 | This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
The composition of art song in England and English-speaking countries has a long history, beginning with lute song in the late 16th century and continuing today.
The composition of polyphonic music was at its peak in the late 16th century. By that time, however, the lute started to gain popularity, and was very common among educated people by 1600. The Italians were trying to recapture a simpler vocal style, to mimic Greek models. Giulio Caccini and the Florentine Camerata developed the monody, for solo voice with lute accompaniment, around 1600. Caccini traveled around Europe, other countries begin developing their own solo songs with lute, especially the English composers. John Dowland (1563–1626) and Thomas Campion (1567–1620) emerged as the best-known and most respected of the composers of lute song. Later in the 17th century, Henry Purcell (1659–95) composed many solo songs for his semi-operas, and his songs are also generally considered among the best early English Art songs. [1]
Other English Art song composers in the 17th century
As Italian opera composition developed in the later 17th century, recitative and aria began to split apart as separate parts of solo vocal music. Four types of vocal music began to blossom in the 18th century: church music, early oratorio (esp. with Carissimi in Italy), opera, and the secular (or "chamber") cantata. In the early 18th century, George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) made Italian opera very popular in London, but The Beggar's Opera in 1729, a parody of Handel's Italian operas, created a new fad for English popular opera, and Italian opera in London faded by 1740. Thus, the two important types of English solo vocal music in the mid 18th century are oratorios by Handel, and "pastiche operas" or "ballad operas" from Arne, Boyce and other English composers. The publication of solo vocal music (songs often called "canzonets" or "canzonettas") with English texts at the end of the 18th century helped to establish the art song genre in subsequent years.
English Art song composers in the 18th century
London was the largest city in Europe by 1800; many non-English composers traveled there, especially from Germany and Italy. English theater works ("ballad operas") continued to be popular into the 19th century. The harpsichord, fortepiano, harp, and guitar were all popular instruments at the time; all were used to accompany voices and as solo instruments; song composition began to flourish as home music making with these instrument increased. In the 19th century almost everyone sang, in choral societies, at church services, and at home (in the 'drawing room'). Popular songs, called ballads, became the standard for vocal music publishing later in the 19th century, creating a "low point" in British music composition. Famous singers performed these ballads in concerts, paid for by music publishers, so that the songs would gain popularity and sell copies. In contrast, serious British composers late in the 19th century look towards Germany for inspiration and support. [1]
Primary English Art song composers in the early 19th century
Primary English Art song composers in the mid- to late 19th century
Other English Art song composers in the mid- to late 19th century
The great success of European Romantic composers encouraged a "Renaissance" of English music, especially vocal music. Interest in British folk music was expanded through the work of Cecil Sharp, Ralph Vaughan Williams and others; it gradually becomes incorporated into British "classical" music. The highest point of the English musical "Renaissance" began around 1900, and many great art songs were composed in England before the First World War. A second great era for song composition occurred between the wars, in the years 1920-1938. [3]
Primary English Art song composers in the 20th century
Other English Art song composers in the 20th century
There have been two notable book length studies of English art song in the 20th Century. Stephen Banfield's comprehensive, two volume study of early twentieth century English song, first published in 1985, is notable for its incorporation of both literary and musical scholarship alongside a performance perspective. [4] Towards the end of his life composer Trevor Hold published his full length study of English Romantic song, Parry To Finzi: 20 English Song Composers (2002). [5]
Art song composition continues to thrive today, and many English composers are using the internet to show their pieces to the world. While the tradition continues, no current composers have yet achieved the highest level of success and acclaim, making modern British Art Song "a sleeping giant awaiting another resurgence." [3]
English Art song composers Active in the 21st century
A song is a musical composition performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetition and variation of sections.
A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir.
Gerald Raphael Finzi was a British composer. Finzi is best known as a choral composer, but also wrote in other genres. Large-scale compositions by Finzi include the cantata Dies natalis for solo voice and string orchestra, and his concertos for cello and clarinet.
Michael Arne was an English composer, harpsichordist, organist, singer, and actor. He was the son of the composer Thomas Arne and the soprano Cecilia Young, a member of the famous Young family of musicians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Like his father, Arne worked primarily as a composer of stage music and vocal art song, contributing little to other genres of music. He wrote several songs for London's pleasure gardens, the most famous of which is Lass with the Delicate Air (1762). A moderately prolific composer, Arne wrote nine operas and collaborated on at least 15 others. His most successful opera, Cymon (1767), enjoyed several revivals during his lifetime and into the early nineteenth century.
An air is a song-like vocal or instrumental composition. The term can also be applied to the interchangeable melodies of folk songs and ballads. It is a variant of the musical song form often referred to as aria.
