MUSS2124
British Music and National Identity Reading List

Select Bibliography for British Music and National Identity [IA denotes availability on Internet Archive]  

Top of page

1. General Studies of British Music

Allis, Michael, and Paul Watt (eds.), The Symphonic Poem in Britain, 1850-1950 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2020)

Banfield, Stephen, Sensibility and English song : critical studies of the early 20th century 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)      

---, (ed.), The twentieth century, The Blackwell History of Music in Britain 6 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995)

Bashford, Christina, The Pursuit of High Culture: John Ella and Chamber Music in Victorian London (Woodnridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2007)

Collins, Sarah, ed., Music and Victorian Liberalism: Composing the Liberal Subject (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019)

Dibble, Jeremy, 'Fantasy and Hybridization in the British Variation Tradition', in Dibble & Bennett Zon (eds.), Nineteenth-century British music studies volume 2 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 235-50 OCR REQUESTED BY LIBRARY (LW 11/01/2022)  OCR REQUESTED BY LIBRARY (chg 04/08/2020)      

Green, Edward, 'Music and the Victorian Mind: The Musical Aesthetics of the Rev.H.R.Haweis', International review of the aesthetics and sociology of music.. 39.2 (December 2008), 239-56

Haweis, H.R., Music and morals (London: W.H.Allen, 1888) [IA]

Hold, Trevor, Parry to Finzi : twenty English song-composers (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2002)

Hueffer, Francis, Half a Century of Music in England: Essays Towards a History (London: Chapman & Hall, 1889) [IA]

Hughes, Meirion, The English musical renaissance and the press, 1850-1914 : watchmen of music (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001)       

Hughes, Merion & Robert Stradling, The English musical renaissance, 1840-1940 : constructing a national music 2nd edn. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001)     

Lambert, Constant, Music ho! : A study of music in decline (London: Penguin, 1934) [IA]

Palmer, Christopher, Impressionism in music (London: Hutchinson, 1973) [IA]

Pirie, Peter J., The English musical renaissance (London: Gollancz, 1979)

Riley, Matthew (ed.), British Music and Modernism, 1896-1960 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010)     

Scholes, Percy, The mirror of music, 1844-1944 : a century of musical life in Britain as reflected in the pages of the Musical Times. 2 vols (London: Novello & Co., 1947)

Shore, Bernard, Sixteen symphonies (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1950)

Walker, Ernest, A history of music in England. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1952) [IA]

White, Eric Walter, A history of English opera (London: Faber, 1983)

Whittall, Arnold, Music since the first world war 2nd edn. (London: Dent, 1988) [IA]

 

Top of page

2. Studies of specific composers

Allis, Michael, Parry's creative process (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003)

Anderson, Robert, Elgar (London: J.M. Dent, 1993) [IA]

Banfield, Stephen, Gerald Finzi : an English composer (London: Faber & Faber, 1997)

Beecham, Sir Thomas, Frederick Delius. (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1959) [IA]

Carr, Catherine, 'The music of Samuel Coleridge Taylor (1875-1912): a critical and analytical study' (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Durham, 2005), http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/2964/

Crump, Jeremy, 'The Identity of English Music: The Reception of Elgar, 1898-1935', in R.Colls and P.Dodd (eds.), Englishness : politics and culture 1880-1920 (London: Croom Helm, 1986), pp. 164-90

Day, James, Vaughan Williams (London: Dent, 1961) [IA]

Dibble, Jeremy, C. Hubert H. Parry : his life and music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992)

Dibble, Jeremy, Charles Villiers Stanford : man and musician (Oxford: OUP, 2002)

Dibble, Jeremy, The Music of Frederick Delius: Style, Form and Ethos (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2021)    

Dickinson, A.E.F., Vaughan Williams. (London: Faber & Faber, 1963)

Dressler, John C., Granville Bantock: A Guide to Research (Clemson: Clemson University Press, 2020)    

Fenby, Eric, Delius as I knew him (London: G.Bell & Sons, 1937)

Foreman, Lewis, Bax : a composer and his times 3rd edn. (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2007)      

Foreman, Lewis,(ed.), Farewell, my youth and other writings (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1992)

Foreman, Lewis (ed.), Vaughan Williams in perspective : studies of an English composer (Albion Press, 1998)

