Joseph Holbrooke: Composer, Critic, and Musical Patriot

(Hardback)

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This is the first scholarly work to document the musical life of Joseph Holbrooke, one of Britains 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 Holbrookes ability to forge a unique compositional idiom, many of his works were performed to critical acclaim in Britain, Europe, and the United States. Today, Holbrookes 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 Holbrookes 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 Holbrookes 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 Holbrookes 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.

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 nations history, nationalist ideology and folklore on the London-born composer. The more general reader will find the examination of Holbrookes 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 *

Author Bio

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.