318
W
ith some exceptions—
such as the areas
of psychology and
imagination explored in the operas
of Benjamin Britten and Michael
Tippett—British classical music
after World War II was generally in
thrall to convention. Prominent new
works, such as Sinfonia antartica
(1952) by Ralph Vaughan Williams,
or William Walton’s Cello Concerto
(1956), were seen as looking backThe ravings of the mentally
afflicted George III (1738–1820), King of
Great Britain and Ireland, provided the
disconcerting basis for the libretto
of Eight Songs for a Mad King.IN CONTEXT
FOCUS
Theatre and radicalism
in English musicBEFORE
1912 Arnold Schoenberg’s
song-cycle melodrama Pierrot
lunaire launches the concept
of the avant garde.1968 The ritualistic violence
of Harrison Birtwistle’s opera
Punch and Judy disconcerts
listeners at the UK’s Aldeburgh
Festival, including its founder,
Benjamin Britten.AFTER
1972 Maxwell Davies’s opera
Taverner, an ambitiously
dramatic portrait of the Tudor
composer John Taverner, is
first performed at the Royal
Opera House, Covent Garden.1986 Birtwistle’s “lyric
tragedy” The Mask of Orpheus,
a theatrical representation on
an immense scale of multiple
versions of the Orpheus
legend, premieres in London.to a traditional past rather than
pointing toward an exciting
new future. As the 1960s arrived,
however, with their release of
long pent-up desires for social
and political change, a similar
revolution in classical music
was about to erupt.New blood
When Peter Maxwell Davies
entered the Royal Manchester
College of Music in 1952, he found
a number of like-minded radical
fellow-students: composers
Harrison Birtwistle and Alexander
Goehr, trumpeter and conductor
Elgar Howarth, and pianist John
Ogdon. This new “Manchester
School” was an informal group of
very different artistic personalities.
While Goehr’s music related to the
modern Austro-German tradition
of the inter-war years, with its roots
in the style and technical method
of Arnold Schoenberg, Birtwistle
looked to reconnect with ancient
theatrical ritual, particularly GreekIF YOU TELL ME
A LIE, LET IT
BE A BLACK LIE
EIGHT SONGS FOR A MAD KING ( 1969 ),
PETER MAXWELL DAVIESUS_318-319_Maxwell_Davies.indd 318 26/03/18 1:02 PM