Speranza
D. Scott
For the larger part of the nineteenth century, a much narrower meaning is
generally implied by describing an English song as a "national" song than might
be presumed from an acquaintance with Boosey's National Song Book of 1906.
Although the title 'national songs' or 'national airs' was commonly given to a
collection containing a varied selection of songs of a single country (for
example, Moore's Irish National Airs of 1818-28), when applied to English songs,
the description 'national' tends to signify songs of patriotic sentiment rather
than songs sharing the same ethnic quality.
The notion of there being an "Englishness" in the musical character of a song which could be labelled
'national' did not gain wide currency until the 1890s.
The English 'national
song' and the search for an English national musical identity in song must be
seen in the context of British imperialism.
If imperialism were to be defined
solely as the formal annexation of territory, there would be an argument for
regarding 1815-70 as an "anti-imperialist" era.
Annexation did not altogether
cease (the Falkland Islands, for example, were annexed in 1833), but
mercantilism and colonialism were being challenged and forced to give way to
laissez-faire and free trade.
Lenin, however, who defines imperialism as a
particular stage in the development of capitalism, argued that the enthusiasm
for liberating the colonies (shown by some bourgeois politicians) sprang from
thriving capitalist competition.
But, as capitalism passes into the monopoly
stage, as other countries industrialize, as companies become larger, and as
the big banks increase their control as agents of finance capital, there comes
about an 'intensification of the struggle for the partitioning of the world'.
Fear of losing markets is a stimulus to the 'conscious imperialism' or 'new
imperialism' which was being articulated in the 1880s.
Behind the 'scramble for
Africa' lay a European economic crisis, though Conservative politicians talked
of a 'civilizing mission' and 'imperial responsibility', and criticized
Gladstone for not upholding British interests abroad (the death of General
Gordon was constantly flung at him).
With an air of inevitability, the Liberal
Party itself witnesses its imperialist wing rapidly growing in strength during
the later years of the century.
It is noticeable that songs written in the
period of new imperialism' lie greater stress on Britain and things British
than had been the norm earlier in the century, when a title like 'Britain's
Glory', which was given to a 'National Song' of 1845, was unusual.
In
later years, however, there appear such songs as 'The Glory of Britain'
(1876), 'Britain's Flag' (1888), and 'Britannia's Sons' (1893).
These are
followed by many others after the turn of the century which demonstrate an
increasing fondness for waving the British flag and invoking Britannia.
After
the Napoleonic Wars and before the 1890s, patriotic songs were almost entirely
concerned with ENGLAND.
Examples are:
"England, Europe's Glory" (1859)
"England's Strength" (1860)
"England's Greatness Still Endures" (1864), and
"England's Heroes" (1880).
All of these songs could have used 'Britain' in their
titles with little change of meaning.
England was Britain at this time -- and vice versa (vide Mikes, "How to become a Brit": "use "England" when you mean "Britain" and vice versa").
In the
1890s and later, however, the word 'England' tends to be preferred as part of a more
personal emotional appeal.
This is epitomized by W. E. Henley's poem 'England,
My England', which was set to music often in the early twentieth century.
As
part of a broad patriotic appeal, the word 'British' was better suited to the
age of new imperialism since it acted as a claim upon the loyalty of the
Empire's subjects in its suggestion of a homogeneous British imperial unity.
Examples are three of John Tenniel's 1876 "Punch" cartoons about Disraeli and
retitling Queen Victoria as the Empress of India, and New
Crowns for Old Ones, Empress, and Earl; or, One Good Turn Deserves
Another and The Queen with Two Heads
The crown of the United Kingdom became the symbol of imperial
unity, particularly during and after the Jubilee of 1887 (though the idea may be
traced to Disraeli and the conferring of the title 'Empress of India' upon
Victoria in 1876).
The Golden Jubilee is the inauguration of
a modern concept of royalty as a distracting pageant (1887 was a year of
depression), with the monarchy as a focal point for orthodox herding instincts,
jingoism, circuses, 'respectability', and guff.
Even a music-hall publisher,
Francis Bros. & Day, turns out a 'Song of Jubilee'.
It s a sign of things
to come.
