Keith Alldritt Books

The ground-breaking biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams reveals more than any other the man behind the music. In this new paperback edition, the author examines the considerable range of Vaughan Williams's work, from the English pastoral tradition to Modernism, and shows how Vaughan Williams was influenced by the Boer War, the economic depression after World War I, the deprivations of the Blitz, and the austerity of the Cold War. He also reveals how the greatest influence on Vaughan Williams's music and creative development was his personal life, involving his seemingly secure marriage and an equally enduring love affair. The author shows how these reflected both the stability and cutting-edge aspects of his music.Like a great symphony, this book ranges from doubt to inspiration. It is the most complete biography of one of Britain's greatest composers.

8vo. Original pictorial card covers (softback) (VG). Pp. xvi + 388, illus with b&w photos (no inscriptions).

The spectacular revival of serious music in England is a chief feature of the history of British culture from the turn of the 20th century and after. For some two centuries the art form had stagnated in England, which was referred to, notoriously, by a German commentator as "the land without music." But then came a great renaissance. In the three linked essays that make up this book, Keith Alldritt, the most recent biographer of Vaughan Williams, examines the several phases and genres of this revival. A number of composers including Gustav Holst, Arnold Bax, and William Walton contributed to the renewal. But this book presents the renaissance as centrally a continuity of enterprise, sometimes of riposte, running from Elgar to Vaughan Williams and then to Benjamin Britten. There concern was with music at its most serious, though not unceasingly humorless. All three explored music's frontier with philosophy. They also probed the psychological impact of the unprecedently violent and destructive century in which they practiced their art. Going beyond musicological comment, England Resounding essays insights into the historical, geopolitical, and personal events that elicited the major works of these three great composers.

After a consideration of the best lyric poetry of the Second World War the writer examines those poems which responded more fully to the challenge of the war. These are the long poems of Eliot, Pound, Bunting and MacDiarmid. Through a close reading of the poems the writer demonstrates that what these radically different poets have in common in their war poems is their use of modernist techniques to transcend the particulars of the war and to assert the resilience of the human spirit and civilisation when confronted with such an unprecedented threat.