A song cycle is a group, or cycle, of individually complete songs designed to be performed in sequence, as a unit.
A madrigal is a form of secular vocal music most typical of the Renaissance and early Baroque (1600–1750) periods, although revisited by some later European composers. The polyphonic madrigal is unaccompanied, and the number of voices varies from two to eight, but usually features three to six voices, whilst the metre of the madrigal varies between two or three tercets, followed by one or two couplets. Unlike the verse-repeating strophic forms sung to the same music, most madrigals are through-composed, featuring different music for each stanza of lyrics, whereby the composer expresses the emotions contained in each line and in single words of the poem being sung.
The term lute song is given to a music style from the late 16th century to early 17th century, late Renaissance to early Baroque, that was predominantly in England and France. Lute songs were generally in strophic form or verse repeating with a homophonic texture. The composition was written for a solo voice with an accompaniment, usually the lute. It was not uncommon for other forms of accompaniments such as bass viol or other string instruments, and could also be written for more voices. The composition could be performed either solo or with a small group of instruments.
Johann Joseph Fux was an Austrian composer, music theorist and pedagogue of the late Baroque era. His most enduring work is not a musical composition but his treatise on counterpoint, Gradus ad Parnassum, which has become the single most influential book on the Palestrinian style of Renaissance polyphony.
In music, a canzonetta is a popular Italian secular vocal composition that originated around 1560. Earlier versions were somewhat like a madrigal but lighter in style—but by the 18th century, especially as it moved outside of Italy, the term came to mean a song for voice and accompaniment, usually in a light secular style.
Dominick Argento was an American composer known for his lyric operatic and choral music. Among his best known pieces are the operas Postcard from Morocco, Miss Havisham's Fire, The Masque of Angels, and The Aspern Papers. He also is known for the song cycles Six Elizabethan Songs and From the Diary of Virginia Woolf; the latter earned him the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1975. In a predominantly tonal context, his music freely combines tonality, atonality and a lyrical use of twelve-tone writing. None of Argento's music approaches the experimental, stringent avant-garde fashions of the post-World War II era.
Howard Ferguson was an Irish composer and musicologist from Belfast. He composed instrumental, chamber, orchestral and choral works. While his music is not widely known today, his Piano Sonata in F minor, Op. 8 and his Five Bagatelles, Op. 9, for piano are still performed. His works represent some of the most important 20th-century music to emerge from Northern Ireland.
Elisabetta de Gambarini was an English composer, mezzo-soprano, organist, harpsichordist, pianist, orchestral conductor and painter of the 18th century. Elisabetta's music is considered late Baroque and Classical music. She achieved distinction as an all-around musician, performing on, and composing for a variety of instruments as well as voice. Her compositions were known to reflect that of vocal work instead of instrumental patterns. She was the first female composer in Britain to publish a collection of keyboard music.
Michael John Hurd was a composer, teacher and author, principally known for his dramatic cantatas for schools and for his choral music.
Tommaso Giordani was an Italian composer active in England and particularly in Ireland.
Antun Dobronić was a Croatian composer and pupil of Vítězslav Novák. He studied at the Prague Conservatory from 1910 to 1912. From 1922 to 1940, he served as professor at the Zagreb Academy of Music. His works show a strong streak of Croatian nationalism, which also is manifest in his writings on music. He sought to integrate high culture music techniques with traditional Croatian folk elements.
Benjamin Carr was an American composer, singer, teacher, and music publisher.
Liza Lehmann was an English soprano and composer, known for her vocal compositions.
Michael Christian Festing was an English violinist and composer. His reputation lies mostly on his work as a violin virtuoso.
Paul Spicer is an English composer, conductor, and organist. He taught choral conducting at the Royal College of Music and conducted the RCM Chamber Choir between 1995 and 2008. Until his retirement in July 2022 he also taught at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and conducted their chamber choir which records for Somm Records. He also teaches at Oxford and Durham universities. Since 2004 he has been the conductor of the Petersfield Festival. He was Senior Producer for BBC Radio 3 for the Midlands Region based in Birmingham between 1984 and 1990 after which he moved to be artistic director of the Lichfield Festival. He also produced for various record companies over many years. He founded the Finzi Singers in 1984 making many recordings for Chandos Records. He conducts the Birmingham Bach Choir and the Whitehall Choir in London. His compositions include two oratorios for Easter and for Advent with libretti by the Dr Tom Wright and a choral symphony 'Unfinished Remembering' (2014) to a libretto by Euan Tait commemorating the outbreak of World War 1. He runs a series of choral courses under the banner of The English Choral Experience based mainly at Abbey Dore in Herefordshire.