By 1900 another music-hall publisher, Hopwood & Crew, is offering
a whole "Navy and Army Patriotic Album"
Songs in praise of Victoria were nothing
new to the drawing-room ballad market, of course.
And the idea of Victoria as
Empress had been foreshadowed in song almost twenty years before she received
that title — following the suppression of the Indian Mutiny in 1857, a 'new
national anthem' was written by Edward Clare, entitled 'Victoria! Empress of the
East'.
In fact, there is much in the songs written at the time of Crimea and the
Indian Mutiny to add weight to Gallagher and Robinson's 'continuity thesis', which holds that there was no aversion to empire building during this period,
but that it lacked the strategic planning which came in the depression-dogged
years of 1873-96.
Gallagher coins the phrase 'imperialism of free
trade' and suggests that there was an informal empire of places not formally
ruled by Britain, yet dominated by Britain in some way.
Colonial responsible
governments, for example, may have enjoyed local autonomy but were still
economically dependent on Britain.
It was an idea hatched after the Canadian
rebellions which successfully served to forestall a repetition of the American
Revolution.
If necessary, force was always ready to be used to protect the
interests of free trade.
There were contradictions in the way formal and
informal control was exercised: while internal self-government was being
introduced in British North America in 1846, India was still being developed in
a mercantilist way.
Only after the Mutiny did the British government rely on
class collaboration from princes and magnates (the natural leaders of the
people) to ensure control.
Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta "Utopia Limited; or, the flowers of progress" (1893)
is a comic fantasy on the free trader's faded dream of informal
control of a country by market forces.
In this work, "Utopia" becomes the first
country to be floated as a limited company.
Before the dawn of the new
imperialism, many songs shared the perspective of the free trader.
Here is
verse 3 of 'The Men of Merry England' (1858), a song written and composed by J.
B. Geoghegan, published in an arrangement byJ. Blockley.
o the men of
merry merry England
where'er Jove's thunders are hurled
bright
monuments rise, of their enterprise
& their commerce gives wealth to the
world
still, may it increase, whilst the fair hands of peace
shed plenty
and blessin; so free
should war call again, our rights we'll
maintain,
Then gaily my burthen shall be.
The men of merry, merry England,
etc.
Sympathy can also be found for the pacifist wing of the Manchester
School, led by Richard Cobden, which opposed the use of power in foreign policy.
Here is the first verse of Henry Frank Lett's 'Song for the Peace Movement'
(1849).
god knows with what a trumpet tongue we've boasted of our wars
& set our Soldier-idols up and lauded gallant Tars
& blown a loud defiant
blast across each purple sea
but men of Peace have risen, and said, 'This
shall no longer be
for that fierce Lion carnage-clawed we'll from our flag
remove
& straight inscribe with olive branch a gentle milk-white
Dove.
There is a clear distinction between the demand that the British flag
be respected, which is voiced in a great number of songs during the period of
imperialism of free trade, and the transparent aggression and covetousness
found in eighteenth-century songs espousing the mercantilist cause, or late
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century songs committed to the new
imperialism'.
Arthur Benson's well-known words, fitted to Elgar's music, in the
refrain of 'Land of Hope and Glory' (1902)
wider still and wider shall thy
bounds be set
God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet.
show a
return to the aspirations articulated in verse 5 of'Rule, Britannia':
to thee
belongs the rural reign
thy cities shall with commerce shine
all thine
shall be the subject main
& ev'ry shore it circles thine.
There are
times when enthusiasm for new patriotic songs wans (noticeably 1825-30,
1845-50, and 1865-70).
But they are always ready to roll off the presses when
the possibility of international hostility loomed on the horizon.
Then, not only
are new songs produced, but traditional patriotic songs are dug out and
revitalized.
In 1851 'The British Grenadiers' is published in London as an
individual sheet-music item, labelled 'National Song'.
And at the outbreak of
the Crimean War the publisher C. Jeffreys issues a new version to
which had been added extra verses of his own.
Yet there is no record of this
song having received the distinction of being published on its own since the
1770s.
