A REVIVAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 268, 2 February 1928, Page 16

A REVIVAL

i i ENGLISH MUSIC TAKING 1 AN UPWARD TREND I I MARK HAMBOURG’S OPINION Mark Hambourg, London pianist, finds in England a recrudescence of musical composition such as has not obtained since the Elizabethan era. “In no country has productivity along

musical lines taken as marked an upward trend as in England,” he said while in Berlin, where he appeared for the first time since the war. When England turns to composing the world sits up and takes notice. It is frequently claimed that the English are not very musical people. Yet the fact remains that men like Bryd, Tallis, Morley, Wilbye and Orlando Gibbons, who flourished during the Elizabethan era, and Purcell, a century later, produced a wealth of melody and of musical ideas that can well stand beside the musical output of other nations. “Since then, however, little creative work of lasting value has been done until our generation. To-day the Elizabethan era seems to be revived. Composers like Edward Elgar, Arnold Bax, Vaughan Williams, Joseph Holbrooke, William Wallace and Granville Bantock are putting England on the map anew as a mftisic producing country.” Hambour°* defines jazz as “the negro’s revenge on the white man.”