Joseph Holbrooke

Composer, Critic, and Musical Patriot

Edited by Paul Watt and Anne-Marie Forbes

This is the first scholarly work to document the musical life of Joseph Holbrooke, one of Britain’s most prolific and controversial composers during the first half of the twentieth century. Holbrooke was outspoken on many issues, including the maligned fortunes of British composers, which he believed were brought about by apathy and indifference on the part of critics and the public. Despite doubts in various quarters over Holbrooke’s ability to forge a unique compositional idiom, many of his works were performed to critical acclaim in Britain, Europe, and the United States. Today, Holbrooke’s music is increasingly enjoyed and recorded.

Joseph Holbrooke: Composer, Critic, and Musical Patriot opens with a biographical overview of Holbrooke that concentrates on his relationship with Granville Bantock and Wales and the role that Lord Howard de Walden played in Holbrooke’s work and development. Contributors offer studies of a selection of repertory by Holbrooke, including his chamber music, the operas Pierrot and Pierrette and The Enchanted Garden, and his tone poem “The Raven.” The final chapter describes Holbrooke’s patriotism by examining his book Contemporary British Composers, which was published in 1925. Included is an appendix that provides the first comprehensive and corrected list of Holbrooke’s compositions.

This book will interest not only musicologists, musicians and listeners interested in the repertory of the British classical music tradition but also scholars and general readers interested in the ways Celticism, poetic inspiration, and nationalist ideology were expressed in the work of classical composers in the early twentieth century.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 380 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9⅛

978-0-8108-8891-3 • Hardback • December 2014 • $116.00 • (£89.00)

978-0-8108-8892-0 • eBook • December 2014 • $110.00 • (£85.00)

Subjects: Music / Individual Composer & Musician, Music / Genres & Styles / Chamber, Biography & Autobiography / Music

Joseph Holbrooke

Composer, Critic, and Musical Patriot

Hardback

eBook

Summary

This is the first scholarly work to document the musical life of Joseph Holbrooke, one of Britain’s most prolific and controversial composers during the first half of the twentieth century. Holbrooke was outspoken on many issues, including the maligned fortunes of British composers, which he believed were brought about by apathy and indifference on the part of critics and the public. Despite doubts in various quarters over Holbrooke’s ability to forge a unique compositional idiom, many of his works were performed to critical acclaim in Britain, Europe, and the United States. Today, Holbrooke’s music is increasingly enjoyed and recorded.

Joseph Holbrooke: Composer, Critic, and Musical Patriot opens with a biographical overview of Holbrooke that concentrates on his relationship with Granville Bantock and Wales and the role that Lord Howard de Walden played in Holbrooke’s work and development. Contributors offer studies of a selection of repertory by Holbrooke, including his chamber music, the operas Pierrot and Pierrette and The Enchanted Garden, and his tone poem “The Raven.” The final chapter describes Holbrooke’s patriotism by examining his book Contemporary British Composers, which was published in 1925. Included is an appendix that provides the first comprehensive and corrected list of Holbrooke’s compositions.

This book will interest not only musicologists, musicians and listeners interested in the repertory of the British classical music tradition but also scholars and general readers interested in the ways Celticism, poetic inspiration, and nationalist ideology were expressed in the work of classical composers in the early twentieth century.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 380 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9⅛

978-0-8108-8891-3 • Hardback • December 2014 • $116.00 • (£89.00)

978-0-8108-8892-0 • eBook • December 2014 • $110.00 • (£85.00)

Subjects: Music / Individual Composer & Musician, Music / Genres & Styles / Chamber, Biography & Autobiography / Music

Author

Paul Watt is a senior lecturer in musicology in the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music, Monash University.

Anne-Marie Forbes is a senior lecturer in musicology at the Conservatorium of Music, Tasmanian College of the Arts, University of Tasmania.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Chronology of Holbrooke’s Life and Music
Chapter 1: Situating Holbrooke in British Musical History
Paul Watt and Anne-Marie Forbes
Chapter 2: Joseph Holbrooke: A Life in Outline
Rob Barnett
Chapter 3: Friendship with Granville Bantock
David Craik
Chapter 4: Celtic Connections and T.E. Ellis
Anne-Marie Forbes
Chapter 5: Holbrooke’s Chamber Music and the Specter of Mass Culture
Paul Hopwood
Chapter 6: Holbrooke and Chamber Opera: Pierrot and Pierette and The Enchanted GardenPaul Rodmell
Chapter 7: Holbrooke and Poe Revisited: Refiguring The Raven as the Musical Uncanny Michael Allis
Chapter 8: A “Nationalist in Art”: Holbrooke’s Contemporary British Composers (1925)
Paul Watt
Appendix 1: Catalog of Works
Appendix 2: Music Inspired by Welsh Subjects
Appendix 3: Discography
References
Index
List of Contributors

Reviews

This book is more of a bibliographic than biographic entry--a collection of Holbrooke articles by various scholars. Future scholars of Holbrooke will be in its debt. . . .These articles add up to an interesting portrait of a composer Dimitri Mitropoulos called 'the English Berlioz'.
— American Record Guide

Joseph Holbrooke: Composer, Critic and Musical Patriot is the first book to provide a detailed examination of the composer. . . .[The book] will be of considerable interest to a surprisingly large group of people. Firstly, there are the musical historians for whom this volume will be invaluable in gaining a greater understanding of British music, especially in the first half of the twentieth century. . . .Students of Celtic and Welsh history and arts will require this book as an essential adjunct to their understanding of the influence of that nation’s history, ‘nationalist ideology’ and folklore on the London-born composer. The more general reader will find the examination of Holbrooke’s life of great interest as well as the examination of some of his key chamber and orchestral works prove helpful in gaining an understanding of one of the most important, but neglected, if somewhat wayward, of British composers.
— MusicWeb International

Awards

• Winner, 2016 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Awards for Excellence - Awarded a Certificate of Merit in the category of Historical Research in Recorded Classical Music

Joseph Holbrooke

Composer, Critic, and Musical Patriot

Edited by Paul Watt and Anne-Marie Forbes

Joseph Holbrooke

Composer, Critic, and Musical Patriot

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