Foss, Hubert, Ralph Vaughan Williams : a study. (London: George G.Harrap & Co., 1950)

Frogley, Alain (ed.), Vaughan Williams studies (Cambridge: CUP, 1996)  

Fuller Maitland, J. A., The music of Parry and Stanford : an essay in comparative criticism (Cambridge: W. Heffer, 1934)

Grimley, Daniel M., Delius and the Sound of Place (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018)

Grimley, Daniel M., & Julian Rushton (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Elgar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)

Holst, Imogen, Holst. (London: Faber & Faber, 1974)

Howes, Frank, The music of Ralph Vaughan Williams. (London: Oxford University Press, 1954) [IA]

Hurd, Michael, The ordeal of Ivor Gurney (Oxford: OUP, 1978) [IA]

Hurd, Michael, Rutland Boughton and the Glastonbury festivals (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993)

Hutchings, Arthur, Delius (London: Macmillan, 1948)

Kennedy, Michael, The works of Ralph Vaughan Williams. (London: OUP, 1964)

---, A catalogue of the works of Ralph Vaughan Williams 2nd edn. (Oxford: OUP, 1996)

---, Portrait of Elgar 3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004)

McVeagh, Diana, Gerald Finzi : his life and music (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005)

Mellers, Wilfred, Vaughan Williams and the vision of Albion (London: Pimlico, 1989)   OCR REQUESTED BY LIBRARY (LW 11/01/2022)  Available as an Online Course Reading in Minerva   

Mitchell, Jon C., A comprehensive biography of composer Gustav Holst, with correspondence and diary excerpts : including his American years (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2001)

Moore, Jerrold Northrop, Edward Elgar: A Creative Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)

Ottaway, Hugh, Vaughan Williams symphonies. (London: BBC, 1972)

Palmer, Christopher, Delius : portrait of a cosmopolitan (London: Duckworth, 1976) [IA]

Redwood, Christopher (ed.), A Delius companion (London: John Calder, 1980) [IA]

Rees, Brian, A musical peacemaker : the life and work of Sir Edward German (Bourne End: Kensal, 1986) [IA]

Richards, Fiona, The music of John Ireland (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000)

Riley, Matthew, Edward Elgar and the Nostalgic Imagination (Cambridge: CUP, 2007) [IA]

Rodmell, Paul, Charles Villiers Stanford (Burlington: Ashgate, 2002)

Schwartz, Elliot, The Symphonies of Vaughan Williams (Amhurst: University of Massachussetts Press, 1964) [IA]  

Self, Geoffrey, The Hiawatha Man: The Life and Work of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995)

Short, Michael, Gustav Holst : the man and his music (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990)

Smyth, Ethyl, The memoirs of Ethel Smyth (Harmondsworth: Viking, 1987) [IA]

St. John, Christopher, Ethel Smyth : a biography (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1959)

Stradling, Robert, 'On Shearing the Black Sheep in Spring: The Repatriation of Frederick Delius', in C. Norris, Music and the politics of culture (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1989), pp. 69-105.

Vaughan Williams, Ralph, Some thoughts on Beethoven's Choral symphony : with writings on other musical subjects. (London: OUP, 1953).

Vaughan Williams, Ralph National music and other essays 2nd edn. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996)

Vaughan Williams, Ralph (ed. David Manning), Vaughan Williams on music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)

Vaughan Williams, Ursula, R.V.W.: A Biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams (London: OUP, 1964) [IA]

Warlock, Peter, Frederick Delius rev. edn. (London: The Bodley Head, 1952) [IA]

Young, Percy M., Vaughan Williams (London: Denis Dobson, 1953)

 

Top of page

3. Folksong and tudor revivals

Anon, 'Mr Cecil Sharp', The Musical Times. 53 (1 October 1912), 639-43

Broadwood, Lucy E., 'On the Collecting of English Folk-Song', Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 31 (1904-5), 89-109

---, 'Folksongs and Music', Folk-Lore. 3.4 (December 1892), 551-53

Carlton, Richard, 'Folksong, Chant and the English Musical Symphonic Renaissance. A Case Study of Ethnic Musical Identity', International review of the aesthetics and sociology of music. 24.2 (December 1993), 129-42

Fox-Strangways, A., 'English Folksongs', Music and Letters.. 5.4 (October 1924), 293-301

