breath as Purcell---which I personally think is a stretch, but have you heard his Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra? And did I mention his Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra? But really, there's also his Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.

But anyway: Isn't Shakespeare enough? Or Marlowe? Or Milton? Or Keats?


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_Perhaps some of you won't agree, and that's fine, naturally, but I've thought about this a great deal: Why is it, in your opinion, that English culture has not produced Great composers (and/or artists in general) like, say, Austria/Germany, France or Russia?_

I think it clear England has produced great composers from Henry Purcell to Ethyl Smyth to Fredrich Delius to Edward Elgar and Ralph Vaughan Willians and William Walton and William Alwyn and, in this century, John Tavener and John Rutter, among others.

I would turn this question the other way: who are today's greatest Russian and German composers?


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## Chilham (Jun 18, 2020)

I don't agree with the general premise that England has not produced "great composers and artists in general". The answer as to why more greatness in composing was achieved in France and Germany possibly lies in the fact that Germans have sat on the throne of England since 1714. It's likely that patronage through the late-baroque, galant and early romantic period was therefore often granted outside of the Realm, or relied on imported talent like Handel. This accounts for the "gap" between the likes of Purcell, Tallis, Weelkes, Byrd, and Dowland, and the re-emergence of British composing from Elgar, Finzi, Vaughan Williams, Holst, and Britten.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Chilham said:


> It's likely that patronage through the late-baroque, galant and early romantic period was therefore often granted outside of the Realm...


I can't think of a single example. King George, when he was still Elector of Hanover, was pretty steamed when Händel left him for London. Later, when he became King George, he quickly put Händel back to work. He wasn't about to patronize any German principalities, or their cooks, or their musicians.


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## annaw (May 4, 2019)

vtpoet said:


> Don't agree with the premise. Also don't agree with those who keep bringing up Händel or JC Bach. The OP asked why English culture hadn't produced Great composers, not why England hadn't hosted great composers.
> 
> But, the same question could be asked of any number of other European countries (or is England once again no longer European? ).


The thing is. Very many smaller European nations didn't have an opportunity to build their own culture in a similar way because during different periods they were part of the larger European countries. Also, one cannot expect nations with 50 times less people produce the same amount of great artists as the larger European nations.



> Anyway, I would call Dowland and Purcell great composers. There are some (people are saying) who consider Elgar a great composer. Personally,whenever I have to listen to his music, I just lie there, eyes closed, and do it for the Queen and country. Benjamin Britten is frequently mentioned in the same breath as Purcell---which I personally think is a stretch, but have you heard his Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra? And did I mention his Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra? But really, there's also his Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.
> 
> But anyway: Isn't Shakespeare enough? Or Marlowe? Or Milton? Or Keats?


I agree that England has certainly produced many great composers but it comes down to quantity. England certainly has produced some of the greatest literature that has ever been produced.

German history was rather interesting during Classicism and Romanticism. The Thirty Years War, which was a result of the religious conflict between Catholic and Protestant had burdened Central Europe in the first part of the seventeenth century, but after it, the German-speaking lands formed a loose alliance of independent states. In those states emerged a German high culture which was enhanced by the rivalry of neighbouring states.

Those sovereign states were very deficient in military power, differently from France and England during the period. As the romantic ideas focused on folk poetry and tales, the German intellectuals managed to produce a huge amount of fantastic art while French and Britons were building their military power. German city-states were so weak that pretty much any attack would have resulted in their collapse and they became aware of it when Napoleon managed to evade huge areas of land in the territory of contemporary Germany. Nevertheless, after Napoleon's power was destroyed, Germans continued were they left off and the ideas of unified Germany became rather popular and much-discussed. They, in turn, spurred on the artistic and cultural development in Germany.