When the Crimean War began in 1854, songs ar being produced such as:
"England, empress of the Sea"
"England's Queen to England's Heroes"
"England's patriotic appeal to her sons against the Russian despot, To Arms"
The difference between the warmongering at the time of Crimea (1854-6) and that
at the time of-the Russo-Turkish War (1877—79) is that the Conservatives make a
conscious effort to involve the working class in imperialist sentiment during
the latter.
The Conservatives wishe to intervene in this war and, as part of their effort
to whip up popular support, may have paid for the services of the music-hall
entertainer, the 'Great Macdermott'.
It was 'Macdermott's War Song', with its
refrain beginning
we don't want to fight, but by JINGO if we do
which gives
the word 'jingoism' to the English language.
The success of this approach was
evident when demonstrators smashed Gladstone's windows, and a previously
vacillating Parliament was moved to vote £6,000,000 for military use.
With few exceptions, the songs published at the time of Crimea adopted a
style more suited to the drawing room than the battlefield.
Even Captain J.
Wilson's parody of 'Kelvin Grove' in 'Crimea's Battlefield' (1854), which
begins
o campaigning's no for you, bonnie lassie o
probably owes more
to the fashionable enthusiasm for 'Scotch songs' in the 1850s than to any desire
to acknowledge the part played by Scottish soldiers.
A large number of men
recruited to fight were actually Irish, and one of their songs which is still
sung today is 'The Kerry Recruit'.
Its gory detail and stoical humour are in
strong contrast to the elevated patriotic sentiment favoured by the bourgeoisie.
Until Gerard F. Cobb's settings of Kipling's "Barrack-Room Ballads" in the
early 1890s, there is an immense gulf between the fighting man as depicted in
drawing-room ballads and the British Army soldier (for whom, in reality, there
was widespread contempt both among the bourgeoisie and his own commanding
officers).
After Dibdin, vernacular speech was less commonly used, even in
sailors' songs.
That Cobb becomes known as "the Dibdin of the Army" probably owes
as much to the use of the vernacular in Kipling's verse as to the tunefulness of
the music.
Kipling's men speak in a markedly different manner from the eloquent
belligerance of the soldiers and sailors of the early nineteenth century, such
as were encountered in 'The Death of Nelson' (1811) and 'The Soldier' (1815).
In the years following the Napoleonic Wars, these characters
develop a tender side, as revealed in 'The Soldier's Tear' of 1830 (words by
T. H. Bayly, music by A. Lee), but not at the sacrifice of an ounce of courage,
as is confirmed by 'Yes, Let Me Like a Soldier Fall', a "favourite air" from
Wallace's Italianate opera "Montana" (1845).
The dragoons of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Patience; or Bunthorne's Bride" (1881)
are not an unfair caricature of the type of martial characters met with in the
drawing room up to that time.
The growing interest in the thoughts and words of
the ordinary fighting man, as mediated by middle-class poets and composers, relate to the search for English identity during the age of new
imperialism.
There is also, of course, a feeling that this sort of song would
win cross-class appeal.
The following are press comments concerning some of
Cobb's settings of Barrack-Room Ballads.
Sure to gain popularity, both in the
mess-room and in the barrack-room
Madras Times, 28 September 1892).
We have no hesitation in saying that these songs are bound to become popular
throughout the entire British Army'
United Services Gazette, 13 August 1892).
Nevertheless, their perceived market is middle class.
It was the music-hall
which remained the prime vehicle for winning workers over to the imperialist
cause, right up to the outbreak of the Great War when recruiting was
helped by Vesta Tilley singing 'The Army of To-Day's All Right' (but cfr. parodies to "I'll make a man of anyone of you").
Jingoism does
not, however, find its base in any working-class movement, but, according to the
Liberal critics of imperialism in the 1890s, J. A. Hobson and L. T. Hobhouse, in
the villa Toryism of the sub-urban middle and lower middle class.
Sub-urbanization in the late nineteenth century was not
unconnected to the construction of an English rural mythology which helps to
build a new kind of nationalism, both aggressive and sentimental.
England
becomes the land of thatched cottages, red roses, and ripe corn.
Although it
lacks the rural images in its verse, 'Land of Hope and Glory' establishes the
new musical style for patriotic songs.
The nineteenth-century variety called for
a booming masculine voice.
