A biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams, published in collaboration with the Bard Music Festival. Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) was one of the most innovative and creative figures in twentieth-century music, whose symphonies stand alongside those of Sibelius, Nielsen, Shostakovich, and Roussel. After his death, shifting priorities in the music world led to a period of critical neglect. What could not have been foreseen is that by the second decade of the twenty-first century, a handful of Vaughan Williams’s scores would attain immense popularity worldwide. Yet the present renown of these pieces has led to misapprehension about the nature of Vaughan Williams’s cultural nationalism and a distorted view of his international cultural and musical significance. Vaughan Williams and His World traces the composer’s stylistic and aesthetic development in a broadly chronological fashion, reappraising Vaughan Williams’s music composed during and after the Second World War and affirming his status as an artist whose leftist political convictions pervaded his life and music. This volume reclaims Vaughan Williams’s deeply held progressive ethical and democratic convictions while celebrating his achievements as a composer.

The first large-scale study of the music of Herbert Howells, prodigiously gifted musician and favourite student of the notoriously hard-to-please Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. Herbert Howells (1892-1983) was a prodigiously gifted musician and the favourite student of the notoriously hard-to-please Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. Throughout his long life, he was one of the country's most prominent composers, writing extensively in all genres except the symphony and opera. Yet today he is known mostly for his church music, and there is as yet relatively little serious study of his work. This book is the first large-scale study of Howells's music, affording both detailed consideration of individual works and a broad survey of general characteristics and issues. Its coverage is wide-ranging, addressing all aspects of the composer's prolific output and probing many of the issues that it raises. The essays are gathered in five sections: Howells the Stylist examines one of the most striking aspect of the composer's music, its strongly characterised personal voice; Howells the VocalComposer addresses both his well-known contribution to church music and his less familiar, but also important, contribution to the genre of solo song; Howells the Instrumental Composer shows that he was no less accomplished for his work in genres without words, for which, in fact, he first made his name; Howells the Modern considers the composer's rather overlooked contribution to the development of a modern voice for British music; and Howells in Mourning explores the important impact of his son's death on his life and work. The composer that emerges from these studies is a complex figure: technically fluent but prone to revision and self-doubt; innovative but also conservative; a composer with an improvisational sense of flow who had a firm grasp of musical form; an exponent of British musical style who owed as much to continental influence as to his national heritage. This volume, comprising a collection of outstanding essays by established writers and emergent scholars, opens up the range of Howells's achievement to a wider audience, both professional and amateur. PHILLIP COOKE is Lecturer in Composition at theUniversity of Aberdeen. DAVID MAW is Tutor and Research Fellow in Music at Oriel College, Oxford, holding Lectureships also at Christ Church, The Queen's and Trinity Colleges. CONTRIBUTORS: Byron Adams, Paul Andrews, Graham Barber, Jonathan Clinch, Phillip A. Cooke, Jeremy Dibble, Lewis Foreman, Fabian Huss, David Maw, Diane Nolan Cooke, Lionel Pike, Paul Spicer, Jonathan White. Foreword by John Rutter.

For centuries, the sea and those who sail upon it have inspired the imaginations of British musicians. For centuries, the sea and those who sail upon it have inspired the imaginations of British musicians. Generations of British artists have viewed the ocean as a metaphor for the mutable human condition - by turns calm and reflective, tempestuous and destructive - and have been influenced as much by its physical presence as by its musical potential. But just as geographical perspectives and attitudes on seascapes have evolved over time, so too have culturalassumptions about their meaning and significance. Changes in how Britons have used the sea to travel, communicate, work, play, and go to war have all irresistibly shaped the way that maritime imagery has been conceived, represented, and disseminated in British music. By exploring the sea's significance within the complex world of British music, this book reveals a network of largely unexamined cultural tropes unique to this island nation. The essaysare organised around three main themes: the Sea as Landscape, the Sea as Profession, and the Sea as Metaphor, covering an array of topics drawn from the seventeenth century to the twenty-first. Featuring studies of pieces by thelikes of Purcell, Arne, Sullivan, Vaughan Williams, and Davies, as well as examinations of cultural touchstones such as the BBC, the Scottish fishing industry, and the Aldeburgh Festival, The Sea in the British Musical Imagination will be of interest to musicologists as well as scholars in history, British studies, cultural studies, and English literature. ERIC SAYLOR is Associate Professor of Musicology at Drake University. CHRISTOPHER M. SCHEER is Assistant Professor of Musicology at Utah State University. CONTRIBUTORS: Byron Adams, Jenny Doctor, Amanda Eubanks Winkler, James Brooks Kuykendall, Charles Edward McGuire, Alyson McLamore, Louis Niebur, Jennifer Oates, Eric Saylor, Christopher M. Scheer, Aidan J. Thomson, Justin Vickers, Frances Wilkins

