Joseph Holbrooke

This is the first scholarly work to document the musical contribution of Joseph Holbrooke, one of Britain's most controversial composers during the first half of the twentieth century. The controversies surrounding Holbrooke's life and work include his outspokenness on the maligned fortunes of British composers, which he believed were brought about by apathy and indifference on the part of critics and the public. However, despite doubts in various quarters over Holbrooke's ability to forge a unique compositional idiom, many of his works were performed to critical acclaim in Britain, Europe and the United States. Today, Holbrooke's music is increasingly performed and recorded. Joseph Holbrooke: Composer, Critic, and Musical Patriot focuses on the musical and literary life of the composer. Opening 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 Holbrooke's work and development, contributors then offer studies of a selection of repertory by Holbrooke, including his chamber music, the chamber operas Pierrot and Pierrette and The Enchanted Garden, and his tone poem "The Raven." The final chapter discusses Holbrooke's patriotism by examining his book Contemporary British Composers, that was published in 1925. Included as well is an appendix of the complete works of Holbrooke, providing the first comprehensive and corrected list of Holbrooke's compositions. In this book, Paul Watt and Anne-Marie Forbes have gathered together a team of scholars who shed new light on Holbrooke and his contribution to British music. The book will interest not only musicologists and lovers of the British classical music tradition, but 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.