British Music and Modernism, 1895–1960

Dr Matthew Riley, Senior Lecturer in Music, University of Birmingham, UK

• Contents: Introduction, Matthew Riley; Liberal critics and modern music in the post-Victorian age, Matthew Riley; 'A thoroughgoing modern': Elgar reception in the Manchester Guardian 1896-1908, Meirion Hughes; Schoenberg, Roger Fry and the emergence of a critical language for the reception of musical modernism in Britain 1912-1914, Deborah Heckert; Modernism, Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes in London 1911-1929, Gareth Thomas; Modern maritime pastoral: wave deformations in the music of Frank Bridge, Stephen Downes; 'A direct and intimate realization': Holst and formalism in the 1920s, Christopher M. Scheer; Façades for Façade: William Walton, visual culture and English modernism in the Sitwell circle, Tim Barringer; Landscape and distance: Vaughan Williams, modernism and the symphonic pastoral, Daniel M. Grimley; Vaughan Williams's antic symphony, J.P.E. Harper-Scott; Hindemith's disciple in London: Walter Leigh on modern music 1932-1940, Thomas Irvine; Benjamin Britten's 'Pierrot' ensembles, Christopher Dromey; Music for the machines of the future: H.G. Wells, Arthur Bliss and Things to Come (1936), Matthew Riley; Early music and the ambivalent origins of Elisabeth Lutyens's modernism, Laurel Parsons; 'The real thing - at last'? Historicizing Humphrey Searle, Ben Earle; Index.

'... the overriding impression is that the book provides a series of case studies into how worthwhile, detailed research into this period of British music can be undertaken. The results are often remarkable, and this book is essential reading for anyone interested in twentieth-century British music or the development of modernist music more generally.' Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland'...a refreshing contrast to the heavy-handedness of much literary criticism', The Journal of the H.G. Wells Society