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The first book-length study of musical education and culture in
twentieth-century Oxford. Music has always played a central role in
the life of Oxford, in both the city and university, through the
great collegiate choral foundations, the many amateur choirs and
instrumentalists, and the professional musicians regularly drawn to
perform there. Oxford, with its collegiate system and
centuries-long tradition of musical activity, presents a
distinctive and multi-layered picture of the role of music in urban
culture and university life. The chapters in this book shed light
on music's unique ability to link 'town and gown', as shown by the
Oxford Bach Choir, the city's many churches, and the major choral
foundations. The twentieth century saw the emergence of new musical
initiatives and the book traces the development of these, including
the University's Faculty of Music and the University Opera Club.
Further, it explores music in the newly-founded women's colleges,
contrasted with the musical society formed in 1930 at University
College, an ancient men's college. The work of Oxford composers,
including George Butterworth, Nicola Lefanu, Edmund Rubbra, and
William Walton, as well as the composer for several 'Carry on'
films, Bruce Montgomery, is surveyed. Two remarkable figures, Sir
Hugh Allen and Sir Jack Westrup, recur throughout the book in a
variety of contexts. The volume is indispensable reading for
scholars and students of musical life in twentieth-century Britain,
as well as those interested generally in the history of Oxford's
thriving cultural life.
Shakespeare and the Evolution of the Human Umwelt brings together
research on Shakespeare, biosemiotics, ecocriticism, epigenetics
and actor network theory as it explores the space between nature
and narrative in an effort to understand how human bodies are
stories told in the emergent language of evolution, and how those
bodies became storytellers themselves. Chapters consider
Shakespeare's plays and contemporary works, such as those of
Barbara Kingsolver and Margaret Atwood, or productions for which
Shakespeare is a genetic forebear, as evolutionary artefacts which
have helped to shape the human umwelt-the species-specific
linguistic habitat that humans share in common. The work
investigates the juncture where semisphere meets biosphere and
illuminates the role that narrative plays in our construction of
the world we occupy. The plays of Shakespeare, as works that have
had unparalleled cultural diffusion, are uniquely situated to speak
to the ways in which ideas and the texts they use as vehicles are
always material, always environmental, and always alive. The book
discusses Shakespeare's works as vital nodes in our cultural,
historical, moral and philosophical networks, but also as
environmental actors in and of themselves. Plays are presented
alternately as digitally encoded bits of culture awaiting their
connection to an analog world, or as bacteria interacting with
living organisms in both productive and destructive ways, altering
their structure and creating new meaning through movement that is
simultaneously biological and poetic. This book will be of great
interest to students and scholars of ecocriticism looking to model
ecocritical readings and bridge gaps between scientific,
philosophical and literary thinking.
'Erudite, original and surprisingly moving ... This Christmas, as
at every Christmas, millions of listeners will have relished the
ethereal King's choir ... Day's meticulous history of a special
choral sound investigates the creation of a style, and the
evolution of a tradition, that now feels as anciently English as
the stonework of King's chapel itself' Boyd Tonkin The sound of the
choir of King's College, Cambridge - its voices perfectly blended,
its emotions restrained, its impact sublime - has become famous all
over the world, and for many, the distillation of a particular kind
of Englishness. This is especially so at Christmas time, with the
broadcast of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, whose
centenary is celebrated this year. How did this small band of men
and boys in a famous fenland town in England come to sing in the
extraordinary way they did in the twentieth and early twenty-first
centuries? It has been widely assumed that the King's style
essentially continues an English choral tradition inherited
directly from the Middle Ages. In this original and illuminating
book, Timothy Day shows that this could hardly be further from the
truth. Until the 1930s, the singing at King's was full of high
Victorian emotionalism, like that at many other English choral
foundations well into the twentieth century. The choir's modern
sound was brought about by two intertwined revolutions, one social
and one musical. From 1928, singing with the trebles in place of
the old lay clerks, the choir was fully made up of choral scholars
- college men, reading for a degree. Under two exceptional
directors of music - Boris Ord from 1929 and David Willcocks from
1958 - the style was transformed and the choir broadcast and
recorded until it became the epitome of English choral singing,
setting the benchmark for all other choral foundations either to
imitate or to react against. Its style has now been taken over and
adapted by classical performers who sing both sacred and secular
music in secular settings all over the world with a precision
inspired by the King's tradition. I Saw Eternity the Other Night
investigates the timbres of voices, the enunciation of words, the
use of vibrato. But the singing of all human beings, in whatever
style, always reflects in profound and subtle ways their
preoccupations and attitudes to life. These are the underlying
themes explored by this book.
A century of recording has fundamentally changed our experience of
music-the way we listen to it and the way it is performed. This
highly engaging book is the first thorough exploration of the
impact of recording technology upon the art of music. Timothy Day
chronicles the developments in recording technology since its
inception and describes the powerful effects it has had on artistic
performance, audience participation, and listening habits. He
compares the characteristics of musical life one hundred years
ago-before the phonograph-to those of today and offers a
fascinating analysis of how performing practices, images of
performers, the work of composers, and performance choices in
concert halls and opera houses have changed. The book investigates
the work of such great recording engineer-impresarios as Fred
Gaisberg and Walter Legge; the recording history of conductors,
orchestras, and soloists throughout the century; and the
development of the great classical recording labels. Day also
addresses a variety of questions raised by the study of recordings:
What have people expected of a recorded performance? Do recordings
constitute an art form in their own right? What is historical
authenticity? What is moral authenticity? Are recordings that endow
incompetent artists with flawless techniques somehow fraudulent?
Why do artists re-record repertoire? This book will inform and
engage a wide range of readers, from those who love music and
recordings to performers and scholars and all readers with an
interest in the social and artistic history of the twentieth
century.
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