Chapter 29 - Reception Outside England, 1901–1914

Summary

This chapter deals with the reception of Vaughan Williams’s music in the musical press on the continent and in North America prior to the First World War. The process played out in three distinct stages: (1) 1901–5, when Vaughan Williams was virtually unknown beyond Britain, and just the appearance of his name was something of a novelty; (2) 1906–9, when the press began to cite performances of individual works and even comment (though briefly) upon them; and (3) 1910–14, when he began to receive critical scrutiny in terms of individual works, general stylistic traits, and his place among his English contemporaries. In all, by the eve of the First World War, Vaughan Williams’s reputation was slowly but surely spreading beyond England.

Some perspective: most of the notices in the foreign journals came from their London correspondents, many of whom were themselves English; in a way, then, ‘foreign’ pertains more to readership than to those who shaped opinions. Thus in New York, for example, it was only in the 1920s that Vaughan Williams became something of a staple in the concert halls and therefore the subject of interest among local critics.