Francmanis, John 'National Music to National Redeemer: The Consolidation of a "Folk-Song" Construct in Edwardian England', Popular music. 21.1 (January 2002), 1-25

Gammon, Vic, 'Folk Song Collecting in Sussex and Surrey, 1843-1914', History workshop journal. 10:1 (1980), 61-89

Gregory, E. David, The late Victorian folksong revival : the persistence of English melody, 1878-1903 (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2010)

Pople, Anthony, 'Vaughan Williams, Tallis, and the Phantasy principle', in Frogley (ed.), Vaughan Williams studies, pp. 47-80. OCR REQUESTED BY LIBRARY (LW 11/01/2022)  Available as an Online Course Reading in Minerva      

Schneer, Christopher, 'For the Sake of the Union; The Nation in Stanford's Fourth Irish Rhapsody ', in Rachel Cowgill & Julian Rushton (eds.), Europe, empire, and spectacle in nineteenth-century British music (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2006), pp. 159-69

Sharp, Cecil, English folk-song : some conclusions (1907) [IA]

Sharp, Cecil & Lucy E.Broadwood, 'Some Characteristics of English Folk-Music', Folk-Lore. 19.2 (30 June 1908), 132-52.

 

Top of page

4. Landscape and Pastoral

Baxendale, John, Priestley's England : J.B. Priestley and English culture (Manchester UP, 2007)

Gifford, Terry, Pastoral (London: Routledge, 1999)

Greene, Richard, ‘A Musico-Rhetorical Outline of Holst’s Egdon Heath’, Music and Letters., 73.2 (1992), 244-67

Grimley, Daniel M., ‘Landscape and Distance: Vaughan Williams, Modernism and the Symphonic Pastoral’, in British music and modernism, 1895-1960, ed. by Matthew Riley (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 147-74       

Hardy, Thomas, The Return of the native (London: Macmillan, 1974)

Howells, Herbert, ‘Vaughan Williams’s “Pastoral Symphony”’, Music and Letters., 3.2 (1922), 122-32

Marshall, Em, Music in the landscape : how the British countryside inspired our greatest composers (London: Robert Hale, 2011)

Saylor, Eric,  English pastoral music : from Arcadia to Utopia, 1900-1955 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017)      

Schur, Owen, Victorian pastoral : Tennyson, Hardy, and the subversion of forms (Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1989) [IA]  

Wynn Jones, David, Beethoven : Pastoral symphony (Cambridge: CUP, 1995)

 

Top of page

5. Seascape & cityscape

Arblaster, Anthony, 'A London Symphony and Tono-Bungay ', Tempo. no.163 (1987), 21-5

Frogley, Alain, 'H.G.Wells and Vaughan Williams's A London Symphony: Politics and culture in fin-de-siecle England', in C.Banks, A.Searle & A.Turner (eds.), Sundry sorts of music books : essays on the British Library collections : presented to O.W. Neighbour on his 70th birthday (London: British Library, 1993), pp. 299-308       

Jerrold, William Blanchard, London: A Pilgrimage (London: Grant & Co., 1872) [IA]

Saylor, Eric, and Christopher M. Scheer (eds.), The sea in the British musical imagination (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2015)      

Symons, Arthur, London : a book of aspects (London: Chiswick Press, 1909) [IA]

Wells, H.G., Tono-Bungay (London: Macmillan, 1909) [IA]

 

Top of page

6. Literature

Allis, Michael,  British music and literary context : artistic connections in the long nineteenth century (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2012)

---, 'Elgar, Lytton and the Piano Quintet Op.84', Music and Letters.. 85:2 (May 2004), 198-238

---, 'Musical reactions to Tennyson; reformulating musical imagery in The Lotos Eaters ', in Phyllis Weliver (ed.), The figure of music in nineteenth-century British poetry (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 177- 213

---, ‘Reading Music through Literary Scholarship: Granville Bantock, Shelley, and The Witch of Atlas’, Journal of musicological research, 36.1 (2017), 6-28

---, 'Shared Concerns: British Music and Literature in the Long Nineteenth Century', 19 : interdisciplinary studies in the long nineteenth-century. 1 (Autumn 2005), 1-33. ( https://www.19.bbk.ac.uk/articles/abstract/10.16995/ntn.436/)

Frogley, Alain, ‘Vaughan Williams and Thomas Hardy: “Tess” and the slow movement of the Ninth Symphony’, Music and Letters., 68.1 (January  1987), 42-59

