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When, in 1904, the German critic Oscar Schmitz described Britain as ‘Das Land ohne Musik’ (The land with out music), he was presumably making an attempt to stir.
Nonetheless, he did have a little bit of some extent – for all of the efforts of Parry, Sullivan and co, Britain’s output over the previous century or two had been pretty paltry in comparison with that of his personal nation.
Schmitz’s timing, although, proved deliciously misguided. His fellow German Richard Strauss had already began to sing the praises of Elgar – from whom two symphonies and a Violin Concerto would shortly observe – and throughout the subsequent decade, Vaughan Williams would write his personal first two symphonies plus the groundbreaking Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, whereas Holst would start work on The Planets.
On the premiere of VW’s Fantasia in 1910 had been Howells and Gurney, simply two of a flurry of tremendous composers who would drive British music on into the Twentieth century, and the work itself attracts inspiration from the Renaissance, when Britain comfortably rivalled its European counterparts.
At the moment, the British composing scene is as robust as ever. However who’re the best composers the nation has ever produced? We requested 167 of right this moment’s main musicians to have their say, with 5 votes every, based mostly on the standards of originality, affect, approach and, after all, sheer enjoyability to take heed to and carry out. We then totted up the votes to attract up the next High 25 British composers, in reverse order…
Finest British composers of all time
22= Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-94)
Born: Hertfordshire, England
When discussions of nice Twentieth-century string quartet cycles come up, these of Bartók and Shostakovich are often in pole place. The 13 quartets of Elizabeth Maconchy (left), nonetheless, need to hold related firm.
Written throughout half-a-century, Maconchy’s quartets have a tendency in direction of financial system and drama, packing loads of impression into quick actions. Additionally they combine influences from throughout Europe: the angular soundworlds of Bartók and Berg, the punch and pizzazz of Britten, and extra lyrical sections evoking her personal Irish heritage. Now add to {that a} wealth of orchestral works and songs, plus a handful of operas together with the quirky and risqué The Couch of 1956, and you’ve got fairly a portfolio.
In her personal phrases: ‘For me, one of the best music is an impassioned argument.’
22= Herbert Howells (1892-1983)
Born: Gloucestershire, England
Listening to a critic shout ‘Thank God that’s over’ in response to the world premiere of his Second Piano Concerto in 1925 might have put the brakes on Howells’s (under) profession as an orchestral composer, nevertheless it additionally successfully set him in a brand new path, wherein he would show pre-eminent.
Channelling his efforts into choral music, he would produce a string of masterful liturgical settings for the likes of St Paul’s and Gloucester cathedrals and King’s Faculty, Cambridge, in every occasion shaping the phrasing and texture of the music to go well with particularly the constructing it was written for.
His masterpiece, in the meantime, was the large-scale Hymnus Paradisi, spurred by the tragic loss of life of his nine-year-old son Michael in 1935. He didn’t solely abandon non-choral music, nonetheless… and who might presumably not like a composer who, in 1933, wrote a ballet known as Penguinski?
In his personal phrases: ‘I’ve by no means been capable of compose a word of music with out both a spot or a constructing in my thoughts.’
22= Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912)
Born: London, England
When Coleridge-Taylor’s Hiawatha trilogy of cantatas obtained its first full efficiency on the 1900 Birmingham Pageant, the composer obtained a standing ovation – a quite extra enthusiastic response than Elgar obtained on the identical pageant for his Dream of Gerontius.
Hiawatha made the composer a star right here and within the US, although not wealthy, because of his promoting of the copyright. Its success has additionally maybe overshadowed his in any other case wealthy output, which has all of the heady Romanticism and storytelling aptitude of Dvořák and Grieg (whom he admired significantly), to not point out Stanford, underneath whom he studied on the Royal Faculty of Music.
In his personal phrases: (On music) ‘Ought to it not quite come from the guts in addition to the mind?’
We named Coleridge-Taylor one of many greatest black composers it is best to learn about
22=Malcolm Arnold (1921-2006)
Born: Northampton, England
Arnold is greatest remembered right this moment for his movie scores – The Bridge on the River Kwai, anybody? – or maybe his mild music, which ranges from jaunty, pungent Scottish, Welsh, Irish and English Dances to concertos for all method of bizarre devices (A Grand, Grand Overture calls for three vacuum cleaners, one ground polisher and, er, 4 rifles).