The newer type aims to fill the heart with pride and
the eyes with tears and, for that reason, allowing for gender stereotyping, is
eminently suited to the female voice.
Dame Clara Butt must have seemed to many
the voice of the motherland personified.
The last gasp of British imperialism as
a popular cause came with a song clothed in all the garments of English
national identity which had been stitched up in the present century.
Written in
1939, 'There'll Always Be an England' gives an assurance that England will
always exist while there is a 'country lane' and a 'cottage small beside a field
of grain'.
Here is the pastoral ideal, not to be confused with the farm
labourer's cottage and its tin bath and earth closet (living conditions still
occasionally found in Yorkshire in the 1980s, let alone the 1930s).
When the
stirring call to action comes, Englishness is typically replaced by Britishness:
red, white and blue, what does it mean to you
surely you're proud, shout
it aloud, Britons awake
the empire too, we can depend on you
freedom
remains, these are the chains nothing can break.
One way of asserting English
identity was to project as imperial virtues such English bourgeois values as
character and duty.
In Kipling's 'The White Man's Burden', imperialism
itself becomes invested with a sense of duty.
The ideology of the home is
similarly magnified.
England begins by offering shelter to a bourgeois
conception of freedom, as in 'England, Freedom's Home' of 1848.
Sretches out in
a global embrace, as in 'England, the Home of the World' (1872) a 'national
song'.
The word 'men', with its connotations of courage and firmness, also begins
to appear in titles of increasing grandeur: in 1877 came 'Men of England', a
'national song'.
In 1894 came 'Men of Britain'.
Then, in 1915, came 'Men of
Empire', written to the tune of 'Scots Wha Ha'e'.
Songs in the later 'nineteenth
century came to acknowledge that men were dying overseas.
Verse 2 of'The Old
Brigade' of 1881 (words by F. E. Weatherly, music by O. Barri) begins
over the
sea far away they lie
far from the land of their love
and Weatherly pursues
a similar vein of thought in verse 3 of'The Deathless Army' of (music by H.
Trotère).
their bones may bleach 'neath an alien sky,
But their
souls, I know, will never die,
They march in a deathless army
The formal
design of 'The Deathless Army', with its middle section pondering the subject of
death, and a triumphant apotheosis for its conclusion, was a prototype for many
later ballads concerning the armed forces, well-known examples being 'The
Trumpeter' (1904) and 'Shipmates o' Mine' (1913).
In the 1890s the image of
the patriotic Englishman is built into the character that is being constructed
of the typical or traditional Englishman.
The threat posed by imperial
federation to English national identity is met by attempts to recapture some
imagined rural ideal, included in which is the belief that unadulterated
English qualities are found in songs collected in the countryside.
These
songs, like patriotic songs, were given the label national' and, helped by the
mediations of bourgeois folksong collectors, an idea of a homogeneous nation was
formed which obscured the class divisions within British society.
In a paper
delivered to the Royal Musical Association in 1891, F. Gilbert Webb defines
nation as a number of people having certain things in common, such as
language, one form of government, etc.
and argues that folk-song may fairly
claim to be the vital principle in the music of all nation.
Having
referred to folksongs as national songs, Webb
proclaims that the origin of all folk-music is the endeavour to perpetuate by
forcible and picturesque means the glories of love and war.
Behind much
of Webb's article lies the pseudo-science of race.
Darwinian anthropology had
reinforced the notion of there being distinct races, and the pseudo-science of
phrenology also related to racial questions (the 'long-headed man' and the
'broad-headed man' who anciently inhabited the British Isles).
Theories of "race " should be distinguished from those of "ethnicity".
The former allude to
unchanging, hereditary factors, while the latter allude to cultural factors.
Members of the same ethnic group may or may not be members of the same race, yet
still be bound by the same cultural ties.
Webb uses folksong to confirm racial
stereotyping.
Webb notes with regard to the rhythmic device known as the 'Scotch
snap' which is so commonly found in Scottish song:
It is the musical
expression of great muscular strength allied with highly- developed nervous
force — I mean rapidity of nervous action, or transmission of thought to the
muscular mechanism, which proceeds from great determination of mind and quick
decision.