This unique historical background probably played an important role in the flowering of German art during Romanticism which worked as one of the major basis for all the German art that followed it. England didn't have a similar situation and their cultural development was simply different.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Animal the Drummer said:


> With respect, Forss, my opinion is that your basic premise is flat wrong. I'll give you three great composers straight off the top of my head: Purcell, Handel (check out what he himself said on the subject if you doubt my claiming him for England) and Elgar. As for the bit about "artists in general": while I could quote great long lists of them, I'll simply name Shakespeare and rest my case there. (Nor incidentally do I agree that Ireland's list of great writers has much if any connection with their constitution, but that's another story.)


I am not British but think the OP is absolutely wrong. Having said that, no British composers have made onto my top 20 favorite composers list.

But Dowland, Byrd, Britten, are three more great composers.


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## Animal the Drummer (Nov 14, 2015)

Those contributing to this thread, on either side of the argument, who deny Handel's status as an English composer can be thankful they never tackled the great man himself on this point. Perhaps not surprisingly, similar pronouncements were made in his lifetime and there was at least one occasion I know of when he gave them very short shrift, pointing out to those advancing such a view that they were English by birth, but he was English by choice.


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## Chilham (Jun 18, 2020)

vtpoet said:


> ... King George, when he was still Elector of Hanover, was pretty steamed when Händel left him for London. Later, when he became King George, he quickly put Händel back to work ...


Strange that you redact that part of my post.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

larold said:


> _Perhaps some of you won't agree, and that's fine, naturally, but I've thought about this a great deal: Why is it, in your opinion, that English culture has not produced Great composers (and/or artists in general) like, say, Austria/Germany, France or Russia?_
> 
> I think it clear England has produced great composers from Henry Purcell to Ethyl Smyth to Fredrich Delius to Edward Elgar and Ralph Vaughan Willians and William Walton and William Alwyn and, in this century, John Tavener and John Rutter, among others.
> 
> ...


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Strange Magic said:


> The English--a nation of shopkeepers. The phrase is attributed to several, including Napoleon (see Wikipedia: _Nation of Shopkeepers_). My reading of British history and character, and fiction, shows a strong interest in the practical and also the financially rewarding that may preclude the less immediately useful arts. There are exceptions--Blake, Turner, the Romantic poets. But one does not sense a great popular surge on the part of the British public to attend to or to reward such, historically. Things changed somewhat in the 20th century, in music in Britain.


Then why do you get Avison in Newcastle adapting Scarlatti to suit the abilities of local amateur players? Equally what about the Literary and Philosophical Society founded in Newcastle in 1790 as a "conversation club".


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Taggart said:


> Then why do you get Avison in Newcastle adapting Scarlatti to suit the abilities of local amateur players? Equally what about the Literary and Philosophical Society founded in Newcastle in 1790 as a "conversation club".


Always there are exceptions. The British embrace (such as it was) of foreign--especially German--composers shows that there was appreciation, interest, even enthusiasm. But the sturdy and practical local talent largely chose other channels and outlets for their creative energies--architecture and landscape, for instance; literature; even painting. Music, not so much.


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## annaw (May 4, 2019)

larold said:


> _Perhaps some of you won't agree, and that's fine, naturally, but I've thought about this a great deal: Why is it, in your opinion, that English culture has not produced Great composers (and/or artists in general) like, say, Austria/Germany, France or Russia?_
> 
> I think it clear England has produced great composers from Henry Purcell to Ethyl Smyth to Fredrich Delius to Edward Elgar and Ralph Vaughan Willians and William Walton and William Alwyn and, in this century, John Tavener and John Rutter, among others.
> 
> ...


The question you're asking is quite a different question. The problem is that we cannot view culture as some never-changing entity. The OP asks about the culture in general while your question limits itself to the late 20th and 21st century only. Is there any doubt that the Austro-German culture has nurtured the greatest number of composers who are widely acknowledged as some of the greatest composers who have ever lived? I think it's quite undeniable, at least according to the public opinion (and that's the nearest thing to a universal opinion we have).