Bringing together established authorities and new voices, this book takes off the 'protective arm' around Britten. Benjamin Britten Studies brings together established authorities and new voices to offer a fresh perspective on previous scholarship models and a re-contextualization of previously held beliefs about Britten. Using the mostrecent and innovative historical, musicological, sociological, psychological, and theoretical methodologies, the authors take off the 'protective arm' around Britten and disclose an unprecedented amount of previously unpublishedand disregarded primary source materials. The collection considers difficult questions of identity such as Britten's retreat to America, his re-entry into the British musical scene, and late-life revisions of his American works; scrutinizes the fraught establishing of the English Opera Group contemporaneous with the founding of the Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts; explores his break with Boosey & Hawkes and inspects international copyright concerns in the Soviet Union' investigates sensitive issues of intimacy and Britten's relationships; and combines closer analysis of Britten's musico-rhythmic, harmonic, and compositional practices with a description of the more overtlypolitical context within which he found himself. Benjamin Britten Studies ends by asking what we can actually know about the composer in a reconsideration of the materials he left behind. All of this coalesces into avolume that not only serves as a model of on-going and future Britten research but which generates a greater understanding of the overall trends within the ever-synthesizing and interdisciplinary musicological field of the twenty-first century. VICKI P. STROEHER is Professor of Music History at Marshall University. JUSTIN VICKERS is Assistant Professor of Voice at Illinois State University. Contributors: Byron Adams, Nicholas Clark, Jenny Doctor, Paul Kildea, Christopher Mark, Thornton Miller, Louis Niebur, Philip Reed, Colleen Renihan, Philip Rupprecht, Kevin Salfen, Vicki P. Stroeher, Justin Vickers, Lucy Walker, Danielle Ward-Griffin, Lloyd Whitesell

Exploring the relationship between queer sexuality and music in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Queer Episodes in Music and Modern Identity approaches modern sexuality by way of music. Through the hidden or lost stories of composers, scholars, patrons, performers, audiences, repertoires, venues, and specific works, this intriguing volume explores points of intersection between music and queerness in Europe and the United States in the years 1870 to 1950--a period when dramatic changes in musical expression and in the expression of individual sexual identity played similar roles in washing away the certainties of the past. Pursuing the shadowy, obscured tracks of queerness, contributors unravel connections among dissident identities and concrete aspects of musical style, gestures, and personae. Contributors are Byron Adams, Philip Brett, Malcolm Hamrick Brown, Sophie Fuller, Mitchell Morris, Jann Pasler, Ivan Raykoff, Fiona Richards, Eva Rieger, Gillian Rodger, Sherrie Tucker, and Lloyd Whitesell.

Edward Elgar (1857-1934) is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating, important, and influential figures in the history of British music. He rose from humble beginnings and achieved fame with music that to this day is beloved by audiences in England, and his work has secured an enduring legacy worldwide. Leading scholars examine the composer's life in "Edward Elgar and His World," presenting a comprehensive portrait of both the man and the age in which he lived.

Elgar's achievement is remarkably varied and wide-ranging, from immensely popular works like the famous "Pomp and Circumstance" March no. 1--a standard feature of American graduations--to sweeping masterpieces like his great oratorio "The Dream of Gerontius." The contributors explore Elgar's Catholicism, which put him at odds with the prejudices of Protestant Britain; his glorification of British colonialism; his populist tendencies; his inner life as an inspired autodidact; the aristocratic London drawing rooms where his reputation was made; the class prejudice with which he contended throughout his career; and his anguished reaction to World War I. Published in conjunction with the 2007 Bard Music Festival and the 150th anniversary of Elgar's birth, this elegant and thought-provoking volume illuminates the greatness of this accomplished English composer and brings vividly to life the rich panorama of Victorian and Edwardian Britain.

The contributors are Byron Adams, Leon Botstein, Rachel Cowgill, Sophie Fuller, Daniel M. Grimley, Nalini Ghuman Gwynne, Deborah Heckert, Charles Edward McGuire, Matthew Riley, Alison I. Shiel, and Aidan J. Thomson.

Nematodes are renowned for their ability to survive severe environmental fluctuations. Their mechanisms to withstand temperature extremes, desiccation, and osmotic and ionic stress are presented here together with information on the underlying biochemical basis contributing to survival. Highlighting parallels and contrasts between parasitic and free-living nematode groups, this book integrates strategies that enable nematodes to persist in the absence of food with tactics used by parasitic forms to survive the defence responses of a plant or animal host. This functional study is an essential resource for researchers in nematology, parasitology and zoology.