Comprehension Questions and Points for Discussion

1. Tell the story of The Beatles.

2. What were the sources of The Beatles music?

3. How many times did The Beatles visit Hamburg in the early years of their career?

4. Who was the first bass guitarist in the group?

5. What films with The Beatles were made?

6. What single made by The Beatles first became a hit?

7. Did the group visit India? What was the purpose of their visits? What was the first song written under the influence of Indian music?

8. When did The Beatles split up?

9. Have you got any Beatles records in your collection? Which of them are your favourites?

10. What accounts for the world-wide popularity of The Beatles, in your opinion?

11. Give your opinion on the influence of The Beatles' music in other countries, including the Soviet Union.

English and American Musical History

ENGLISH MUSIC (GENERAL SURVEY)

Contemporary musical life and related institutions. Much of English musical life is centered in London, but there is considerable activity outside the capital as well. Decentralization is encouraged by the Arts Council of Great Britain, which, since 1946, has been the agency that distributes government subsidies to the arts.

Opera.

The two principal opera companies in London are the Royal Opera at Covent Garden and the English National Opera (formerly Sadler's Wells*), which performs in English, at lower prices, and usually without the great international stars, at the Coliseum. There are also more modest companies, such as the English Music Theatre Company, some of which mostly tour outside London.

Opera is a feature of several English festivals, including Camden,* Aldeburgh,* and, most notably, Glyndebourne.* Occasional productions at English universities have helped awaken interest in works outside the standard repertory. Those at Cambridge in the 1920s and 1930s were of particular historical importance in this respect.

Performing groups.

Orchestras. London is remarkable for its four major symphony orchestras, the London Symphony (founded in 1904), London Philharmonic (1932), Philharmonia (1945), and Royal Philharmonic (1946). The London Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic are the result of the activities of Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961). The BBC Symphony (1930) is based in London and gives public concerts. There are several excellent symphony orchestras outside London, including the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (1840), and the Halle Orchestra of Manchester* (1858).

Chamber orchestras became an important part of London musical life through such groups as the London Chamber Orchestra (1921) and the Boyd Neel Orchestra (1932). The tradition they began has been carried on by several excellent newer ones, including the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields (1959), the English Chamber Orchestra (1960), the London Sinfonietta (1968), which specializes in 20th-century music.

Choruses. Choral performance has been traditional in England for several centuries and remains popular today, although the

tendency to have mammoth choruses singing Handel oratorios so much favored in thé 19th century, has been somewhat tempered by the changing taste and greater historical consciousness of the 20th. Amateur choral societies are common throughout the country. Among the many in London are the Royal Choral Society (1871), the Bach Choir (1875), and the London Bach Society (1946). London also has several excellent chamber choruses, including the Monteverdi Choir (1964). Cathedral choirs and such well-known bodies as the choir of King's College, Cambridge, are also important elements in English choral music.

Early music. An interest in performing and listening to old music is something of an English tradition, as evidenced by the concerts of the Academy of Ancient Music in 18th-century London, which had hardly a parallel elsewhere in Europe at the time. Arnold Dolmetsch* (1858-1940), the central figure in the beginning of the modern revival of early-music performance, spent most of his career in England and firmly planted the movement there. The work of English musicians, such as David Munrow (1942-76) and his Early Music Consort (1967), was important in arousing audience interest in early music beginning in the 1960s. English activity in this field flourishes at present, with many groups of varied scope, such as the Academy of Ancient Music (1973), which recreates the mid-18th-century orchestra with authentic instruments.

Festivals.

Music festivals have constituted a flourishing tradition in England since the 18th century, and they are at present almost innumerable. The Three Choirs Festival, begun around 1715 and almost certainly one of the oldest in Europe, represents the traditional type of choral festivals, of which several others also survive. Its site alternates among the homes of its choirs, Hereford, Gloucester, and Worcester. Among older English festivals, that at Haslemere was founded by Dolmetsch in 1925 to feature early music, and the Glyndebourne Festival, founded in 1934, early achieved and maintains an international reputation for its production of operas as integrated dramatic works.

