The first Glastonbury Festivals, most notable for being the forerunners of Glastonbury Festival, were a series of cultural events founded by communist activist and composer Rutland Boughton, which were held in summer from 1914 to 1925 in Glastonbury, Somerset, England. [1]
Despite being an initial success, public support and financing for the festivals was lost after Boughton joined the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), supported the miners during the 1926 United Kingdom general strike, and performed a nativity opera (Bethlehem) depicting Jesus as the son of a miner and King Herod as a capitalist. [2]
The festivals were founded by English socialist composer Rutland Boughton and his librettist Reginald Buckley. [3] Apart from the founding of a national theatre, Boughton and Buckley envisaged a summer school and music festival based on utopian principles. [4] This was inspired at least in part by the concept of the "temple theatre" first proposed by Richard Wagner and its corresponding festival, Bayreuth: a place for the common people to congregate around art. [5] With strong Arthurian connections and historic and prehistoric associations, Glastonbury was chosen to host the festivals. At the turn of the century one of the earliest New Age communities had already established itself in the area. [6] The agricultural setting was also considered an asset as Boughton and Buckley felt that 'real art can only grow out of real life." [5]
Among the supporters were Sir Edward Elgar and George Bernard Shaw, while financial support was received from the Clark family, shoemakers in nearby Street. The first festival included the premiere performance of Boughton's opera The Immortal Hour . By the time the festivals ended in 1926, 350 staged works had been performed, as well as a programme of chamber music, lectures and recitals. [1]
In 1924 the festival hosted the première of Boughton’s musical setting of Thomas Hardy’s play The Queen of Cornwall . Hardy was present at the première, and was said to be 'pleased'. [7]
The festivals ended ignominiously when Boughton's backers withdrew funds following a scandalous production of his Nativity opera Bethlehem in London. [1] In sympathy with the miners and the ongoing General Strike, the production had Jesus born in a miner's cottage with King Herod as a top-hatted capitalist and his soldiers in police uniforms. [2] The demise of the festival was also hastened once it became public knowledge that Boughton had joined the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), losing him the support of many wealthy supporters. [2]
The New Communist Party of Britain is an anti-revisionist Marxist–Leninist communist party in Britain. The origins of the NCP lie in the Communist Party of Great Britain from which it split in 1977. The organisation takes an anti-revisionist stance on Marxist–Leninism and is opposed to Eurocommunism. After the fall of the Soviet Union the party was one of two original British signatories to the Pyongyang Declaration in 1992. It publishes a newspaper named The New Worker.
Somerset is a county in the south-west of England. It is home to many types of music.
Rutland Boughton was an English composer who became well known in the early 20th century as a composer of opera and choral music. He was also an influential communist activist within the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).
The National Minority Movement was a British organisation, established in 1924 by the Communist Party of Great Britain, which attempted to organise a radical presence within the existing trade unions. The organization was headed by longtime unionist Tom Mann and future General Secretary of the CPGB Harry Pollitt.
El Niño is an opera-oratorio by the contemporary American composer John Adams. It was premiered on December 15, 2000, at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris by soloists Dawn Upshaw, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, and Willard White, the vocal ensemble Theatre of Voices, the London Voices, La Maîtrise de Paris, and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, with Kent Nagano conducting. It has been performed on a number of occasions since, and has been broadcast on BBC Television.
Thomas Appleby Matthews was an English conductor and organist.
The Immortal Hour is an opera by English composer Rutland Boughton. Boughton adapted his own libretto from the play of the same name by Fiona MacLeod, a pseudonym of writer William Sharp.
Glastonbury is a town in Somerset, England.
Michael John Hurd was a composer, teacher and author, principally known for his dramatic cantatas for schools and for his choral music.
Charles Montagu Slater was an English poet, novelist, playwright, journalist, critic and librettist.
Frederic William Austin was an English baritone singer, a musical teacher and composer in the period 1905–30. He is perhaps best remembered for his arrangement of Johann Pepusch's music for a 1920 production of The Beggar's Opera by John Gay, and its sequel Polly in 1922; and for his popularization of the melody of the carol The Twelve Days of Christmas. Austin was the older brother of the composer Ernest Austin (1874–1947).
Sir James Steuart Wilson was an English singer, known for tenor roles in oratorios and concerts in the first half of the 20th century. After the Second World War he was an administrator for several organisations including the Arts Council of Great Britain, the BBC and the Royal Opera House.
The birth of Jesus has been depicted since early Christianity, and continues to be interpreted in modern artistic forms. Some of the artforms that have described Jesus' nativity include drama and music. Featured characters usually include Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
Dorothy (Ellen) Silk was an English soprano, who was associated both with early Baroque music and with contemporary British music, particularly the works of Rutland Boughton and Gustav Holst.
Katharine Mary Adela Maddison, née Tindal, usually known as Adela Maddison, was a British composer of operas, ballets, instrumental music and songs. She was also a concert producer. She composed a number of French songs in the style of mélodies; for some years she lived in Paris, where she was a pupil, friend and possibly lover of Gabriel Fauré. Subsequently, living in Berlin, she composed a German opera which was staged in Leipzig. On returning to England she created works for Rutland Boughton's Glastonbury Festivals.
The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPGB founded the Daily Worker. In 1936, members of the party were present at the Battle of Cable Street, helping organise resistance against the British Union of Fascists. In the Spanish Civil War, the CPGB worked with the USSR to create the British Battalion of the International Brigades, which party activist Bill Alexander commanded.
Aitken Ferguson was a Scottish communist activist.
This is a summary of 1926 in music in the United Kingdom.
This is a summary of 1914 in music in the United Kingdom.
The Carnegie Collection of British Music was founded in 1917 by the Carnegie Trust to encourage the publication of large scale British musical works. Composers were asked to submit their manuscripts to an anonymous panel. On the panel at various times were Hugh Allen, Granville Bantock, Arnold Bax, Dan Godfrey, Henry Hadow and Donald Tovey. Up to six works per year were chosen for an award – publication at the expense of the Trust, in conjunction with music publishers Stainer & Bell. Unfortunately the war delayed things for the earliest prizewinners. The first to be published was the Piano Quartet in A minor by Herbert Howells.. By the end of 1920 some 13 works were available. 30 were out by the end of 1922, and when the scheme finally closed in 1928 some 60 substantial works that might not otherwise have seen the light of day had been issued under the Carnegie Collection of British Music imprint.