Classical music of the United Kingdom
Within this international growth the traditions of composition and performance centred in the United Kingdom, including the various cultural strands drawn from its different provinces, have continued to evolve in distinctive ways through the work of many famous composers.
[4] This was also the period when classical music began to be recognised as an important element of British and Irish culture and to be placed on a more organised basis that could match some of the developments seen in continental Europe.
Founders included Sir George Smart, Johann Baptist Cramer, Muzio Clementi, William Ayrton (musical director of the King's Theatre), William Shield, Henry Bishop, Thomas Attwood (composer and organist of St Paul's Cathedral, and teacher of John Goss), Johann Peter Salomon and Vincent Novello.
[9] Braham, whose career thoroughly spanned the opera stage and concert platform, established a tradition in public recital which was continued by his successors down into the early 20th century.
The Irish composer and virtuoso pianist John Field (1782–1837) was highly influential in his style of playing, inventing the nocturne and he is thought to have been an inspiration to Schumann, Chopin and Liszt.
[14] Native singers shared the dramatic stage with international stars in Italian and German opera, notably Clara Novello, Helen Lemmens-Sherrington, Sims Reeves and Charles Santley.
The Crystal Palace Concerts were inaugurated in 1855, with August Manns as the principal conductor and the Handel Triennial Festival, an older institution involving massed choirs before vast audiences, was transferred there.
Arthur Sullivan, a pupil of Goss, came to public attention in the 1860s with Shakespeare incidental music, The Tempest (1862), The Merchant of Venice (1871), his Irish Symphony (1863–66) and In Memoriam.
These included choral works like William Sterndale Bennett's The May Queen (1858),[30] Ebenezer Prout's Hereward and King Alfred[31] and cantatas like Sullivan and Henry Fothergill Chorley's The Masque at Kenilworth (1864),[32] John Francis Barnett's Ancient Mariner (1867)[33] and Frederic Hymen Cowen's The Rose Maiden (1870) and Harold (1895).
[35][36] The works of Handel, Mendelssohn and Spohr continued to be a major part of the British musical repertoire but there was an increasing emphasis on religious drama.
The Italian-born Sir Michael Costa's Eli (1855) and Naaman (1864)[21] set the pace for the later development in the works of Sullivan, including The Martyr of Antioch (1880) The Light of the World (1873), and The Golden Legend (1886), John Liptrot Hatton's Hezekiah (1877), Joseph Barnby's Rebekah (1870), William Cusins's Gideon (1871), Alfred R. Gaul's The Holy City (1882), Charles Gounod's Redemption (1882) and Mors et Vita (1885) (produced expressly for the British public), and Sir John Stainer's The Crucifixion (1887).
[37] Arguably the last of the great English Victorian composers to emerge was Edward Elgar (1857–1934), who during the 1890s produced his Caractacus and King Olaf cantatas, the Enigma Variations in 1899, and the revolutionary Dream of Gerontius in 1900.
[40] A member of teaching staff at the RCM from 1884 and director from 1894 until his death was Sir Hubert Parry (1848–1918), who used it as a platform for creativity and a reformation of British music.
This paralleled similar developments in most European countries, for instance in the music of Smetana, Dvořák, Grieg, Liszt, Wagner, Nielsen and Sibelius.
Examples include the Australian Percy Grainger's Molly on the Shore (1907), Frederick Delius' Brigg Fair (1908), and Ralph Vaughan Williams' English Folk Song Suite (1923) for brass band, as well as subtler references to folk themes in other works including the works of Arnold Bax, George Butterworth, Gustav Holst, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and John Ireland.
[47] In what was now the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the outstanding composers of the century included William Walton, Benjamin Britten, Michael Tippett, Lennox Berkeley, and Havergal Brian.
[49][50] It is arguable that this trend may have contributed to the revival of interest in early music which has been led, in Britain, by such figures as Arnold Dolmetsch and David Munrow.
[52] Notable modern composers include: Peter Maxwell Davies, Harrison Birtwistle, John Tavener, Robin Holloway, George Benjamin, Thomas Adès, Oliver Knussen, James MacMillan, Judith Weir, Peter Seabourne, Alexander Goehr, Jonathan Harvey, Sally Beamish, Julian Anderson, Hugh Wood and at a more popular level Andrew Lloyd Webber, represent very different strands of composition within UK classical music.