It is the language of relentless resolution, of a mind which once
fixed on the acquisition of an object cares not what consequences may result to
itself or others so long as the end in view is attained.
These I need hardly
say are the chief elements which form the characters of successful warriors and
conquerors, such as the Celts.
A grand claim for a rhythm which may
simply derive from the greater ease with which the Highland bagpipe plays uneven
quavers.
Even Webb's example of a song whose petulant, wayward character derives from use of the 'Scotch snap' is ' 'Twas Within a Mile of Edinboro'
Town', which happens to be by an Englishman,
James Hook (from Norwich).
Webb then discusses what he calls the 'English style
of music' (meaning, presumably, a white Anglo-Saxon style).
What
is the character of the majority of ordinary Englishmen?
A well-balanced mind
which regards everything in an intensely practical light and which submits
everything to the question.
What good will that do to my pecuniary or social
position?
We hate display.
All extravagance of language, dress, and gesture -- that Italians seem to adore.
We English
look upon the impulsive man with suspicion and upon the exaggerator with
disgust, and regard enthusiasm as dangerous.
We English fear to let ourselves 'go' lest
we should excite ridicule.
In a word, we English lack Italianate passion.
On the other hand, we English
are magnanimous and chivalrous, whether the object be worthy or no.
Emotional
on social subjects, patriotic, and home-loving.
What should be the music of such
a people?
Just what it is; good, honest, bold, straightforward strains, rich in
melody, and breathing strong, healthy, human affection or simple-hearted gaiety,
but innocent alike of exaggerated sentimentality (as the Italians display) intellectual subtleties (as the French display), or
maddening mysticism (as the Spaniards do).
The novelty of Webb's application of racial theory
to music in 1891 is shown by someone remarking in the course of the discussion
which followed Webb's paper.
I am very glad that someone has had the courage to
stand up and assert the claims of national music to be regarded as the outcome
of a people's feelings.
The matter has never been thoroughly gone into.
Webb's views occasionally reveal the influence of racist ideas which grew
apace as an adjunct of the new imperialism, when the ideology of Anglo-Saxon
supremacy more than ever served as a guide and comfort to the colonizers and as
a rationale for coercion of their troublesome subjects.
Those ideas were
reinforced by the theory of the inevitability of human evolution and progress
associated with Herbert Spencer, survival of the fittest and Social
Darwinism, which allowes an advanced nation to see itself as saving a
backward nation from savagery, offering a helping hand to races struggling to
emerge into civilization in return for their country's riches.
The English
soldier's patronizing contempt for the cultural and religious differences of
other countries is caught in Kipling's 'On the Road to Mandalay'
an' I seed
her first a-smokin' of a whackin' white cheroot
an' a-wastin' Christian
kisses on an 'eathen idol's foot
bloomin' idol made o' mud
what they
called the great Gawd Budd
plucky lot she cared for idols when I kissed her
where she stood
This attitude
clearly stems from the above-mentioned ideas which, in combination with late
nineteenth-century imperial expansion, 'tended to exacerbate more racist notions
of black and brown inferiority'
Before the development of Darwinian
anthropology (The Origin of the Species was published in 1859), and while
ethnology was in its infancy, the quality of 'Englishness' was deemed to lie
largely in the possession of certain virtues.
Indeed, in English Traits,
published in 1854, Ralph Waldo Emerson fails to find anything particularly
English about the rural population at all.
His main concern is with the urban
bourgeoisie.
In 'The Englishman', a song published about 1840 which was very
well known in the mid-century (it reached its twentieth edition by 1870), the
Englishman is defined geographically by reference to his island home, his vast
domain, and the symbol of his territorial possessions, his flag.
In 'The Men of
Merry England', Englishmen are defined by their freedom, bravery, and enterprising spirit.
But these are the same aspects of Englishness with which
the eighteenth-century bourgeoisie would have identified, and which had already
been celebrated in songs like 'Heart of Oak' (1759).
Indeed, in a major new
contribution to a neglected area of historiography, Gerald Newman locates the
rise of English nationalism in the second half of the eighteenth century.
Newman
sees it emerging from anti-aristocratic and anti-French feelings.
The 'real'
Englishman is therefore projected as one who loathes foppishness and who lays
claim to virtues the French are presumed to lack, such as sincerity, honesty,
and independence.