All of that is immediately likeable, and marks Arnold out as one in all classical music’s most imaginative (and theatrical) orchestrators. Arguably, nonetheless, his best music is in his symphonies, from the Sibelian Third to the angst-ridden Fifth, the latter extra revealing of an usually troubled life than any variety of hoover concertos.
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In his personal phrases: ‘Music is the social act of communication amongst folks, a gesture of friendship, the strongest there may be.’
19= Oliver Knussen (1952-2018)
Born: Glasgow, Scotland
Though extensively recognized for his vibrant and exuberant opera based mostly on the kids’s guide The place the Wild Issues Are (1983), Knussen was primarily a miniaturist. Arguably he was the religious inheritor of Ravel, sharing the Frenchman’s mastery of orchestration (Knussen gaining perception from his father being the LSO’s principal double bassist) and a childlike, virtually naive enjoyment of music in all its elements, together with at its most superior. Knussen’s Flourish with Fireworks (1988) is a splendid introduction to his vivid, painterly method to orchestral sound.
In his personal phrases: ‘To me, actual music is actual music whenever you’re not sitting round considering it’s music – it really takes
you over.’
19= Helen Grime (b.1981)
Born: York, England
Often drawing on corresponding artforms equivalent to portray and literature, the music of Helen Grime, with its intricate, multi-layered textures and expressive but targeted character, is turning into more and more common.
A pupil of composers Julian Anderson and Augusta Learn Thomas amongst others, the Scot has utilized herself to an array of varieties, from large-scale orchestral items to concertos, choral, chamber and solo works. Highlights embody 2009’s A Chilly Spring, Two Eardley Footage, premiered on the BBC Proms in 2016, and 2017’s Woven House for Simon Rattle and the LSO.
In her personal phrases: ‘It usually seems like you need to be taught composing anew for each bit.’
19= Jonathan Dove (b.1959)
Born: London, England
Jonathan Dove has made up for what was a comparatively late begin as a composer (in his thirties) with a prolific output throughout genres. The voice sits on the coronary heart of his compelling oeuvre, which is maybe most at house on the opera stage, although it has usually reached far past it because of group initiatives, works for kids and operas for tv.
His seeming have to mirror the human situation and supply social commentary, at all times with a thread of shining optimism, has resulted in charming works about local weather change (Gaia Principle, Hojoki and others), battle (In Damascus) and refugees (Flight).
In his personal phrases: ‘All of us have music in our heads; I’m simply fortunate that I’m capable of write it down.’
15= Judith Weir (b.1954)
Born: Cambridge, England
Creativeness and eclecticism are hallmarks of Judith Weir’s writing. That is the composer who managed to compress the story of Harald Hardrada’s huge, doomed invasion of England in 1066 right into a ten-minute piece for a single soprano. Whether or not for opera, orchestra, string quartet or a dozen extra intriguing configurations, Weir’s music is distinguished by a pleasure in storytelling, an uncanny potential for getting straight to a story’s dramatic essence and a few wealthy, imaginatively rendered soundworlds. Such qualities will certainly have performed an element within the Scot’s appointment as Grasp of the Queen’s (now King’s) Music in 2014.
In her personal phrases: ‘I usually marvel, if there have been no deadlines, would something ever get ended?’
15= Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
Born: Cheltenham, England
The Planets alone must be sufficient to propel Holst in direction of the highest of this listing – massively authentic, brilliantly scored and globally common, its affect on composers continues to today, not least in movie scores by the likes of John Williams. However there may be additionally a lot extra to Holst.
For example, his 1912 Beni Mora, impressed by a vacation in Algeria, foreshadows the minimalist motion by hypnotically repeating the identical Arabic flute motif 163 occasions. Elsewhere, all method of influences together with folks and England’s musical previous infuse a richly diverse CV that features the mystery-filled tone poem Egdon Heath, the raucous ballet The Good Idiot and the soul-stirring Hymn of Jesus for choir and orchestra.
In his personal phrases: ‘Music, being an identical with heaven, isn’t a factor of momentary thrills, and even hourly ones. It’s a situation of eternity.’
