Sensibility and English Song
Critical Studies of the Early Twentieth Century

The history of English song from the late nineteenth century to the Second World War.

Stephen Banfield (Author)

9780521379441, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 27 January 1989

640 pages
23.6 x 19.2 x 3.5 cm, 1.105 kg

'… this study is unlikely to be surpassed in its ambitious comprehensiveness for a long while, and will remain a unique source of reference.' Classical Music

This highly acclaimed study of English song is the first detailed account of an unusually fruitful interrelationship between English music and English poetry. The period covered is known as the English Musical Renaissance and runs from the last years of the nineteenth century to the Second World War. Stephen Banfield traces the late flowering of Romantic impulses in solo song during these years, surveying it from critical, analytical and historical angles. He plots the growth of the English stylistic sensibility in song in the decades leading up to the First World War, discusses in detail the plateau it reached between the wars (particularly in the 1920s), and shows how and why it declined as other musical concerns took the field. Poets whose verse was set to music most frequently, including Housman, Hardy, de la Mare and Yeats, are treated at length, as are pre-eminent song composers such as Butterworth, Finzi, Gurney, Ireland, Quilter, Somervell, Stanford, Vaughan Williams and Warlock. In all, more than fifty composers are discussed, and numerous individual songs. In the final section of the book, besides providing an extensive bibliography, Dr Banfield catalogues over 5,000 songs, giving dates of composition and publication and much other detail, listed by composer. This comprehensive survey will prove an invaluable reference guide to all students of the subject.

Preface
Acknowledgements
Explanation of bibliographical system and song lists
Abbreviations
Part I. The Growth of Sensibility: 1. The condition of English song in 1900
2. Reticent Victorians: Elgar, Parry, Stanford and Wood
3. Narrative song-cycle and dramatic scena: Somervell and Walford Davies
4. Three post-Victorians: Hurlstone, Bridge and Vaughan Williams
5. The Edwardian age (I)
6. The Edwardian age (II)
7. The First World War: its effect and its victims
Part II. The Lyrical Impulse Between the Wars: 8. Introduction: the uses of technique - style and personal symbolism in John Ireland
9. The music of Ivor Gurney
10. Georgian poetry and Georgian music
11. Housman and the composers: documentation and evaluation
12. The Celtic twilight
13. Time and destiny: the Hardy songs of Gerald Finzi
14. The uses and abuses of technique
Postscript: The pursuit of detachment
Appendices
Song lists
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: 20th century & contemporary classical music [AVGC6]