Roast beef becomes a symbol of Englishness because the French
eat fancy ragouts.
'The Roast Beef of Old England' (1734) makes reference to
effeminate France and the vain complaisance of the French.
This song became
part of the ritual of grand military banquets throughout the nineteenth century,
being used as the announcement of dinner.
Even if an image of English
national character is being assembled well before the nationalist enthusiasm of
the late nineteenth century, the issue of whether or not there was a distinctly
national character to the musical side of English songs, as opposed to their
literary content, had been largely ignored.
It was not even vital for the music
of a national song to be of English origin.
Braham's The Death of Nelson' was
rumoured to be founded on a French air.
The use of the description national
as a reference to words rather than music allows for a seemingly paradoxical
situation in which 'God Bless The Prince of Wales' can be viewed as a truly
national song and the Orange Lodge song 'Derry's Walls' which borrows the
same Brinley Richards melody can also be called a national song.
William
Chappell published two volumes entitled "National English Airs" in 1838 and 1840,
but though by national air he was avoiding some of the restrictive
connotations pertaining to national song, he was apparently dissatisfied with
that description, for when he issued a much larger collection to subscribers in
1855-59, which used the previous publications as its basis, he called it "Popular
Music of the Olden Time."
There is no analysis of musical style in Chappell's
work, and no sense of musico-sociological endeavour, nor is there any
acknowledgement of the respective musical contributions of different social
groups.
Chappell is primarily motivated by the desire to trace the
music mentioned in literary sources, such as Shakespeare plays, and the olden
time refers mainly to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Chappell was the
founder of "The Musical Antiquarian Society" and saw his publication as not only
a repertory of English popular music, but also a continuation of the literary
work of Percy and Ritson.
After Chappell's death, and during the
folksong-collecting craze of the 1890s, Chappell's work was republished, but now its
title, "Old English Popular Music" carried a specific reference to nationality.
It was also in the 1890s that Frank Kidson published his "English Peasant Songs",
which parts company with Chappell in two ways.
Frst, Kidson claims that he was
originally driven to collect songs in order to demonstrate the absurdity of the
accusation that the English had no national music, thus implying that Chappell
had failed to counter that accusation.
Second, Kidson locates this English
national musical style in the music of a distinct social group.
Kidson, like
other folksong collectors, is interested in finding a rural population who had
remained unaffected by the commercially oriented music of the cities.
His use of the word 'peasant', till then rarely used in the nineteenth century,
is an indication of his wishful thinking.
Before the interventions of people
like Kidson and Sabine Baring-Gould, the musical traditions of the lower
orders are regarded with scorn.
In fact, it was only very late on in the
century that folksong gains entry to the drawing room, and then in a mediated
form.
Rather than learn about Englishness from rustic labourers, who, as has
been noted, were for most of the century not necessarily thought of as being
typically English anyway, the bourgeoisie are more concerned to win these
people over to an appreciation of morally elevating drawing-room ballads and
blackface minstrel songs performed in village halls and the like.
Ironically,
the early folksong field-collectors are partly motivated by contempt for the
sentimentality of bourgeois music-making, seeking instead an honest, healthy and
spontaneous alternative in the English countryside.
The Folksong Movement
has two noticeable effects on the drawing-room ballad at the close of the
century and during the early years of the next.
An exotic spicing is now almost
always added to music intended to evoke other lands (pointing to the contrast
with Englishness), and it became fashionable to write ballads containing
regional vernacular speech or 'dialect'.
The new exoticism is evident if music concerning
India composed in the middle of the century is compared with that composed at
the end of the century.
'Jessie's Dream' (1857), a story of the Relief of
Lucknow, makes no attempt whatsoever to introduce any music remotely Indian in
character, though it manages to include snatches of 'The Campbells Are Coming',
'Auld Lang Syne', and 'God Save the Queen'.
Adolphe Schubert's descriptive
fantasia 'The Battle of Sobraon', published in London in 1846, has the Sikhs
marching to their entrenchments to the missionary strains of 'There Is a Happy
Land'.