15= John Dowland (c.1563-1626)
Born: London, England (most likely)
The trendy default mode of the Elizabethan age was melancholy; and, musically, the melancholic zeitgeist proved fertile territory for the composer of a pavan autobiographically designated ‘Semper Dowland, semper dolens’ (‘At all times Dowland, at all times grieving’).
Amongst his most well-known songs, in spite of everything, are ‘In Darkness let me Dwell’ and ‘I noticed my Girl Weep’; whereas the ‘Lachrymae’ (‘Tears’) pavan would furnish the start line for Dowland’s crowning glory within the realm of consort music: the Seaven Teares figured in Seaven Passionate Pavans. Grasp lutenist, preeminent track composer and man of the musical world because of expertise gained in France, Italy and Denmark, little marvel that posthumously he was hailed as ‘the rarest musician that this age did behold’. And a wealthy vein of wit and sparkle working by his music suggests grief was by no means the entire story.
In his personal phrases: ‘Who loves not music and the heavenly muse, that man God hates.’
15= George Benjamin (b.1960)
Born: London, England
Internationally recognised as one of many UK’s main opera composers, George Benjamin’s music is notable amongst different issues for its uniquely vibrant splashes of timbre: Written on Pores and skin (2012), for example, consists of elements for a glass harmonica and viola da gamba.
The tightly woven melodic growth and inside voicing owes a lot to Benjamin’s grounding as a pianist and conductor, in addition to his research with Messiaen – there’s a robust European expressionist really feel to orchestral works equivalent to Palimpsests (2002). He continues to work commonly with librettist Martin Crimp, the author he has collaborated with since his first opera, Into the Little Hill (2006).
In his personal phrases: ‘You must be decided and affected person being a composer, notably right this moment. Ultimately some issues slot into place.’
14 Ethel Smyth (1858-1944)
Born: Kent, England
Whereas steeped within the fashion of Mendelssohn and Brahms, Ethel Smyth’s forthright, vigorous and primarily optimistic voice shines by even her early chamber works of the Eighties.
That voice remained a relentless even whereas she absorbed concepts from extra superior composers equivalent to Richard Strauss. In her three-act opera The Wreckers (1904), Wagner looms giant within the lovers’ duet, but it’s pushed by an genuine ardour – apparently impressed by her unrequited love for the artwork patron Winnaretta Singer-Polignac.
That is preceded by the extraordinary Prelude to Act II, an orchestral seascape, adopted by abrupt, Janáček-like declamation as younger Jack pursues a suspected traitor. And there’s even a premonition of Britten’s Peter Grimes within the blood-lusting refrain which ends Act I…
In her personal phrases: ‘I really feel I need to battle for [my music], as a result of I would like ladies to show their minds to huge and troublesome jobs; not simply to go on hugging the shore, afraid to place out to sea.’
13 Frank Bridge (1879-1941)
Born: Brighton, England
Frank Bridge was lengthy assumed to be a purveyor of charming suites and salon miniatures, solely discovering his distinctive voice following the trauma of World Battle I in works such because the pugnacious Piano Sonata (1924) and the mournful Oration for cello and orchestra (1930).
Now, because of recordings by the late conductor Richard Hickox and others, a way more vital but lengthy ignored grasp has been revealed. The Hag, Bridge’s 1902 track for baritone and orchestra, depicts a witch’s trip with lurid and malevolent relish à la Musorgsky or Lyadov. Against this, his lovely but melancholic Suite for Strings (1910) is a piece of understated but deep feeling – one which casts a brand new mild on extra celebrated works such because the orchestral suite The Sea (1911).
In his personal phrases:‘The happiest thrill I ever get is when the gamers are as sympathetic and enthusiastic because the viewers.’
12 Harrison Birtwistle (1934-2022)
Born: Accrington, England
From the ragged lyricism of chamber works such because the Oboe Quartet (2010) to the uncooked immediacy of operas together with Punch and Judy (1968) and The Minotaur (2008), Birtwistle’s uncommon soundworld made him a number one determine in British modernism.
His music, usually impressed by historic myths, options rhythmic spectacles – Harrison’s Clocks (1997-98) for solo piano evokes ticking 18th-century maritime time-keeping – and darkish, frenetic abstraction, as heard in Panic, the saxophone concerto written for 1995’s Final Evening of the Proms, the title of which precisely predicted its reception.
