The term English Musical Renaissance refers to a musical movement in the late 19th and early 20th century, when British composers, often those lecturing or trained at the Royal College of Music, were said to have freed themselves from foreign musical influences, to have begun writing in a distinctively national idiom, and to have equaled the achievement of composers in mainland Europe. The idea gained considerable currency at the time, with support from prominent music critics, but since the latter part of the 20th century the validity of these claims been challenged by some scholars.
The term was (and is) sometimes also used to encompass the expansion of the culture of classical music which took place in Britain in this era, including the burgeoning choral societies, the establishment of new professional orchestras, and the introduction of music education into the school system.
Among the composers championed by proponents of the theory were Hubert Parry, Charles Villiers Stanford and Alexander Mackenzie. Writers who propounded the theory included Francis Hueffer and J A Fuller Maitland.
Read more about English Musical Renaissance: Conception, Dissention, Notes and References
Famous quotes containing the words english, musical and/or renaissance:
“Sir Walter Raleigh might well be studied, if only for the excellence of his style, for he is remarkable in the midst of so many masters. There is a natural emphasis in his style, like a man’s tread, and a breathing space between the sentences, which the best of modern writing does not furnish. His chapters are like English parks, or say rather like a Western forest, where the larger growth keeps down the underwood, and one may ride on horseback through the openings.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There was something refreshingly and wildly musical to my ears in the very name of the white man’s canoe, reminding me of Charlevoix and Canadian Voyageurs. The batteau is a sort of mongrel between the canoe and the boat, a fur-trader’s boat.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“People nowadays like to be together not in the old-fashioned way of, say, mingling on the piazza of an Italian Renaissance city, but, instead, huddled together in traffic jams, bus queues, on escalators and so on. It’s a new kind of togetherness which may seem totally alien, but it’s the togetherness of modern technology.”
—J.G. (James Graham)