In John Pridham's plagiarized version, 'The Battle March of Delhi'
(1857), this section is labelled 'Indian Air (at a distance)'.
Although
reputedly Indian in origin, the tune above suggests nothing of the exotic
atmosphere conveyed by the introduction to the 'Kashmir! Song' (words by L.
Hope, music by A. Woodforde-Finden) from Four Indian Love Lyrics of 1902.
Exotic elements are found in
songs earlier in the nineteenth century (for example, Norton's 'No More Sea'),
but they are a rarity and, even in 1892, Cobb's 'Mandalay' (a setting of
Kipling) has nothing exotic about it.
Indeed, it is a waltz which, in the shape
of an arrangement by Bewick Beverley, became one of the most
fashionable dances of the season.
In contrast, Oley Speaks in his famous 'On
the Road to Mandalay' of 1907 uses an insistent rhythm joined to ominous
harmonies for the verse sections and exotically colours the references to palm-
trees and temple bells.
In the 1890s an exotic turn of musical phrase comes to be
used to indicate non-European countries in general.
Florence Turner's highly
flavoured music for the 'Egyptian Boat Song' of 1898 owes, in reality, no more
to any alternative musical culture than did Frederic Clay's 'I'll Sing Thee
Songs of Araby' of 1877.
Franklin Clive illustrates the late Victorian
all-embracing image of the far-off land in 1899, when he discovered that he
can sing Kipling's 'On the Road to Mandalay' not to any pseudo-Burmese music,
but to Walter Hedgcock's 'Japanese' music composed in 1893 for 'The Mousmee'.
It is probably a conjunction of
imperialist sentiment, the Folksong Movement, and enthusiasm for Kipling's verse
which lies behind the upsurge in the use of vernacular speech in drawing-room
ballads.
Devon and Drake were favourite subjects, a well-known example being
Newbolt's poem 'Drake's Drum', set by Hedgcock in 1897, but most familiar in C.
V. Stanford's setting of 1904.
"Glorious Devon", by German, is one of my favourites ever.
Imperialist sentiment is relevant here because
imperialist endeavour and chivalric aspects of colonial adventure could be related to the Elizabethan merchant adventurers like Raleigh and Drake
-- the message 'Sail overseas and conquer!' might easily have been inferred from
Millais' painting The Boyhood of Raleigh.
In army ballads the rugged sergeant
figure is probably a Kipling bequest; the humorous as well as intimidating
aspects of his character are exploited in later ballads like 'A Sergeant of the
Line' (1908), 'The Company Sergeant-Major' (1918), and 'When the Sergeant
Major's on Parade' (1925) -- but cfr. Gracie Fields, "Kiss me goodnight, sergeant-major".
In spite of all the activity surrounding the
search for a specifically ENGLISH MUSICAL style, there is no consensus about
what that style consisted of in the late nineteenth century.
In the 1890s some
writers on music were still pointing to the bourgeois patriotic song as the
national song' but claiming a national character for the music as well as the
words.
'Rule, Britannia' is described in one song collection of this period as
one of the finest national tunes we have, thoroughly expressive not only of the
words, but embodying in its bold, ringing, martial-like strains, the very
character and spirit of the British nation.
And I agree!
Whether a bold, ringing,
martial-like strain springs from the character and spirit of the British
nation or from the use of certain well-trodden Western compositional techniques
is a matter which can be disputed.
Or not!
The opening of the first verse of ‘Rule,
Britannia’ will serve as an illustration.
The use of a march metre and
the construction of a tune around the tonic arpeggio, suggestive of a fanfare,
undoubtedly conveys a martial mood (the bugle, for example, can play only notes
of the tonic arpeggio, so all bugle calls share this character).
If this is
typically English, it obviously follows that so, too, is the tune of 'The
Englishman', and also that of 'The Men of Merry England'.
There
are, of course, countless other nineteenth-century English 'national songs' of
this character.
But perhaps this melodic and rhythmic device ought to be
considered first and foremost as a feature of songs signifying a MILITARISTIC
rather than an English national character.
Compare the refrain of 'The Old Brigade': "Then steadily shoulder to shoulder".
The refrain of 'The Deathless Army' begins in
similar fashion.
Again, it need hardly be added that other examples are
legion.
