Glastonbury Festival (1914–1925)

Last updated

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]

Contents

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]

History

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]

Demise

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]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Massacre of the Innocents</span> Narrative from chapter 2 of Matthew

The Massacreof the Innocents is an incident in the nativity narrative of the Gospel of Matthew (2:16–18) in which Herod the Great, king of Judea, orders the execution of all male children who are two years old and under in the vicinity of Bethlehem. Christians venerate them as the first Christian martyrs, but a majority of Herod biographers, and "probably a majority of [...] biblical scholars", hold the story to be myth or legend.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Communist Party of Britain</span> Political party in the United Kingdom

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.

<i>El Niño</i> (opera)

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arthur Horner (trade unionist)</span>

Arthur Lewis Horner was a Welsh trade union leader and communist politician. During his periods of office as President of the South Wales Miners Federation (SWMF) from 1936, and as General Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) from 1946, he became one of the most prominent and influential communists in British public life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">York Mystery Plays</span> Annual series of plays in 14th–16th century York, England

The York Mystery Plays, more properly the York Corpus Christi Plays, are a Middle English cycle of 48 mystery plays or pageants covering sacred history from the creation to the Last Judgment. They were traditionally presented on the feast day of Corpus Christi and were performed in the city of York, from the mid-fourteenth century until their suppression in 1569. The plays are one of four virtually complete surviving English mystery play cycles, along with the Chester Mystery Plays, the Towneley/Wakefield plays and the N-Town plays. Two long, composite, and late mystery pageants have survived from the Coventry cycle and there are records and fragments from other similar productions that took place elsewhere. A manuscript of the plays, probably dating from between 1463 and 1477, is still intact and stored at the British Library.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Hurd (composer)</span> English composer, teacher and author (1928 - 2006)

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steuart Wilson</span> English tenor and arts administrator

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.

The 1945 Neath by-election, was a parliamentary by-election held for the British House of Commons constituency of Neath in South Wales.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dorothy Silk</span> English soprano (1883 - 1942)

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Communist Party of Great Britain</span> Communist party in the United Kingdom that existed from 1920 to 1991

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.

Alexander B. Moffat was a Scottish trade unionist and communist activist who was President of the Scottish Trades Union Congress and the Scottish Mineworkers Union.

This is a summary of 1926 in music in the United Kingdom.

This is a summary of 1914 in music in the United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carnegie Collection of British Music</span>

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.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Hurd, Michael (1993). Rutland Boughton and the Glastonbury Festivals. UK: Clarendon Press. ISBN   978-0-198163-16-9.
  2. 1 2 3 Meddick, Simon; Payne, Liz; Katz, Phil (2020). Red Lives: Communists and the Struggle for Socialism. UK: Manifesto Press Cooperative Limited. pp. 13–14. ISBN   978-1-907464-45-4.
  3. "The Rutland Boughton Music Trust". Archived from the original on 12 July 2010. Retrieved 29 December 2019.
  4. The first Glastonbury festival at Utopia Britannica
  5. 1 2 Dzamba Sessa, Anne (1985). "British and American Wagnerians". In Large, David; Weber, William (eds.). Wagnerism in European culture and politics. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. p. 259. OCLC   477332588.
  6. Patrick Benham, The Avalonians (1993), Glastonbury: Gothic Image Publications