Chapter 17 - History and the Spirit of Revivalism

Summary

Historical revivalism has proved to be an ever-constant thread in the reception of Vaughan Williams and his contemporaries. Question of cultural heritage and national history were pressing ones during Vaughan Williams’s lifetime, both as topics of academic study and subjects of popular appeal. England in this period drew enormous pride from its literary and artistic history, and this history in turn fuelled a national image that helped create a sense of a unique national destiny. For the period’s perceived musical ‘renaissance’, similarly, the important influence of English heritage and the nation’s historical musical canon on new English works was a persistent trope.

It is important, however, to create more nuanced accounts of how historical revivalism figured in English musical modernism. In this chapter, I focus on three main elements in English musical revivalism during Vaughan Williams’s lifetime. First, I explore contemporary attitudes towards history, English musicological writing during the period, and new attitudes towards manuscripts and archival research. I then outline how the products of music historians and archival researchers created actual performances of early music via editions and concerts. Finally, I note the expansion of this ‘sounding’ early music into spaces where historical music could be marketed as an element of mass culture.