This week has been unusual as practicing goes: I've spent most of my time practicing music by British composers. If you're not a musician, it may come as a surprise to you that England does not figure very prominently into the history of music, at least, not what musicians refer to as "common-practice art music," the concert music composed between roughly 1750 and 1900. As a student studying music history, I remember having the impression that the United Kingdom had nearly disappeared between the Renaissance and the early 1960s, when the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.
As it turns out, there are some quite respectable British composers. The reason they don't get much attention in typical undergraduate music history classes is because for the most part, they weren't innovators; they didn't do anything particularly groundbreaking. Still, some of these composers left us with some solid, well-crafted, enjoyable music, and I'm pleased to have an opportunity to get to know some of it a bit better.
Here are performances (not my own!) of some of the music I've been working on.
Ralph Vaughan Williams, Six Studies in English Folksong for bassoon and piano
"The Salley Gardens," arranged by Benjamin Britten
C. Hubert Parry, Sonata for Piano and Cello, first movement
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