It may be noted that the 'Marseillaise' is a tune of this type.
One then
needs to ponder why military bands in England are prohibited from playing it
till 1879 and why the writer quoted above, who is so enthusiastic
on the subject of'Rule, Britannia', finds that in the case of the
'Marseillaise', there is an element of danger in a song of this kind.
If
Britishness or "Englishness" implies unquestioning devotion to the concept of a
homogeneous nation, there can be no danger for the bourgeoisie in a song like
'Rule, Britannia'.
Nor is any danger perceived in the new pastoral image of
Englishness which gained ground rapidly in the early twentieth century and took
its idea of the typical expression of English character in music from folksongs
like 'Searching for Lambs'.
Here, the rolling irregularity of the
English landscape finds its melodic counterpart, and the modality and lack of
clearly implied harmony (there is no obvious choice of chord for bar two, for
example) suggest an Eden undented by the commercial music industry.
Yet
folk-songs, as the new national songs, soon became part of that industry.
Whether 'Searching for Lambs' in any better served by the label 'national' than
is 'Rule, Britannia', is once more a matter for ideological debate.
REFERENCES
V. I. Lenin, Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917)
(Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1968)
The phrase 'conscious
imperialism' was coined by J. A. Hobson in Imperialism: A Study (London,
1902).
J. Sturgis, 'Britain and the new imperialism', in C. C.
Eldridge (ed.), British Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (London:
Macmillan1984)
E. P Thompson, William Morris (New York: Pantheon:
1976)
J. Gallagher, and Robinson, R., 'The imperialism of free
trade', Economic History Review (1953).
Some historians now argue over the
extent of the 'Great Depression' — see, for example, F. Bedarida, A Social
History of England 1851-1975 (London: Methuen, 1979) chapter 4 - but though the
depression may not have been universal (the ballad market thrived), it was of
such concern to the government that they agreed to set up a Royal Commission to
investigate the 'Depression of Trade and Industry' in 1885.
H.
Cunningham, 'Jingoism in 1877-78', Victorian Studies (1971)
Pearsall cites the belief 'that Macdermott was in the pay of
the Conservative Party, which was interested in meddling in that war.'
A modern reprint of this song appears in Waites and Hunter
180.
The song may be found in I. Silber (ed.), Reprints from "Sing Out!"
vol. 6 (London: Music Sales Ltd, 1964),
These comments appear on the
back of 'Danny Deever', words by R. Kipling, music by W. Ward-Higgs, published
by C. Sheard & Co., London and Boston, 1906.
F. Gilbert Webb, 'The
foundations of national music', RMA Proceedings, 17 (1890—91):114.
C.
Bolt, 1984 'Race and the Victorians', in C. C. Eldridge (ed.), British
Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (London: Macmillan: 1984), 147.
It
was Spencer, not Darwin, who coined this phrase, in Principles of Biology, 1872,
part 6, chapter 12, section 363.
The phrase used by the Earl of
Carnarvon, addressing the Philosophical Institution in Edinburgh.
An extract
from his speech is given in C. C. Eldridge,
'Sinews of empire: changing
perspectives', in Eldridge 185.
P. Rich, 'The quest for Englishness',
History Today 37 (June 1987): 29.
G. Newman, The Rise of English
Nationalism: a Cultural History 1740-1830 (London: Weidenfeld, 1987).
J.
Stein, J. (ed.), The Nation's Music (London: Cassell, 1909). Preface and notes
by R. J. Buckley, vol. I, English:
Anon., 'Foreword', Orange Standard
( Glasgow: Mozart Allan, n.d.).
W. Chappell, Old English Popular Music
(1893), ed. H. Ellis Wooldridge (New York: Jack Brussell, 1961): vi.
See
Harker 1985: 155—56. Carl Engel is also relevant in this connection, too: see
142-46.
S. Baring-Gould, Further Reminiscences (1925).
J. C. Hadden, 'Our patriotic songs', British
Minstrelsie, vol. 5 (London: n.d. [1890s]) Blackwood, Le Bas: iv.
'A very
perfect example of a folk-song' in C. J. Sharp, English Folk Songs (London:
Novello: 1919).
Monday, December 24, 2012
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