There's no doubt that from the English culture have come some utterly wonderful artists. I adore Turner and love British literature but, I mean, it's not exactly a competition. :lol: The huge number of great composers who were Austrian or German is just quite an interesting phenomenon but probably a result of a positive feedback loop as well (to use biological terms).


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## Simplicissimus (Feb 3, 2020)

What I find interesting is how English composers absolutely exploded in the beginning of the 20th Century with the "Pastoral School." This is some of my favorite music: Vaughan Williams, Holst, Butterworth, Finzi, Delius, Bax. It's really an English national music, isn't it?


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Simplicissimus said:


> What I find interesting is how English composers absolutely exploded in the beginning of the 20th Century with the "Pastoral School." This is some of my favorite music: Vaughan Williams, Holst, Butterworth, Finzi, Delius, Bax. It's really an English national music, isn't it?


Hubert Parry taught Vaughan Williams, Holst and Butterworth. Finzi knew Vaughan Williams. Delius and Bax are in a sense outliers in that they were initially influenced by German music and then moved in different directions Bax to the Celtic fringe and Delius to his own individual style.

Vaughan Williams, Holst and Butterworth were influential in the English folk music scene. Vaughan Williams as a collector, Holst as a music arranger and Butterworth was a founder member of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. Butterworth was employed by the English Folk Dance and Song Society as a professional morris dancer, and was a member of the Demonstration Team.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

The only first tier English composer is likely Purcell, the rest - Elgar, RVW, Bax, Britten - are second tier (at the same level as R. Strauss). The interesting question is why the development of English music stopped after Purcell and there is several centuries hiatus.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Jacck said:


> The only first tier English composer is likely Purcell, the rest - Elgar, RVW, Bax, Britten - are second tier (at the same level as R. Strauss). The interesting question is why the development of English music stopped after Purcell and there is several centuries hiatus.


Um.. Bannister, Boyce, Blow, Mudge, Arne, Dibdin, Avison, Sullivan, Parry, Stanier ...

English music is a weird and wonderful field of study. It is, now, the province of specialised Baroque groups, Gilbert and Sullivan enthusiasts and the major choral centres of the Anglican church.

Bannister is a good example.He starts in the old style doing the Division Viol for Playford. Then Charles II comes back enamoured of the violin after seeing Louis XIV's fiddle orchestra so Bannister does a quick rewrite and Playford re-issues it as the Division Violin to catch the trend. By 1690, the Stuarts were on the way out and the new incumbents had little interest in music. Handel was about the closest to a court composer they had.

Boyce, Blow, Mudge, Avison, Sullivan, Parry, Stanier all had links to the church. Arne and Dibdin wrote for the theatre. There was little support for orchestral music. Bannister ran subscription concerts as did Avison. Much popular music was available at pleasure gardens up and down the country. Some of the players would also play for dances at the various assembly rooms. But there was little appetite or support for purely orchestral music.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Chilham said:


> Strange that you redact that part of my post.


Sorry if that rubbed you the wrong way. Wasn't intentional.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Jacck said:


> The only first tier English composer is likely Purcell, the rest - Elgar, RVW, Bax, Britten - are second tier (at the same level as R. Strauss). The interesting question is why the development of English music stopped after Purcell and there is several centuries hiatus.


Am I the only one who thinks John Dowland was a first tier composer?


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

vtpoet said:


> Am I the only one who thinks John Dowland was a first tier composer?


yes, the English have a very rich tradition of medieval and renaissance composers (one of the best in the world, besides Italy and the Franco-Flemish school). Unfortunately, I am not too versed in the period to be able to judge who was in which tier. I just observed the apparent lack of notable English composers between Purcell and Sullivan. But as Taggart explains, the Stuarts did not support music.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Jacck said:


