Three eras of English music

On 20 March 2016, the Mikhailovsky Theatre Chamber Orchestra will perform works by three English composers, representing three eras of English music, in the dress circle foyer. Below, violinist Vladislav Gluz discusses the evening’s programme.

“In our last Chamber Orchestra concert, we presented several compositions by George Frideric Handel, whose nationality has long been disputed by England and Germany. He was born and raised in the Holy Roman Empire, but spent most of his life as a subject of the British Crown”, Gluz explains. “However, in our concert on 20 March, we will perform works by three indisputably English composers: Henry Purcell, Gustav Holst, and Benjamin Britten. In putting together the programme, our aim was to highlight the special character and tone that unite these three composers.

Each of these composers is associated with a distinct period in the history of English classical music. Between Purcell, working squarely within the British Baroque era, and Gustav Holst, there was a gap of 200 years. On the other hand, only a few decades separate Holst and Britten. The odd spacing reflects the fact that England produced no standout composers for two centuries. That’s why part of the second period, represented for us by Holst, is sometimes known as the English Musical Renaissance. Despite the two-century lull, Holst, Elgar, and others picked up the thread of English music and continued to develop it. Like Purcell’s works, Holst’s music resounds with its English roots.

Our representative of the third era is one of the greatest English composers of the last century, Benjamin Britten. While Holst’s music, though written in the twentieth century, was closer in spirit to that of the nineteenth, Britten pressed forward into a new era with a fresh musical language. But there were mere decades between them.

English musical culture is coloured by the distinctive song and dance of medieval Britain. For example, the personality, melody, and tonal palette of parts of the Holst composition we will be playing at the concert are highly reminiscent of old English ballads. And this is not surprising: after all, folk music is directly related to the national character, and there is a connection between melody and the sound of a language, its inflections. We hear this in the music of Purcell, Holst, and Britten just as we hear it in that of Glinka, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov.”