There’s a disguised sense of pastoral, too: The Moth Requiem (2012) is an elegiac meditation on loss and local weather change – imbued with considerate retrospection and the melancholia that’s current in a lot of the English composer’s later works.
In his personal phrases: ‘You don’t like my music. Go away!’ (to a critic)
10= Thomas Tallis (c.1505-85)
Born: Unknown
‘Tallis is useless, and Music dies’, mourned Byrd in his elegiac madrigal Ye Sacred Muses. Byrd’s tribute to his lately departed good friend neatly sums up the standing of a composer who, by outstanding adaptability coupled with immaculately honed craft, steered a gradual course by the reigns of 4 monarchs – a interval of harmful spiritual upheaval.
In the course of the transient rule of the Protestant Edward VI, Tallis tailored his music to go well with Anglican calls for for plain simplicity, whereas 5 years of the Catholic Mary I noticed him revert to a extra florid fashion in works equivalent to the flowery Missa Puer Natus est.
Maybe his best achievements, although, date from the reign of Elizabeth I, together with the 40-voice motet Spem in Alium and the beautiful Miserere Nostri, a piece of extraordinary mathematical perfection. Catholic Tallis might have been, however the queen knew genius when she noticed it, granting him and Byrd an unique licence to publish music.
Tallis’s epitaph: ‘As he did Lyve, so additionally did he dy,/In myld and quyet Type (O! glad Man).’
10= James MacMillan (b.1959)
Born: Ayrshire, Scotland
In an age when spiritual perception is mostly in decline, James MacMillan stands out as a resolutely Christian composer of Roman Catholic persuasion. Most of his choral music treats spiritual texts and themes, together with the luminous motet O Radiant Daybreak and his riveting St John Ardour (2007).
His spirituality additionally suffuses the exultant breakthrough piece Veni, veni, Emmanuel, a percussion concerto premiered by Evelyn Glennie. In works equivalent to The Confession of Isobel Gowdie, an orchestral elegy for a lady accused of witchcraft, his music additionally bears the robust imprint of his native Scotland. With operas, symphonies, concertos and chamber items additionally to his identify, his physique of compositions is formidable.
Renaissance vocal polyphony is a robust affect stylistically, as are skirling folks music parts. But it surely’s above all acMillan’s searing sense of melody, and his unwavering perception that music could make a social and religious distinction, that mark him out as a contemporary musical grasp.
In his personal phrases: ‘My best listener for me is somebody like myself, which suggests somebody who’s as thirsty and as prepared for the ability of reworking by music as I’m.’
9 George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)
Born: Halle, Germany
1000’s of soccer followers throughout the nation commonly be a part of collectively within the ‘Hallelujah’ refrain from Handel’s Messiah (admittedly with altered phrases) to hurl abuse at opposition gamers and managers – an unlikely, although one way or the other apt, legacy for a composer who did a lot to take music from aristocratic confines and convey it to a a lot wider viewers.
Hailing from Germany then employed in Italy, Handel arrived in England with a pan-European bag of musical tips that proved immediately interesting to his new house crowd. A string of Italian operas together with Giulio Cesare in Egitto made him the toast of London, till John Homosexual’s The Beggar’s Opera lampooned the artform, at which level Handel turned to writing oratorios in English, with equal success.
The grasp of all events, he might do intimate delicacy, as proven in his many chamber works, each bit as deftly as huge ceremonial showpieces equivalent to Music for the Royal Fireworks and Zadok the Priest.
In his personal phrases: ‘Be taught all there may be to be taught, after which select your personal path.’
‘Are we allowed to incorporate Handel?’ was a query commonly requested by our musicians after we invited them to vote. Although born in Germany, the nice man moved to London in 1711 – aged 26 – and remained there for the remainder of his life.
In addition to composing the overwhelming majority of his greatest recognized works whereas in Britain, Handel additionally established himself on the core of the royal ceremonial scene with works together with The Water Music and Zadok the Priest, carried out at each British coronation since George II. In 1727, he was made a British citizen, with a particular act being handed in Parliament to permit this to occur, and his marble memorial enjoys delight of place at Westminster Abbey. He subsequently positively counts as British.
