I
The word renaissance when applied to English musical conditions from about 1870 onwards is convenient but slightly inaccurate. It gives us an easy group-symbol for a large and unexpected outburst of activity; but it does not either state or explain a fact. Re-naissance means 'a being born again,' and that implies previous death. But the flame of life had never quite died out in the country to whose first great composer (Dunstable) the modern world owes the invention of musical art.
In its church and choral music especially there had always been a flicker of life which at least once, in the reigns of Elizabeth and the first James, had blazed up into an astounding vitality. However, it was not to be expected that the nation could go on living at this white heat. The flame burnt itself down, but not out; and the embers of a national art that had once been great enough to light up the wide spaces of the world smouldered through the eighteenth century and far into the nineteenth.
The history of this ecclesiastical music might almost have been predicted. Its postulates are merely the isolation and selfishness of the English Church from the days of William and Mary to those of the Oxford movement. But there are some other factors governing the productions of 'secular' music; and these we must examine.
From about the time of Purcell's death onwards (1695) England was engaged in eating up as much of the world as possible. And the result was national indigestion. Already in Charles II's time there had been alarming signs of an after-dinner torpidity which could find pleasure only in the latest trickeries imported from France. The old healthy delight in music as the recreation of freemen was disappearing; and the Englishman, spending his long day in the conquest, the civilization, and the administration of his great empire, found himself in the evening too weary for anything but contemptuous applause.
Hence began the artistic invasion of England. The foreigner was quick to see his opportunity in the preoccupations of the nation. Over the sea he came in shoals, impelled partly by the very natural belief in his own nation as the source of all kultur, and principally by his interest in the pound sterling. And, once landed, there he remained. His motto was that of the old Hanoverian countess: 'Ve kom for all your goots.'
It is unnecessary in this place to detail either the methods or the pernicious effects of this unnatural domination. Händel was a great, good, and pure-minded man, but when he came to England in 1710 he came to be a curse and an incubus brooding over the English spirit for 150 years. Music very nearly died there and, when the corpse showed any signs of reviving, some foreign professor was always at hand to stifle its faint cries, or, if that was not enough, to do a little quiet blood-letting 'just to make sure.' Even in the third quarter of the nineteenth century England maintained men like Karl Halle (later Charles Hallé, and later still Sir Charles Hallé) who were content to accept position, affluence, and titles, giving in exchange bitter and persistent opposition to the creative art of their adopted country.
This deplorable state of affairs continued more or less down to the middle year of last century. About that time certain forces came into play which have markedly changed the social and artistic conditions of England. And only in this sense can we say that there has been such a thing as a renaissance or rebirth of music. Looked at from the twentieth-century end of the telescope the changes seem violent and unbelievable; but, if we put the glass down and walk through the country itself, we shall be forced to accept them as only a natural and inevitable broadening of the landscape.
The main fact on which we wish to dwell here is that between the years 1870 and 1915 England has been able to assert her nationality in music. And this is a matter of the deepest interest to all Americans who love their country. The preponderance of blood here is Anglo-Saxon and, though America has the advantages and disadvantages of a mixed population, she has yet to learn the lesson already learned by some other peoples, that only by the paths of nationalism can she scale the heights of internationalism.
In more ways than one America's 1915 is England's 1870. The American composer need not engrave this fact on his notepaper, but he may be recommended by a sincere well-wisher to keep it in his heart. On both the material and the spiritual sides it is true. Watch the orchestral players on a Sunday night at the 'Metropolitan.' They are the sons of the men who were playing in 1870 at Covent Garden. But since then the Englishman has asserted his personality; and to-day there is scarcely a foreigner in any first-class English orchestra. Again, read through the synopses of novelties in any season's concert programs here. How many are American? Almost none. A hundred million people owning half a continent with vast waterways, prairies, and mountain ranges—yet musically nearly inarticulate! There must be something wrong here.
Let us hasten to add that the brain-stuff of the American composer is just as good as the brain-stuff of any other composer. More than that, he alone of all his countrymen seems to be aware that the price of victory is battle and death in battle.
No one can say that England has yet conquered the world in a musical sense. Still her achievements are much greater than are generally recognized on this side of the Atlantic. The art-works which represent these achievements lie mostly on composers' shelves and in publishers' cellars, kept there partly by their own strangeness and partly by the timidity and self-effacement of their authors.
Already similar works are being produced in America; and it is therefore hoped that a consideration of the musical conditions and processes in England between 1870 and 1915 may be helpful to American composers. One may add that at the earlier date the outside English public was just as heavily ignorant and indifferent as the American public is now. In the one case the leaven came, and in the other is coming from within.