Joseph Holbrooke: Composer, Critic, and Musical Patriot

This is the first scholarly work to document the musical life of Joseph Holbrooke, one of Britain’s most prolific and controversial composers during the first half of the twentieth century. Holbrooke was outspoken on many issues, including the maligned fortunes of British composers, which he believed were brought about by apathy and indifference on the part of critics and the public. 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 enjoyed and recorded. Joseph Holbrooke: Composer, Critic, and Musical Patriot opens 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 offer studies of a selection of repertory by Holbrooke, including his chamber music, the operas Pierrot and Pierrette and The Enchanted Garden, and his tone poem “The Raven.” The final chapter describes Holbrooke’s patriotism by examining his book Contemporary British Composers, which was published in 1925. Included is an appendix that provides the first comprehensive and corrected list of Holbrooke’s compositions. This book will interest not only musicologists, musicians and listeners interested in the repertory of the British classical music tradition but also 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.

Table of Contents:
List of Figures List of Tables List of Abbreviations Acknowledgments Chronology of Holbrooke’s Life and Music Chapter 1: Situating Holbrooke in British Musical History Paul Watt and Anne-Marie Forbes Chapter 2: Joseph Holbrooke: A Life in Outline Rob Barnett Chapter 3: Friendship with Granville Bantock David Craik Chapter 4: Celtic Connections and T.E. Ellis Anne-Marie Forbes Chapter 5: Holbrooke’s Chamber Music and the Specter of Mass Culture Paul Hopwood Chapter 6: Holbrooke and Chamber Opera: Pierrot and Pierette and The Enchanted Garden Paul Rodmell Chapter 7: Holbrooke and Poe Revisited: Refiguring The Raven as the Musical Uncanny Michael Allis Chapter 8: A “Nationalist in Art”: Holbrooke’s Contemporary British Composers (1925) Paul Watt Appendix 1: Catalog of Works Appendix 2: Music Inspired by Welsh Subjects Appendix 3: Discography References Index List of Contributors

About the Author :
Paul Watt is a senior lecturer in musicology in the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music, Monash University. Anne-Marie Forbes is a senior lecturer in musicology at the Conservatorium of Music, Tasmanian College of the Arts, University of Tasmania.

Review :
This book is more of a bibliographic than biographic entry--a collection of Holbrooke articles by various scholars. Future scholars of Holbrooke will be in its debt. . . .These articles add up to an interesting portrait of a composer Dimitri Mitropoulos called 'the English Berlioz'. Joseph Holbrooke: Composer, Critic and Musical Patriot is the first book to provide a detailed examination of the composer. . . .[The book] will be of considerable interest to a surprisingly large group of people. Firstly, there are the musical historians for whom this volume will be invaluable in gaining a greater understanding of British music, especially in the first half of the twentieth century. . . .Students of Celtic and Welsh history and arts will require this book as an essential adjunct to their understanding of the influence of that nation’s history, ‘nationalist ideology’ and folklore on the London-born composer. The more general reader will find the examination of Holbrooke’s life of great interest as well as the examination of some of his key chamber and orchestral works prove helpful in gaining an understanding of one of the most important, but neglected, if somewhat wayward, of British composers.