Sounds in the Silent Air
Reflections on the impact of the First World War on the creative soul of English music
David Borrill
© David Borrill 2011
Published by The New Curiosity Shop at Smashwords
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Published by The New Curiosity Shop
Edition 1.0
© David Borrill 2011
David Borrill has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
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Charles Hasting Hubert Parry (1848-1918) – ‘The Chivalry of the Sea’, premiered on 12 December 1916
Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934) – ‘Spirit of England’, Op. 80 (1916-1917), premiered on 4 October 1917.
Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 3 (A Pastoral Symphony), premiered on 16 January 1922.
Sir Arthur Bliss: Morning Heroes, premiered on 22 October 1930
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Introduction
In 1919, the French writer Paul Valery (1871-1945) wrote ‘Crises of the Mind’. In it, he reflected on the aftermath of the Great War on Europe, in which:
An extraordinary shudder ran through the marrow of Europe. She felt in every nucleus of her mind that she was no longer the same, that she was no longer herself, that she was about to lose consciousness, a consciousness acquired through centuries of bearable calamities, by thousands of men of the first rank, from innumerable geographical, ethnic, and historical coincidences.1
For Valery, the war had destroyed any fixed systems of thinking and living, which he termed ‘disorders’ of the mind. Europe had lost its pre-eminence in the world and what lay ahead was an age of anxiety and uncertainty. Its most subtle influence was to be for literature, philosophy and the arts.
For Britain, this ‘shudder’ was to last decades. 885,138 UK combatants were killed and more than 1.6 million were injured. The old chivalric codes of war were blown away with technology and the concept of ‘total war’. Britain would never be the same again.
Some of Britain’s leading composers were part of these convulsive events. Others, too old to fight, could only view events from afar. To what extent did the war instigate a crisis of the mind or specifically a crisis of their creative soul? How did they respond?
In this book we will look at a sample of composers and at pieces they wrote either during or just after the war.
The composers and their compositions are:
Charles Hasting Hubert Parry (1848-1918) – ‘The Chivalry of the Sea’
Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) – ‘Songs of the Fleet’ and Organ Sonata No. 2, Op. 151, ‘Eroica’
Edward Elgar (1857-1934) – ‘Spirit of England’, Op. 80
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) – Symphony No. 3 (A Pastoral Symphony)
Arthur Bliss (1891 – 1975) – ‘Morning Heroes’
Ivor Gurney (1890 – 1937) – ‘War Elegy’
1 Valéry, P. (1919) Crisis of the Mind
Available from: http://www.historyguide.org/europe/valery.html [Accessed 16 September 2011]
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Charles Hasting Hubert Parry (1848-1918) – ‘The Chivalry of the Sea’, premiered on 12 December 1916
Parry was born in Bournemouth, the youngest of six children. He grew up in Gloucestershire and was sent to Eton and Oxford via Twyford Prep School in Hampshire. He excelled in music and sport while at Eton. He was the youngest person ever to sit the Oxford Bachelor of Music examination. His father intended him to follow a commercial career, so he dropped music at Oxford in favour of law and modern history. In the 1870s, he became an underwriter at Lloyds of London. He continued to study music while working in insurance, under Pierson in Stuttgart and later Edward Dannreuther. His first major work was ‘Blest Pair of Sirens’ (1887). It was a great success and established him as the leading choral composer of his day.
Parry was greatly influenced by German music, in particular that of Brahms and Wagner. He felt it was the epitome of musical expression, so the prospect of war with Germany was to him, a tragedy. Not only because the enemy was a nation he had held in the highest esteem, but also because he feared many of his students at the Royal College of Music, where he was professor, would die.