> The only first tier English composer is likely Purcell


I should think "the father of English music", William Byrd, is a deserving charter member of the lofty first tier. His output of nearly 500 compositions amply justifies his reputation as one of the great masters of European Renaissance music. Perhaps his most impressive achievement as a composer was his ability to transform so many of the main musical forms of his day and stamp them with his own identity. Having grown up in an age in which Latin polyphony was largely confined to liturgical items for the Sarum rite, he assimilated and mastered the Continental motet form of his day, employing a highly personal synthesis of English and continental models. He virtually created the Tudor consort and keyboard fantasia, having only the most primitive models to follow. He also raised the consort song, the church anthem and the Anglican service setting to new heights. How soon we forget, assuming we ever knew.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

What about Haendel


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> What about Handel?


he was an import, educated in Germany, and so a product of the German culture milieu


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Jacck said:


> he was an import, educated in Germany, and so a product of the German culture milieu


Sorry mate, tell it to the marines, the Messiah is as English as HRH The Queen.


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

What are the countries then that produced great composers? Germany, Italy, Russia and France? We have to remember to take Opera and Sacred music into consideration.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Mandryka said:


> Sorry mate, tell it to the marines, the Messiah is as English as HRH The Queen.


That doesn't change the fact that Händel was not a product (to use the OP's phrase) of English culture.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Strange Magic said:


> _Sehnsucht._. Yearning. The search for a better, higher life or world. The Germans especially, said my German Lit prof, suffered from a bad case of Sehnsucht for a long time, and it often expressed itself in music as both career and as release (or attempt at release). Peoples living in uncertain times, in countries with uncertain boundaries (Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Italy, Russia, etc.) tended to seek a Better World in Art and Music. The English, after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, put away national discord and concentrated on living quietly, making money, and dabbling in science and invention. It was OK to do a little writing, paint a few pictures (Blake and Turner spring to mind, both regarded as misfits) but one hired foreigners mostly if music for some specific purpose was needed. It wasn't something suitable for native-born, proper Englishmen.


I had some German education (a high school I visited was in part in German) and the teacher teaching German literature and German philosophy said, that with the possible exception of Goethe, the whole German literature and philosophy was terribly depressive. Always dealing with difficult philosophical topics, little pure enjoyement like the French. Just remember their philosophers like Schopenhauer, Nietsche, Kant etc. And the German music reflects that, it is too heavy, too serious. A stereotype about Germans says that they lack a sense of humor (I did not really found this to be true), and their music lacks playfulness and humor. The Wagnerian operas are opera seria. Maybe all this German negativity accumulated over centuries than got discharged during the wars. But this is not true for Austria, Mozart is much more playful and less serious, he composed mostly opera buffa.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> Sorry mate, tell it to the marines, the Messiah is as English as HRH The Queen.


And Handel's _La Resurrezione_ is as Italian as his patron, Francesco Maria Marescotti Ruspoli, 1st Prince of Cerveteri.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

vtpoet said:


> That doesn't change the fact that Händel was not a product (to use the OP's phrase) of English culture.


Let's not let a little thing like a fact get in the way of a good argument.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Jacck said:


> But this is not true for Austria, Mozart is much more playful and less serious, he composed mostly opera buffa.


Saying that Mozart (who called Germany "his fatherland" in his letters, and spent less than 1/3 of his life in the Hapsburgs' territory) is not "Bavarian", but "Austrian" is more ridiculous than saying Handel is English. "Hitler is German, Mozart is Austrian" is a modern Austrian propaganda.



Jacck said:


> The Wagnerian operas are opera seria. Maybe all this German negativity accumulated over centuries than got discharged during the wars. But this is not true for Austria, Mozart is much more playful and less serious, he composed mostly opera buffa.


One of Wagner's greatest operas, Die meistersinger is a comic opera, and 3 of Mozart's 7 complete mature operas, - Don Giovanni is a blend of comic and tragic, "dramma giocoso". Idomeneo and La clemenza di tito are opera seria. 
The reasons why Wagner and Mozart sound the way they do have little to do with the difference in their nationality, more has to do with idiomatic and social differences of the times they lived in. With the kind of patronage system in Mozart's time, no composer could spent 28 years in writing a work, while being as "egomaniac" as they could. (I don't mean this in the negative sense, I just couldn't think of a better word)
Beethoven seems more more "optimistic" in his final "liturgical" works than Mozart, does this have anything to do with their nationality?


