British Art Song Composition, Performance, and Pedagogy and the Articulation of National Identity in Early Twentieth Century England

Abstract

English song in the early 1900s was tightly associated with notions of Britishness in the wider context of the development of British art song. The paper, focusing on Ralph Vaughan Williams' On Wenlock Edge, explores the parts played by poetry, landscape, folk influence, modal writing and chamber texture in the creation of a musical language which was part of Englishness. It also focuses on the role of the singers and teachers, in terms of their emphasis on diction, speech rhythm, textual clarity and controlled expression. These techniques contributed to the development of an identifiable style of English singing and the dissemination of the repertoire via teaching, concert performance, festivals and commemorative events. English art song also was related to memory, continuity and national renewal in the years around the First World War. Composition, performance and pedagogy were thus not isolated domains but are interdependent practices which contributed to the development of English art song as a musical tradition and as a form of cultural expression.