… Though we did identify him one of many best German composers ever as properly…
8 Thomas Adès (b. 1971)
Born: London, England
Thomas Adès has constructed a fame for audaciousness and mental rigour. Bursting onto the scene within the Nineties as an enfant horrible with the chamber opera Powder her Face (1995) and the orchestral piece Asyla (1997), the pianist-composer-conductor and pupil of György Kurtág has continued to construct on that with an enormous vary of operas, orchestral works, concertos, chamber and solo music, amongst them The Tempest, The Exterminating Angel, Polaris and the ‘Concentric Paths’ Violin Concerto.
Stylistically, his music is filled with contradictions and kooky creativeness, however with an underlying seriousness of intent. He enjoys visiting and paying tribute to previous varieties and types – generally actually quoting from earlier composers – but remaking that materials afresh. Within the phrases of Radio 3’s Tom Service, he ‘makes you hear stuff you thought you had been acquainted with, as in the event that they had been utterly new’.
In his personal phrases: ‘I like the sensation of falling into a special period, not simply in my music, however in any music.’
7 Michael Tippett (1905-98)
Born: London, England
Tippett courted controversy each in his music and in his life, and whereas he was respectful of his musical roots he pushed the envelope, generally to the bafflement of musicians and audiences alike. A Little one of Our Time, maybe his most well-known work, was born out of Tippett’s anger, unhappiness and frustration with an escalating battle with Germany – one which he famously resisted serving in, as an alternative doing time in jail because of his pacifism.
That pervasive streak of bravado, or creativeness (name it what you’ll), has made him a hero for a lot of, whereas his music, ever aware of world occasions and musical traits, developed together with him. 5 operas, 5 string quartets, 4 symphonies, track cycles, concertos, sonatas… every work is ahead considering, generally daring, often maddening, however hardly ever devoid of lyricism. Tippett was a composer who ploughed his personal musical furrow, a real authentic.
In his personal phrases: ‘I’m fairly sure in my coronary heart of hearts that fashionable music … is a type of fact and integrity for many who practise it truthfully, decently and with all their being.’
6 William Walton (1902-83)
Born: Oldham, England
Walton’s potential to stir the feelings, his fervent lyricism and fastidious orchestral colouring made him a pure inheritor to Elgar. That mantle held agency with patriotic duties for 2 coronations – 1937’s Crown Imperial and 1953’s Orb and Sceptre – whereas his innate aptitude for drama meant he was properly suited to movie scoring.
His cinematic exploits proffered live performance favourites such because the Spitfire Prelude and Fugue (from the 1942 propaganda movie rating The First of the Few), whereas music for Laurence Olivier’s Shakespeare movies introduced a pair of Oscar nominations. Regardless of a 60-year profession, his output was comparatively small – such was his perfectionism – and whereas he was revered in his personal lifetime, his music was additionally gently reviled by some for being quaint. Two symphonies, necessary concertos (Viola, Violin and Cello) and an incredible cantata (Belshazzar’s Feast) later, he’s now rightly celebrated.
In his personal phrases: ‘It’s simply as troublesome to beat success as it’s to beat failure.’
5 William Byrd (c.1540-1623)
Born: Unknown
Though there have been excellent homegrown composers earlier than him – Tallis, specifically –Byrd can fairly be known as the primary genuine genius of English music.
That is partly because of the vary of his achievement, and the politically turbulent circumstances underneath which he wrote. A Catholic himself, Byrd was pressured to toggle between choral settings in Latin and English, because the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary yielded to that of the Protestant Elizabeth I.
Byrd created masterpieces for each the English and the Latin liturgy, together with the colourful, richly textured Nice Service and the Plenty for Three, 4 and 5 Voices. The mass settings, composed for gatherings of the Catholic trustworthy to carry out in secret, are notably beautiful creations, evincing a uncommon religious limpidity.
He additionally left a considerable physique of music for keyboard devices. Written in quite a lot of varieties – grounds, galliards, pavans, fancies and variations – these are richly rewarding items betokening Byrd’s fertile melodic creativeness. Chamber music, songs and madrigals additionally flowed from his pen, and Byrd moreover performed a key function as a pioneering music writer. In sum, he raised the bar considerably on what an English musician could possibly be, offering a formidable template for Purcell and others to observe.