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

hammeredklavier said:


> Saying that Mozart (who called Germany "his fatherland" in his letters, and spent less than 1/3 of his life in the Hapsburgs' territory) is not "Bavarian", but "Austrian" is more ridiculous than saying Handel is English. "Hitler is German, Mozart is Austrian" is a modern Austrian propaganda.
> One of Wagner's greatest operas, Die meistersinger is a comic opera, and 3 of Mozart's 7 complete mature operas, - Don Giovanni is a blend of comic and tragic, "dramma giocoso". Idomeneo and La clemenza di tito are opera seria.
> The reasons why Wagner and Mozart sound the way they do have little to do with the difference in their nationality, more has to do with idiomatic and social differences of the times they lived in. With the kind of patronage system in Mozart's time, no composer could spent 28 years in writing a work, while being as "egomaniac" as they could. (I don't mean this in the negative sense, I just couldn't think of a better word)
> Beethoven seems more more "optimistic" in his final "liturgical" works than Mozart, does this have anything to do with their nationality?


of course there are exceptions and I dont want to argue if Mozart was German or Austrian or to count how many comical operas each author wrote. I only wanted to observe that German music sounds serious, more serious than from other countries. Maybe that is the reason why it is so highly regarded. French music does not sound as serious.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

I'm not exactly certain, I think what really makes Handel typically "18th-century Germanic" is his use of counterpoint and orchestration to create harmony in his music, compared to other styles like Pergolesi, for example. These might give us some clues:

"Handel wasn't impressed with Gluck's fugue-writing abilities; but Handel had grown up with a generation of German Lutherans to whom the fugue - and counterpoint - was their musical lifeblood." <George Frideric Handel: A Music Lover's Guide to His Life, His Faith & the Development of Messiah and His Other Oratorios: Van Til, Marian, Page 215>

"On the other hand, for the French, Mozart was certainly not 'one of us' from a national point of view. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, before Berlioz's time, some influential critics - for instance, Julien-Louis Geoffroy - rejected Mozart as a foreigner, considering his music 'scholastic', stressing his use of harmony over melody, and the dominance of the orchestra over singing in the operas - all these were considered negative features of 'Germanic' music."
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Rossini: "The Germans have always been at every time the greatest harmonists and the Italians the greatest melodists. But from the moment that the North produced a Mozart, we of the South were beaten on our own ground, because this man rises above both nations, uniting in himself all the charms of Italian melody and all the profundity of German harmony".

Wouldn't something like this be "typically 18th-century Germanic", similar to Handel's origin:




"Of the manuscript compositions by Herr Mozart which have become known, numerous contrapuntal and other church pieces are especially noteworthy."https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=ucin1335462994#page=9
"Leopold Mozart was a talented musician who well understood his craft as a composer....many of his church pieces, of which we find masses, litanies, offertories and many others in considerable number are among the best that he wrote."
-Ernst Fritz Schmid


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

I just ADORE the English culture and Anglican customs, religion, view of the world and influence on the world...The English is the NEW Latin...I see there are not so many great composers and such but I see the Englishness as a sort of an Umbrella over the all of worlds culture, both highest and lowest. Although I wish the old one's return to circulation as well!:lol:


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## josquindesprez (Aug 20, 2017)

Tallis seems conspicuously missing too.


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## Axter (Jan 15, 2020)

I tried to stay away from this thread, but now as someone who lived in both England and Austria, and as someone in love with both literature and classical music, I will give my two cents.

Besides that Vaughn Williams Symph 5 is among my top, and I am fond of great English conductors such as Sir Adrian Boult, Sir Thomas Beecham, Sir Simon Rattle (technically Sir Gerog Solti by passport), yes Austria has produced more composers, and England more writers and playwright. Shakespeare vs Mozart? Dickens vs Hayden? Or shall we go the other way round Zweig vs Elgar? Schnitzler vs Vaughn Williams?

