Do our composers not get the praise that they deserve?? Do they tend to play second fiddle to the likes of Beethoven, Mozart & Tchaikovsky??

Apart from the mighty Wagner, it's the Brits all the way for me at the mo, with the likes of Elgar, Bax, Delius, Vaughan Williams, Holst & co - right up to Robert Simpson.

Anyone agree or maybe disagree??? Are we better than the Germans or perhaps we lag behind the Iron Curtain??

Why start with Elgar ? I reckon Dunstable, Tallis, Byrd and a host of other early chaps deserve a mention - although I have to confess that for me Machaut was the best of the medieval (or mediaeval if you prefer) bunch.

[Deleted by the author on 23 Oct 2009 00:34 BST]

Well, Elgar was heavily derivative of Wagner (so not surprised you're listening to him as well) and most of the others were heavily derivative of him. I like 'em, especially RVW, but they're leaning towards 'guilty pleasure' category.

Agree about the earlier English composers, of whom I would also mention Dowland and Purcell. Now, at that time, we really could stand comparison with the best in the world.

[Deleted by the author on 23 Oct 2009 00:34 BST]

Mere mention of names in the many lists that so many people like to post, or even comments, or even that rare thing 'discussion' do not count as celebration. In any case Adam did not frame his question as if he meant that people on this forum don't celebrate English music enough. He obviously meant British people in general, and perhaps the international musical world or the cultural world as it is presented in the media.
Many of the names you list are not names that I can recall even being mentioned although I suppose they might have been while I was away.
In fact I can see as many as 12 names that I havn't seen a comment about anywhere. Perhaps you are thinking of US Amazon.

Your post goes a long way towards making Adam's point. Why do you think they are guilty pleasures?
Do you think Elgar was any less entitled to be influenced by Wagner than German, Russian, French, Italian and American composers. The cost of not being influenced by him was to make one's musical language emotionally sterile in reaction, often to the extent of going radically avant-garde. The result in so much 20thc music has been a cold objectivity often created through highly individual, but not subjective, musical languages sometimes derived from, and claiming the authenticity and cultural backing of national folk roots and designed to betray as little Wagnerian influence as possible.
One of the things I most value about British music in the 20thc is the way composers have kept the Wagnerian faith in the 'music of the future' arguably for longer than in any other country, with the exception perhaps of opera where they have strong competition from German composers at least up to WW2.
Perhaps we are not in a position to know yet how much of the music produced in Soviet Russia in some sort of conformity to official edicts was actually any good. At least a fair amount of it may have been as we already know some that seems to be of value and there are many composers we don't know.
There are many people who feel guilty about enjoying any music after Schoenberg's 'revolution' that expresses normal or heightened emotions of a pleasurable or lyrical nature. I take the view that there is a mainstream that should always produce music written from a subjective point of view and prompted by the pleasure principle. Music does not have to take it's cue from the state of society, or the world, or from the dogmas of Art History. Popular music comes from the pleasure principle rooted in subjectivity, why shouldn't serious music?
I anticipate that some will respond that one can experience pleasure in post-Schoenberg, outright Modernist and avant-garde music, and I would not deny that, but the point I'm making is that it is not rooted in subjectivity, and certainly least of all in lyrical subjectivity. Neither I would argue, is the pleasure as valuable or intense - with a few exceptions, mostly by Schoenberg and Berg.

Anyway Elgar is not 'heavily derivitive' of Wagner as you say, although I would agree there is occasionally an echo of Wagner, and even a flavour of Wagner in Gerontius. He is certainly writing well within Wagner's aesthetic but Elgar always writes completely convincingly in his own voice, to the extent in fact that most people would not even hear Wagner. Bax and the rest also write in their own voice but the most individual of them all are undoubtedly first Elgar, and then Delius.

I certainly agree with regards to 18th Century British composers. In general we seem to have developed a peculiar prejudice against our own kind. It's existed for many centuries - perhaps because British composers, at least in the 16-19th Centuries have not pushed the boundaries of musical development to the extent that their continental counterparts did. Even more so in the current artistic climate, where it seems the overriding opinion is that anything which is not wholly new and original has very little intrinsic value. However, this trend has led us to perceive British composers on the whole to be "inferior" in skill and in worthiness of 'comparison' (whatever dubious value that may have) with continental composers.

This is by no means a modern view - in the Reformation, French music was in vogue, composers either imitated it, incorporated it into their own musical language, or perished. By the early C18, it became the Italian style, in the 1760s, the Mannheim style and in the 1790s, Viennese classicism. In each instance we "imported" composers from the continent who became the iconic examples of their genre, native composers were either seen as pale imitators or outdated if they failed to adapt. An article in the Morning Chronicle on the 21st March 1776 reviewing Thomas Linley II's Shakespeare Ode sums up this view quite succinctly:

"His merit, even at this early time in life, is certainly sufficient to challenge the warmest encouragement from the public, even though our Amateurs should not yet be brought to overlook the misfortune of his being -an Englishman."

This was a composer who Mozart confided to Burney in 1784 that he believed to be "a true genius". It seems people put a lot more stock into Mozart's music than his opinions as many of those Mozart regarded very highly have fallen almost into oblivion.

I could go on to list a huge number of neglected English composers other than those already mentioned on the forum - but I see little point. One other I will mention though, who has been absent according to Piso's comprehensive list is Samuel Wesley. There's a charming anecdote about Boyce visiting Charles Wesley's house sometime in 1774, where he remarked "Young (Thomas) Linley [his pupil] informs me that you have a young Mozart in your house!" upon which Sam presented him with his newly completed oratorio Ruth.

