The National Song Book (1906) was a collection of British songs edited and arranged by Charles Villiers Stanford and published by Boosey & Co London. The book's publication followed Stanford's work editing three volumes on the collection made by George Petrie of the folk music of Ireland and he was supported in this by Arthur Somervell (his ex-pupil and Inspector of Music at the Board of Education). It includes folk-songs, carols, and rounds with the choice reflecting the suggestions of Britain's Board of Education in their 1905 Blue Book of Suggestions. The aim of the work was to provide older school children with a "gateway to musical taste and knowledge". The songs included are from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales and it is notable that they include songs of national rebellions against British rule but, as Knevett (2014) notes, these songs are included as a celebration of a more turbulent past presented as a stage in the development towards a more stable present. The arrangements in the book are presented in a simple fashion. It argues these are "merely intended to suggest sufficient harmony to make clear the tonality of each song, and in some cases to reinforce the characteristic rhythm, without distracting the attention of the singers from the melody itself". The book also notes the likelihood that English children, whilst they might find the Celtic scales and intervals difficult at first the "trouble involved will be amply repaid by the widening of their musical horizon, and by the more deeply poetical influence which Keltic music will exert upon the young mind". [1] [2] [3]
Cox (1992) argues in a polemical historiography of the book that "The National Song Book proclaimed the hegemony of the literate tradition as opposed to the oral, and considers the view that national songs contained within them the danger of the manipulation of patriotism." [4]
An updated edition The New National Song Book, edited by another of Stanford's pupils Geoffrey Shaw (also with credit to the then deceased Stanford) and published by Boosey & Hawkes, was released in 1938. [1]
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.
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford was an Anglo-Irish composer, music teacher, and conductor of the late Romantic era. Born to a well-off and highly musical family in Dublin, Stanford was educated at the University of Cambridge before studying music in Leipzig and Berlin. He was instrumental in raising the status of the Cambridge University Musical Society, attracting international stars to perform with it.
The folk music of England is a tradition-based music which has existed since the later medieval period. It is often contrasted with courtly, classical and later commercial music. Folk music traditionally was preserved and passed on orally within communities, but print and subsequently audio recordings have since become the primary means of transmission. The term is used to refer both to English traditional music and music composed or delivered in a traditional style.
Charles Wood was an Irish composer and teacher; his students included Ralph Vaughan Williams at Cambridge and Herbert Howells at the Royal College of Music. He is primarily remembered and performed as an Anglican church music composer, but he also wrote songs and chamber music, particularly for string quartet.
John Lloyd Williams was a Welsh botanist, author, and musician. He was one of the founders of the Welsh Folk-Song Society, established in 1906 to promote the collection and study of traditional Welsh folk songs, and became the first editor of the society's journal.
English Folk Song Suite is one of English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams' most famous works. It was first published for the military band as Folk Song Suite and its premiere was given at Kneller Hall on 4 July 1923, conducted by Lt Hector Adkins. The piece was then arranged for full orchestra in 1924 by Vaughan Williams' student Gordon Jacob and published as English Folk Song Suite. The piece was later arranged for British-style brass band in 1956 by Frank Wright and published as English Folk Songs Suite. All three versions were published by Boosey & Hawkes; note the use of three different titles for the three different versions. The suite uses the melodies of nine English folk songs, six of which were drawn from the collection made by Vaughan Williams’ friend and colleague Cecil Sharp.
Boosey & Hawkes is a British music publisher, purported to be the largest specialist classical music publisher in the world. Until 2003, it was also a major manufacturer of brass, string and woodwind musical instruments.
"Arthur McBride" is a folk song probably of Irish origin, also found in England, Scotland, Australia, and North America. Describing a violent altercation with a recruiting sergeant, it can be narrowly categorized as an "anti-recruiting" song, a specific form of anti-war song, and more broadly as a protest song. A. L. Lloyd described it as "that most good-natured, mettlesome, and un-pacifistic of anti-militarist songs".
Martin Edward Fallas Shaw was an English composer, conductor, and theatre producer. His over 300 published works include songs, hymns, carols, oratorios, several instrumental works, a congregational mass setting, and four operas including a ballad opera.
The Oxford Book of Carols is a collection of vocal scores of Christmas carols and carols of other seasons. It was first published in 1928 by Oxford University Press and was edited by Percy Dearmer, Martin Shaw and Ralph Vaughan Williams. It became a widely used source of carols among choirs and church congregations in Britain.
Christopher Norton is a British pianist and composer of Jazz music. His pieces are standard in piano learning repertoire, especially the ABRSM and RCM.
Frederick John Thurston was an English clarinettist.
John Alexander Fuller Maitland was an influential British music critic and scholar from the 1880s to the 1920s. He encouraged the rediscovery of English music of the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly Henry Purcell's music and English virginal music. He also propounded the notion of an English Musical Renaissance in the second half of the 19th century, particularly praising Charles Villiers Stanford and Hubert Parry.
Geoffrey Turton Shaw was an English composer and musician specialising in Anglican church music. After Cambridge, where he was an organ scholar, he became a schoolmaster, then a schools inspector, while producing a stream of compositions, arrangements, and published collections of music. He was awarded the Lambeth degree of Doctor of Music.
The English Musical Renaissance was a hypothetical development in the late 19th and early 20th century, when British composers, often those lecturing or trained at the Royal College of Music, were said to have freed themselves from foreign musical influences, to have begun writing in a distinctively national idiom, and to have equalled the achievement of composers in mainland Europe. The idea gained considerable currency at the time, with support from prominent music critics, but from the latter part of the 20th century has been less widely propounded.
The British folk revival incorporates a number of movements for the collection, preservation and performance of folk music in the United Kingdom and related territories and countries, which had origins as early as the 18th century. It is particularly associated with two movements, usually referred to as the first and second revivals, respectively in the late 19th to early 20th centuries and the mid-20th century. The first included increased interest in and study of traditional folk music, the second was a part of the birth of contemporary folk music. These had a profound impact on the development of British classical music and in the creation of a "national" or "pastoral" school and led to the creation of a sub-culture of folk clubs and folk festivals as well as influential subgenres including progressive folk music and British folk rock.
Peter Gregory Rose is a conductor, composer, arranger, and music director. He has conducted orchestral, choral and ensemble premieres throughout Europe and the Far East.
St. Columba is a traditional Irish tune. It was first published by George Petrie in 1855, and it was republished in Charles Villiers Stanford's edited compilation of the tunes Petrie collected. It was described as having been "sung on the dedication of a chapel" in County Londonderry. The tune was paired with the hymn The King of Love My Shepherd Is in The English Hymnal (1906), and it rose in popularity with the hymn.
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Yvonne Madeleine Adair was a pianist, teacher and composer whose educational compositions still regularly appear in the graded pieces of music college examination boards. Some pieces were published under the pen name Ella Fairall.