To me literature and classical music compliment each-other. I can start a weekend by reading Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and right after listen to Beethoven’s Eroica! That’s why it was difficult for me to start participating in this thread to begin with.

To me Classical Music is the sound of thoughts, while Literature is the word of thoughts! I cannot separate them from one another!
Both England Austria contributed a great deal to this!


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

Jacck said:


> I had some German education (a high school I visited was in part in German) and the teacher teaching German literature and German philosophy said, that with the possible exception of Goethe, the whole German literature and philosophy was terribly depressive.


That's because the teacher couldn't get back before about 1840s with Schopenhauer. You go back to the German Idealists and the Romanticists like Novalis and you're in a paradise of optimism and mysticism. Novalis was the most Surrealistically mystical thinker of all time.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

regenmusic said:


> That's because the teacher couldn't get back before about 1840s with Schopenhauer. You go back to the German Idealists and the Romanticists like Novalis and you're in a paradise of optimism and mysticism. Novalis was the most Surrealistically mystical thinker of all time.


you mean the Hymns to the Night by Novalis?
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/43821/43821-h/43821-h.htm
the night refers to death?
I never read any Novalis before, but it is clear where he is coming from. The goal as in every mysticism is the transcendence of the ego. The individual ego has to die (hence the worship of the night as a symbol of the mystical death), to find the universal life. Goethe had similar pantheistic views, as did many German idealists. Hegel with his notion of the world soul (anima mundi). It is interesting, though none of it reaches the depth of Meister Eckhart, who was the deepest German mystic of them all.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_The only first tier English composer is likely Purcell, the rest - Elgar, RVW, Bax, Britten - are second tier (at the same level as R. Strauss). _

I can't concur with this conclusion. Purcell in the so-called first tier of composers but not Strauss, Elgar, Britten or Vaughan Williams? I'd like to see any reliable information supporting that conclusion not drawn from personal opinion.

In the survey of top 99 composers I conducted R. Strauss was No. 12, Britten No. 20, Vaughan Williams 25, Elgar 27 and Purcell 46.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

larold said:


> _The only first tier English composer is likely Purcell, the rest - Elgar, RVW, Bax, Britten - are second tier (at the same level as R. Strauss). _
> 
> I can't concur with this conclusion. Purcell in the so-called first tier of composers but not Strauss, Elgar, Britten or Vaughan Williams? I'd like to see any reliable information supporting that conclusion not drawn from personal opinion.
> 
> In the survey of top 99 composers I conducted R. Strauss was No. 12, Britten No. 20, Vaughan Williams 25, Elgar 27 and Purcell 46.


it is my personal opinion. And your survey is also based on personal opinions. If you made such a survey in the general population, John Williams would be top tier composer. The reason why I believe that Purcell is a first tier composer is his originality and freshness, that is a quality of all great composers. I find Strauss, RVW or Elgar more derivative of the romantic tradition. They are not as groundbreaking and fresh as Purcell. So at least for me, his genius was bigger. But it is just my opinion.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

larold said:


> _The only first tier English composer is likely Purcell, the rest - Elgar, RVW, Bax, Britten - are second tier (at the same level as R. Strauss). _
> 
> I can't concur with this conclusion. Purcell in the so-called first tier of composers but not Strauss, Elgar, Britten or Vaughan Williams? I'd like to see any reliable information supporting that conclusion not drawn from personal opinion.
> 
> In the survey of top 99 composers I conducted R. Strauss was No. 12, Britten No. 20, Vaughan Williams 25, Elgar 27 and Purcell 46.