In his personal phrases: ‘If thou bee disposed to wish, heere are Psalmes. If to bee merrie, heere are Sonets. If to lament for thy sins, heere are songs of sadnesse and Pietie.’
4 Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Born: Gloucestershire, England
Given the enduring reputation of Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending, you may count on this grandfatherly purveyor of bucolic fare to be on the very high of our composers’ listing. And maybe if this had been a ballot of audiences quite than musicians which may have been the case.
Nonetheless, the highly effective reminiscence of a ‘inexperienced and nice land’ evoked in his hottest works plus a masterful adoption and adaptation of the nation’s wealthy musical previous, most notably within the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, nonetheless earns him a spot within the high 5. And, after all, Vaughan Williams was a lot extra – his 9 symphonies alone chart a path from glowing, wistful magnificence to violent, anguished dissonance. After which there are the operas and ballets, the chamber music and vocal compositions, each spiritual and secular.
Like all one of the best composers, VW was an necessary historic and cultural determine, too, his love of Tudor music and English folksong representing a break from the Germanic custom of Elgar and offering a particular voice for a Britain deeply affected by two devastating and society-shifting world wars. Harmonically, his works bear robust hallmarks of modal tonality and of the French impressionism of his contemporaries Ravel and Debussy – but from this he derived an idiosyncratically ‘British’ sound.
In his personal phrases: ‘The artwork of music above all the opposite arts is the expression of the soul of a nation.’
3 Henry Purcell (1659-95)
Born: London, England
‘Generally a hero in an age seems, however scarce a Purcell in a thousand years’ noticed one up to date. Hyperbole after all, however the sheer breadth of Purcell’s achievement recollects Mozart’s verdict on Haydn: ‘There isn’t any one (else) who can do all of it – to joke and terrify, to evoke profound sentiment… and all equally properly.’
Fortuitously for Purcell, born on the cusp of the Restoration, he was capable of take full benefit of the flowering of musical life following the demise of the Cromwellian Commonwealth. And he seized the benefit throughout just about all out there genres. Like Monteverdi in Italy earlier than him, he was adept at types previous and new.
The fantasias for viols supply a wealthy compendium of old school consort polyphony, whereas the extra up-to-date sonatas in three and 4 elements ‘faithfully endeavour a simply imitation of essentially the most famed Italian masters’.
Corralling French and Italian types, he cast a language solely his personal, drawing potently on the music of his English predecessors. An effortlessly supple method to phrase setting, rhythmic ingenuity, an incomparable harmonic palette with a aptitude for ear-bending chromaticism and an unfailing melodic facility are underpinned by a grasp of artifice that each one unite within the first nice opera in English: his Dido and Aeneas (c.1688). From ceremonial pomp and circumstance to the gravitas of the Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary, or from a easy track to the knockabout good humour of his semi-opera The Fairy-Queen, Henry Purcell – as Mozart may need agreed – is the English Haydn, the person who can assuredly ‘do all of it, and all equally properly’.
In his personal phrases: ‘As poetry is the concord of phrases, so music is that of notes; and as poetry is an increase above prose and oratory, so is music the exaltation of poetry.’
2 Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Born: Worcestershire, England
For 20 years, Elgar’s avuncular face adorned Financial institution of England £20 notes, and in 1985 his Sea Footage was depicted on 34p stamps. His works have been used to promote all the things from ketchup to spring water, and he’s an ever-present at ceremonies each of mourning (‘Nimrod’ on Remembrance Sunday) and celebration (Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 on the Final Evening of the Proms). He’s, briefly, part-and-parcel of common British tradition.
Proper from his personal time, nonetheless, he has additionally had pan-European enchantment, and for all his fond depictions of companions near house within the Enigma Variations (1899), it was by German buddies equivalent to Richard Strauss and Fritz Kreisler, dedicatee of his Violin Concerto in 1910, that his fame stretched properly past these shores.
Neglect the faulty British stiff upper-lip picture, too – Elgar was not afraid to explain in phrases how his very soul was laid naked in his music, not least within the First and Second Symphonies (1908 and ’11) that cemented his place among the many greats. The achingly wistful strains of his 1919 Cello Concerto, in the meantime, describe the temper of each its composer and post-war Britain extra eloquently than phrases ever might.