Many British festivals began after World War II. They include the Alderburgh Festival (1948), long dominated by the personality of its founder, Benjamin Britten; the Bath Festival (1948), since 1959 similarly associated with Yehudi Menuhin; the English Bach Festival (1963); and the Tilford Bach Festival (1952) and others.

A festival of sorts and long a central feature of London summers are the Henry Wood* Promenade Concerts ("Proms") (1895), mostly given at the Royal Albert Hall.

Education.

Many aspects of musical activity in England were dominated by foreigners in the 18th and early 19th centuries, and the idea of conservatories and music schools to train native musicians developed slowly. The leading schools are the Royal Academy of Music (1822), the Royal College of Music (1883), both in London, and the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester

(1792). Other important schools include Trinity College of Music (1872) of the University of London and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (1880), London.

The first degrees in music known to have been conferred by a university were awarded at Cambridge in the 15th century, and a professorship of music was created there in the 17th. Oxford awarded music degrees from the early 16th century and in the 17th instituted a lectureship that grew into a professorship, but the establishment of music in anything like a regular, systematic, and modern way as part of the university curriculum at any university in England was almost entirely a 20th-century development. About a dozen English universities now have full music programs.

History. England was an important musical center in the Middle Ages. The Sarum rite,* a dialect of the Roman rite originating at Salisbury Cathedral and widely influential throughout the country, gave a local favor to the chant. Sacred polyphony was well established by the early 11th century, and by the 13th, English polyphony had taken on traits distinguishing it from Continental styles. In the early 15th century, John Dunstable (ca. 1390-1453) achieved the widest reputation among several important composers. English music of that tune is usually held to have had a decisive influence on the development of Continental musical style and compositional procedures. Thereafter, although works of high quality were written, English music was of mainly local importance, and influences tended to run in the other direction, from Italy and France, producing such English versions of Continental developments as the English madrigal, the lute ayre,* and the semi-opera.*

The Puritan Commonwealth of the mid-17th century greatly disrupted the English musical tradition; however, the late 17th century produced several distinguished figures, including Henry Purcell (1659-95), one of England's greatest composers. The 18th and 19th centuries were in general a low point in the vitality of native English music, unless Handel is considered to have become an English composer, a not untenable assertion, so completely was his music absorbed into the native tradition. Much of English musical life, particularly that of London, was dominated in this period by foreign musicians attracted by the country's wealth and the large public provided by its sizeable middle class. The native tradition survived in church music and in local genres such as the catch,* the glee,* and the ballad opera,* which developed in the late 18th century into the English comic opera and eventually led in the latter part of the 19th century to the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan, which constitute almost the only part of English 19th-century music surviving in the repertory.

With Edward Elgar (1857-1934), England produced its first native composer of international importance since Purcell, and in the early 20th century an English nationalist school flowered with Ralph

Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), Gustav Holst (1874-1934), and others. William Walton (1902-83), Michael Tippett (b. 1905), and Benjamin Britten (1913-76) dominated their generation. Younger composers of achievement include Richard Rodney Bennett (b. 1936), Harrison Birtwhistle (b. 1934), Peter Maxwell Davies (b. 1934).

Folk music. Most English folk music is closely related to the songs of the dance. Folk songs are generally syllabic and strophic,* frequently with a refrain. Notable types include the ballad, love songs of various sorts, and songs attached to particular occasions or activities, such as carols,* sea shanties,* children's singing games, and street cries. Two general varieties of folk dance exist: ritual or ceremonial dances, associated with certain seasons of the year and most often performed by costumed groups of men; and country dances, performed at social occasions by both men and women. Ritual dances include sword, morris,* and processional dances. Dance tunes usually come from folk song and are almost always in duple meter. Instruments used in folk music are the pipe and tabor,* the small-pipes (a sort of bagpipe), and, especially today, the fiddle, concertina, or melodeon.*

From: The New Harvard Dictionary of Music

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 967