I can't totally concur either, except my objection would be that Dowland, Tallis and Gibbons were top-tier for their time -- and Dowland may have been Irish iirc. Purcell's music just hasn't been performed as much and he doesn't have quite the same name recognition as the moderns, but I don't think any subsequent British "serious" composer can match his stature. Your survey is also based on personal opinion. The most enthusiastic proponents of composers like Elgar and Vaughan Williams seem to be other Britons. The US hasn't done much better in the realm of "serious music" in my opinion, although characters like Ives, Glass, Cage and Adams are probably quite a bit more memorable than than any of the "modern" British composers. Not that I'm a huge fan of Ives, Glass, Cage or Adams, either. Not too long ago there was a thread about personal "blind spots", and British art music after Purcell and the American variety except for Copland are a couple of mine.


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## Gallus (Feb 8, 2018)

cheregi said:


> As much as I enjoy this discussion of the differences between the national character of the English and the Germans etc., I think this question may be answered much more simply by looking at geopolitics - as far as I know, in Italy and Germany the sheer quantity of independent small states competing for prestige meant much more opportunity for composers to find patronage. For example, the 1580s court of Ferrara in northern Italy, famous across Europe for its musical innovations which were integral in the development of opera, only managed to reach such heights at the whim of a duke who suffered military defeat and then tried to compensate by investing in culture. Similar situations played out anywhere politically fractured.


Basically this.

Before the 19th century and the emergence of a mass middle class of concert-goers, there were three streams of what we now define as "classical" music: the court, the church, and opera.

Court: since Britain was centralised on one royal court over the entire country, you only need a single composer. Even so this produced Purcell, one of the greatest composers of the entire Baroque period anywhere. After 1714 Britain was ruled by a royal dynasty from Germany, the Hanoverians, who liked to import German music and composers to the court for obvious reasons - Handel, J.C. Bach, Haydn, even persisting into Mendelssohn, who was immensely popular with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

Church: after Flanders, England has probably the most outstanding musical output of the entire Renaissance, so much so that the style of polyphony that defined the period was originally known as the "contenance anglaise" to the Franco-Flemish composers who took it up. Unfortunately so much of this music has been lost due to the destruction of the monasteries after the Reformation, which also points to why that elaborate tradition was ended. But despite that England continued (continues) to have one of the strongest choral traditions and most admired collection of hymns of any country in the world.

Opera: More or less an outgrowth of the Italian (and then French and German) courts, so what above applies here also. When there was a brief craze for opera here in the 1720s it never took root because of an eventual preference for oratorios with a religious and moral message, and native theatre which one could actually understand and find dramatic interest in. There's an essay by Joseph Addison gently mocking opera-goers for listening to singing in a language where they don't know what's happening at all, and when the same operas were sung in English it sounded faintly ridiculous (think long melismas over a single syllable such as "and" - the languages were felt too different for Italian opera to work).

So if you want to know why, I think it's down to 3 interrelated factors: 1. Political centralisation, 2. Protestantism, 3. Geographical and cultural distance from Italy.

(Also, much of the great music of the 19th century, especially from Eastern Europe, was explicitly driven by nationalistic concerns and an attempt to establish a national identity through music. Think Smetana, Sibelius, Grieg, The Five. Since England and Britain had already been an established and powerful nation for centuries, for a long time there was felt no need to consciously attempt to produce a native tradition against the dominance of German music.

So maybe four interrelated factors: 1. Political centralisation, 2. Protestantism, 3. Geographical and cultural distance from Italy, 4. Established nationhood.)

After a native tradition was finally established by academic composers like Hubert Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford at the end of the 19th century England then produced a stable of composers not embarrassed by comparison to any country: Elgar, RVW, Britten being the big three, but plenty more minor composers besides.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)




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## Iota (Jun 20, 2018)

Jacck said:


> the Stuarts did not support music.


Actually, although before the period you're talking about, James I for example enthusiastically patronised Orlando Gibbons.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

Gallus said:


> ...
> So maybe four interrelated factors: 1. Political centralisation, 2. Protestantism, 3. Geographical and cultural distance from Italy, 4. Established nationhood.)
> 
> ...