That concerto had an infamously shaky begin, as did The Dream of Gerontius in 1900. Each, although, would quickly take their place at European music’s high desk.
In his personal phrases: ‘My thought is that there’s music within the air, music throughout us; the world is filled with it, and also you merely take as a lot as you require.’
1 Benjamin Britten (1913-76)
Born: Lowestoft, England
And the best British composer of all time? Britten. He famously jolted the worldwide music world with the 1945 premiere of his opera Peter Grimes. But Benjamin Britten had already proved himself to be greater than merely a world-class opera composer, and would proceed to take action within the remaining 30-or-so years of his profession.
Performers and listeners have recently caught up with earlier works such because the plangently eloquent Violin Concerto (1939), written in response to the trauma of the Spanish Civil Battle, and the extra modest but potent melodies of his faculty track assortment Friday Afternoons (1933-35).
What has maybe most impressed musicians and audiences alike is Britten’s potential to jot down successfully each for the most important scale – whether or not the Battle Requiem (1962), involving a full symphony orchestra and refrain in addition to a chamber orchestra, three soloists, and off-stage choristers plus chamber organ – or the smallest, such because the Six Metamorphoses after Ovid for solo oboe (1951).
Or, to think about a special side of measurement, there’s his repeated success as an opera composer, his two best achievements apart from Peter Grimes being Billy Budd (1951) – notable in being not solely a strong and touching work in its personal proper but additionally the one profitable full-length opera for an all-male forged – and The Flip of the Screw (1954), lean in its instrumental forces but so wealthy in its number of color and ambiance.
Britten’s creativeness – whether or not utilizing standard devices, or mugs hit with a picket spoon to counsel the primary plinks of rain in Noyes Fludde (1958) – mixed together with his potential (aided by laborious research) to jot down idiomatically for each instrument from French horn (1943’s Serenade for tenor, horn and strings) to harp (A Ceremony of Carols) has resulted in a few of his most hauntingly memorable music. His knowhow was equally evident in writing for the human voice – most famously that of his associate, the tenor Peter Pears, but additionally writing a deal of great works for different voices, together with soprano in Les illuminations and On This Island. On the identical time, he sometimes units his musicians a problem, including an additional layer of enjoyment in performing his music: for instance, the tough 7/4 time signature for the choristers within the ‘Gloria’ from his Missa Brevis, exhilarating as soon as mastered.
But these technical challenges are all means to an finish, and he might equally contact the guts with one thing very simple. There may be the understated but touching second when the Madwoman in Curlew River lastly sees the spirit of her useless son – principally only a harp ostinato, above which a piccolo pipes a haunting theme. Britten hardly ever wrote something which didn’t have some expressive finish, or no less than character to have interaction each performer and listener.
In his personal phrases: ‘It’s the composer’s obligation, as a member of society, to talk to and for his fellow human being
Who’s lacking?
Shut… however no cigar – some shocking non-appearances
With any ballot equivalent to this, the names who didn’t make it inevitably have a tendency to lift as a lot of an eyebrow/scream of horror (delete as applicable) as those that did.
Amongst those that may take into account themselves unfortunate to not make the highest 25 are the late-Nineteenth-century stalwarts Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) and Hubert Parry (1848-1918), whose operettas and choral music stay as common as ever (plus Parry’s listing of pupils reads like a who’s who of British composing). Heading into the early Twentieth century, live performance corridor favourites Frederick Delius (1862-1934) and Arnold Bax (1883-1953) are notable by their absence, as is the chic songsmith Gerald Finzi (1901-56).
Infamously snotty about her friends, Elisabeth Lutyens (1906-83) herself appears to have obtained related therapy from right this moment’s musicians – not a single vote – regardless of some spikily ingenious movie scores.
Her fellow movie composers equivalent to Rachel Portman (b.1960), George Fenton (b.1949) and the ultra-versatile Richard Rodney Bennett (1936-2012) have equally missed out. And heading again to the Renaissance, let’s not neglect John Taverner (c1490-1545), who set a lot in movement within the early sixteenth century, and Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625), beloved by the one of many best pianists ever Glenn Gould, amongst many others.
Phrases by: Michael Beek, Terry Blain, Claire Jackson, Daniel Jaffé, Jeremy Pound, Paul Riley, Charlotte Smith and Steve Wright
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