Hardy, Thomas, Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Cambridge: CUP, 1991) [IA]

Housman, A.E., The Collected poems of A. E. Housman. (London: Jonathan Cape, 1960) [IA]

Shaw, George Bernard, Love among the artists (London: Constable & Co., 1914) [IA]

Weliver, Phyllis, Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction 1860-1900: Representations of Music, Science and Gender in the Leisured Home (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000)

---, ed., The Figure of Music in Nineteenth-Century British Poetry (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005)

 

Top of page

7. Chivalry and Empire

Baden-Powell, Robert, Scouting for boys : a handbook for instruction in good citizenship (Oxford: OUP, 2004) [IA]

Girouard, Mark, The return to Camelot : chivalry and the English gentleman (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1981)

Gould, Clarissa, '"Behind thy veil close-drawn": Elgar, The Crown of India, and the Feminine "Other"', in Cowgill & Rushton (eds.), Europe, empire, and spectacle in nineteenth-century British music, pp. 203-19

---, 'An Inoffensive Thing": Edward Elgar, The Crown of India and Empire', in Martin Clayton & Bennet Zon (eds.), Music and orientalism in the British Empire, 1780s to 1940s : portrayal of the East  (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 147-63     

McGuire, Charles Edward, 'Elgar and Acworth's Caractacus: the druids, race, and the individual hero', in J.P.E.Harper-Scott and Julian Rushton (eds.), Elgar studies (Cambridge: CUP, 2007), pp. 50-77

Richards, Jeffrey, Imperialism and music : Britain 1876-1953 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001)   

Tennyson, Idylls of the King (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996) [IA]

Upperton, Laura, 'Patriotic Vigour or Voice of the Orient? Re-reading Elgar's Caractacus', in Clayton & Zon (eds.), Music and orientalism in the British Empire, 1780s to 1940s : portrayal of the East, pp. 165-87

Wright, David, 'Sir Frederick Bridge and the Musical Furtherance of the 1902 Imperial Project', in Cowgill & Rushton (eds.), Europe, empire, and spectacle in nineteenth-century British music, pp. 115-29

 

Top of page

8. Celtic Identity

Atkinson, Peter, ‘“An Ireland Built Anew”: Bax’s Tintagel and the Easter Rising’, Music and Letters., 97.1 (February 2016), 100-135

Boyd, Ernest, Ireland's literary renaissance (Dublin: Allen Figgis, 1968) [IA]

Carson, Valerie, ‘A Protean Spirit’: William Wallace: Artist, Composer and Catalyst’, PhD thesis (University of Durham, 1999) http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/4482/1/4482_1946.PDF

Castle, Gregory, Modernism and the Celtic revival (Cambridge: CUP, 2001)

Dibble, Jeremy, Hamilton Harty : musical polymath: Musical Polymath (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2013)

Forbes, Anne-Marie, '"Out of old mythologies": Joseph Holbrooke and Thomas Eevelyn Ellis', in Watt and Forbes, Joseph Holbrooke: Composer, Critic, and Musical Patriot (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), pp.41-59       

Hurd, Michael, Rutland Boughton and the Glastonbury festivals (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993)

Huss, Fabian Gregor, ‘The Irish Music of Arnold Bax & E.J. Moeran’ in Music and identity in Ireland and beyond, ed. by Mark Fitzgerald & John O’Flynn (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 69-82

Lowe, George, Josef Holbrooke and his work (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1920) [IA]

Marcus, Phillip L., Yeats and the beginning of the Irish Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1970) [IA]

Oates, Jennifer, ‘Scotland, the “Celtic North” and the Sea: Issues of Identity in Bantock’s Hebridean Symphony’, in The sea in the British musical imagination, ed. by Eric Saylor and Christopher M. Scheer (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2015), pp. 31-50     

Sharp, William [Fiona Macleod]: William Sharp A Memoir, compiled by his wife Elizabeth A. Sharp (New York: Duffield, 1910) [IA]

Watt, Paul, & Anne-Marie Forbes (eds.), Joseph Holbrooke : composer, critic, and musical patriot (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015)

White, Harry, The keeper's recital : music and cultural history in Ireland, 1770-1970 (Cork: Cork UP, 1998) [IA]

This list was last updated on 04/01/2022

Reading lists home