I'm not really convinced. The choral tradition in Protestant areas of Germany produced some of the very greatest music ever written; France was probably even more politically centralized than Britain ever was, and in the 17th-19th centuries was pretty much *the* European powerhouse; such geopolitical explanations can't really satisfactorily explain why Britain led the way in literature or why painting was so great in the Low Countries, and so weak in Britain. My theory is: that's just the way things turned out. I don't think science or various materialist philosophies can explain the appearance of "genius". Some things just don't have a pat, "rational" explanation. Shakespeare was English, not German. Bach was German, not English. 'Nuff said.


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

Jacck said:


> you mean the Hymns to the Night by Novalis?
> https://www.gutenberg.org/files/43821/43821-h/43821-h.htm
> the night refers to death?
> I never read any Novalis before, but it is clear where he is coming from. The goal as in every mysticism is the transcendence of the ego. The individual ego has to die (hence the worship of the night as a symbol of the mystical death), to find the universal life. Goethe had similar pantheistic views, as did many German idealists. Hegel with his notion of the world soul (anima mundi). It is interesting, though none of it reaches the depth of Meister Eckhart, who was the deepest German mystic of them all.


He was a full blown philosopher as well. Wrote an calculus of ideas (kind of like the ParaMind Brainstorming Program aims to but in a different way) and tried to see what future science would be like. He has a large body of work for dying so young. Only recently was much of it translated into English.


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## Gallus (Feb 8, 2018)

consuono said:


> I'm not really convinced. The choral tradition in Protestant areas of Germany produced some of the very greatest music ever written


1) Luther and Lutheranism promoted music against the more Calvinistic strains of Protestantism which were influential in Britain and the Netherlands; 2) Germany was split between Catholic and Protestant principalities and musicians moved between the two for employment. What is considered by many to be the pinnacle of German choral music and perhaps of all classical music? Bach's Mass in B Minor, a setting of the Latin mass he wrote for the Catholic Elector of Saxony! There was an entire South German organ tradition where Lutheran composers such as Froberger and Pachelbel moved to Catholic Vienna (the cultural centre of the German-speaking world) and absorbed Italian musical influences there.



consuono said:


> France was probably even more politically centralized than Britain ever was, and in the 17th-19th centuries was pretty much *the* European powerhouse


In literature, sure, but I wouldn't say *the* powerhouse in music. The Italian tradition was probably the most influential across Europe until the latter part of the 18th century: "French" music was founded by Lully, an Italian immigrant! and there we bitter controversies in Paris as late as Rousseau over the superior merit of Italian opera. But yes, not only did France have the most magnificent court in Europe at Versailles, but composers like a Charpentier could be employed by the Jesuits to write elaborate sacred music which would have found no place in England at the time.



consuono said:


> such geopolitical explanations can't really satisfactorily explain why Britain led the way in literature or why painting was so great in the Low Countries, and so weak in Britain. My theory is: that's just the way things turned out. I don't think science or various materialist philosophies can explain the appearance of "genius". Some things just don't have a pat, "rational" explanation. Shakespeare was English, not German. Bach was German, not English. 'Nuff said.


I don't want to give decisive pronouncements on literature and especially painting as I don't know the histories in those arts as well, but it seems plausible to me that Dutch golden age panting tracks the emergence of a Burgher class, the wealthiest in the world at the time, that was interested in a new style of domestic and naturalistic depictions of life versus the mythological, religious topics of Italian Renaissance and Baroque painting that serviced collectors in the church and aristocracy. For English literature, likewise the novel form was invented there due to a new middle class readership in the 18th century, and of course the global dominance of the English language does the reputation of a Shakespeare no harm. But these are just off the cuff speculations.  Point is, if Vermeer or Milton had been born in Australia of the time none of us here would have ever heard of them, so obviously there has to be some material explanation for why genius occurs, even if it can't explain the whole 'qualia' of their exact genius.


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