Eric Saylor - The Sea in the British Musical Imagination

THE SEA IN THE
BRITISH MUSICAL IMAGINATION

For centuries, the sea and those who sail upon it have inspired the imaginations of British musicians. Generations of British artists have viewed the ocean as a metaphor for the mutable human condition by turns calm and reflective, tempestuous and destructive and have been influenced as much by its physical presence as by its musical potential. But just as geographical perspectives and attitudes on seascapes have evolved over time, so too have cultural assumptions about their meaning and significance. Changes in how Britons have used the sea to travel, communicate, work, play, and go to war have all irresistibly shaped the way that maritime imagery has been conceived, represented, and disseminated in British music.

By exploring the seas significance within the complex world of British music, this book reveals a network of largely unexamined cultural tropes unique to this island nation. The essays are organised around three main themes: the Sea as Landscape, the Sea as Profession, and the Sea as Metaphor, covering an array of topics drawn from the seventeenth century to the twenty-first. Featuring studies of pieces by the likes of Purcell, Arne, Sullivan, Vaughan Williams, and Davies, as well as examinations of cultural touchstones such as the BBC, the Scottish fishing industry, and the Aldeburgh Festival, The Sea in the British Musical Imagination will be of interest to musicologists as well as scholars in history, British studies, cultural studies, and English literature.

ERIC SAYLOR is Associate Professor of Musicology at Drake University. CHRISTOPHER M. SCHEER is Assistant Professor of Musicology at Utah State University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Byron Adams, Jenny Doctor, Amanda Eubanks Winkler, James Brooks Kuykendall, Charles Edward McGuire, Alyson McLamore, Louis Niebur, Jennifer Oates, Eric Saylor, Christopher M. Scheer, Aidan J. Thomson, Justin Vickers, Frances Wilkins.

Frontispiece: Bournemouth: Britains All-Season Resort, British Railways poster, 1950s, by Alker Tripp

To R. J. W.,
with thanks,
and to O. W. N.,
in memory

Eric Saylor and Christopher M. Scheer

Alyson McLamore

Jennifer Oates

Byron Adams

Christopher M. Scheer

Amanda Eubanks Winkler

James Brooks Kuykendall

Frances Wilkins

Justin Vickers

Charles Edward McGuire

Eric Saylor

Aidan J. Thomson

Louis Niebur

Jenny Doctor

A. Rehearsal Mark E (+5) (Hn. 1.2)

B. Rehearsal Mark J (Vln. 1.2)

C. Rehearsal Mark Q (+9) Reh. Fig. R (Cl. 1.2)

D. Rehearsal Mark S (+7) (Mar.)

E. Rehearsal Mark U (+3) V (6) (Reduction of Vln, Vla, Vc)

(a) Introduction theme 1 (mm. 1 9)

(b) Introduction theme 2 (mm. 31 5)

(c) P1 (mm. 51 65)

(d) P2 (mm. 68 71)

(e) P3 (mm. 104 9)

(f) P4 (mm. 152 5)

(g) S1 (mm. 201 8)

(h) S2 (mm. 228 36)

(i) Scherzo figure (mm. 335 40)

(a) Neighbour-note figure in Introduction theme 1

(b) Neighbour-note figure in P1

(c) Neighbour-note model, plus occurrences in P1, P2, and S1

(a) S1, rotation 1 (mm. 49 52)

(b) S2, rotation 1 (mm. 84 7)

(c) S1, rotation 2 (mm. 282 95)

* Bax Symphony No. 4 1932 Murdoch Murdoch & Company, assigned to Chappell Music Ltd., London W8 5DA. Reproduced by permission of Faber Music Ltd. All Rights Reserved

The editors, contributors, and publishers are grateful to all the institutions and persons listed for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies are offered for any omission, and the publishers will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions.

Byron Adams is Professor of Music at the University of California at Riverside. An accomplished scholar and composer, Adams has published extensively on the life and works of Ralph Vaughan Williams; he has also served as scholar-in-residence for the 2007 Bard Festival (Elgar and His World) and editor of the book connected to that festival ( Edward Elgar and His World ). A former president of the North American British Music Studies Association, Adams is presently Associate Editor of The Musical Quarterly and Book Series Editor for Music and Britain: The Twentieth Century for The Boydell Press.

Jenny Doctor is Director of the Belfer Audio Archive and Associate Professor at the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. Her research has long focused on musics dissemination on BBC radio, and current research also encompasses sound recording archiving and American radio. She has published The BBC and Ultra-Modern Music, 1922 (Cambridge, 1999); The Proms: A Social History , co-edited with David Wright and Nicholas Kenyon (Thames & Hudson, 2007); and has recently submitted an anthology called Watching Jazz: Encounters with Jazz on Screen, co-edited with Bjrn Heile and Peter Elsdon (Oxford University Press).

James Brooks Kuykendall is Professor of Music at Erskine College, Due West, South Carolina. He received his Ph.D. in musicology from Cornell University, and his publications have concerned mainly British music from the 1860s to the 1960s, with particular emphasis on Arthur Sullivan and William Walton.

Charles Edward McGuire is Professor of Musicology at Oberlin Conservatory of Music. His areas of scholarly interest are the music of Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams, the British music festival, sight-singing techniques, and the intersection of choral singing and moral reform movements. His publications include Music and Victorian Philanthropy: The Tonic Sol-fa Movement (Cambridge University Press, 2009), Elgars Oratorios: The Creation of an Epic Narrative (Ashgate, 2002), and The Historical Dictionary of English Music (Scarecrow, 2011), which he co-authored with Oberlin colleague Steven Plank.

After studying musical theatre for her masters degree, Alyson McLamores UCLA dissertation focused on symphonic music in eighteenth-century London, supported by a grant from the Fulbright Commission in England. Her work has appeared in the Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle , Notes , Music and the Wesleys , Festschriften in honor of Frank A. DAccone and William F. Prizer, the New Dictionary of the History of Ideas , the Encyclopedia of Broadway , and the Readers Guide to Music . Named a Distinguished Teacher at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, she authored the textbook Musical Theater: An Appreciation , and has served twice as the music curriculum writer for the US Academic Decathlon.

Louis Niebur is Associate Professor of Musicology at University of Nevada, Reno. His research primarily concerns avant-garde and popular music of the post-war era, focusing on musics that bridge high and low cultural traditions through media technology. He is the author of Special Sound: The Creation and Legacy of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop , published by Oxford University Press in 2010.

Jennifer Oates is Associate Professor at Queens College and the Graduate CenterCUNY. She is the author of a biography of the Scottish composer Hamish MacCunn (Ashgate, 2013), and Recent Researches in the Music of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries includes her editions of MacCunns overtures and songs. Her current research focuses on identity in British music in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries and musical culture in Scotland from 1900 through the Great War.