Sam showed probably as much promise as a composer as Mozart did at the same age - in fact his immature works arguable outstrip Mozart's written at the same age in terms of inventiveness of form and contrapuntal skill. Unfortunately he fell in a hole or something and barely composed at all for the rest of his life. What he did write however was exemplary - the Missa di Santo Spiritu was stylistically his first "mature" work written at the age of 18. His hour-long setting of Confetibor from 1799 is comparable with Haydn's creation. A quator concertante from around 1800 anticipates Beethoven, and a symphony from 1802 is positively Schubertian.

His fame clearly spread to Europe in his own lifetime, as Mendelssohn sought him out on his visits to England, yet here he was known soley as an organist - and now only as the father of his son 'an altogether more important figure' according to his biography, Samuel Sebastian Wesley.

Thanks Basil for your endorsement - I think Piso has inadvertently misunderstood my question; I was indeed referring to British culture and the wider view of the world. It always strikes me that the Americans seem to prefer the product of mainland Europe over the output of our insignificant little island.

Not so when the music is pop and rock Adam (I'm sure you would agree). Let's face it since the sixties Britain has had the best pop and rock music.

'Writing within Wagner's aesthetic' is exactly what I meant. Doesn't that make him derivative? Though I didn't mean the word in a disparaging sense. It doesn't disqualify anyone from listening to him, but does affect his claim to be ranked with the very best.

The 'guilty' part is partly aesthetic - I'm not keen on gushing music generally - and partly political. Elgar is tainted by association with the establishment in the same sort of way, though not of course to the same extent, as Wagner.

I agree with your general point abt the nature of music, though (it's possible to be melodic without being gushing).

Nearly all composers wrote within Wagner's aesthetic for about 30-40 years or so including Schoenberg, until Schoenberg's atonalism and Serialism on the one hand and Stravinsky's Neo-Classicism on the other.
Wagner's association with the establishment was simply a case of him exploiting it for financial support. He needed a lot of money to build his own opera house.
Elgar simply needed the money and wrote some marches and accepted a few commissions, notably 'The Crown Of India', before he was in a position to pick and choose.

What music do you consider gushing? Do you mean 'Tristan and Isolde'?

Do you think that Elgar succeeded in revealing his deepest sentiments and emotional needs more than anyone else except Wagner?

Piso - I guess you could say we managed te celebrate Holst, and Simpson at least, thanks to Adams strong advocacy which brought in a surprising number of endorsements. Surprising in the case of Simpson anyway.
Come back! Don't be so touchy. You were posting far more in the way of interesting comment, and even opinion, recently, as I wanted you to, and not just sticking to facts and itemising the incredible workload of what you are listening to.

Since the 60's pop music has been in decline. Mainly because of the coming of The Beatles, who everyone wanted to emulate. What was wrong was they were rubbish as well. Also most of todays pop culture sounds so much alike it's hard to distinguish between artists, so there is really nothing to enjoy.

I really must object to the description of the Beatles as rubbish. A am a member of several British music societies. On a reunion in Oxford recently of the Rawsthorne one I discovered a fellow member is, like me, a Beatles fan. He is also involved with all those Alwyn CDs on Naxos.

Everyone to their own. I personally wouldn't waste electricity playing Beatles music, but you may feel the same about my wide choice of material. I just think that music started to decline when the Beatles were wrongly "lionised" and pumped out unlistionable, feeble music.

Yes they were lionised by some surprisingly discerning and eminent critics and musicologists weren't they? Don't you think they may have noticed something you haven't.
Now I understand you're into folk music. Is there something a bit more complex that you also appreciate or are you only interested in this very simple form of music? I only ask because I know nothing of your tastes except that you like folk music.
It seems strange to me that you should be so hard on the Beatles because they are for the most part (except when being a bit avant-garde) nothing if not contemporary folk music. How did you feel about folk going electric? Are you a hard line accoustic folk purist?
By the way I havn't really listened to the Beatles much since 1969, but then I havn't listened to much traditional folk since 1962.
I suspect you are a folk musician. Am I right? I've met a lot of jazz fans and jazz musicians who hate the Beatles. Both Jazz and folk factions tend to resent the Beatles because they stole their audience.

I listen to, and like a wide variety of music. Folk music isn't one of them.
My classical choice is Puccini operas, with a whole lot of other composers thrown in. I like old jazz and old blues. In fact my collection contains many genres, but you won't find any Beatles, folk music or "music" from the present or recent pop charts, because as I said, I find it hard to distiguish between artists. The majority of which just put out a "nasal" drone and call it music. In fact I think it is criminal for the record companies to want people to actually pay for this rubbish.

Strange - you have a folk album, and only a folk album, on your wish list - or at least you did when I looked yesterday. Yes, it's still there : 'That's Proper Folk' by various artists - a Christmas present for someone perhaps.
Well, at least it's nice to have someone who values Puccini on this forum at last. As far as I can recall you are the only one in the last year or so.
I still don't understand why you think the Beatles began the DECLINE of pop music. Wasn't there a lot of appalling pop music in the 50's? Are you saying that Rock n'Roll was OK but not the Beatles? because I don't see how you can have forgotten that it came before them and that they started as Rock n'Rollers. But anyway how can you admire the blues from a MUSICAL point of view and put it above the Beatles. The blues are very boring from a purely musical point of view and is only enlivened by performance. So is R n'R. The Beatles absorbed blues and Rn'R and made something new that was BRITISH.
Blues is just an American form of folk music characterised by disaffection etc. - that is, just a form of folk music produced by the modern world as it affected a modern underclass.

for me - look no further than Michael Nyman. Still inovative - still experimenting - still bringing new ideas to the table.

just take the new collaboration with David McAlmont

McAlmont & Nyman: The Glare

simply the most startling, extraordinary and an intensely beautiful album of the year - it's classical/it's pop/it's new lyrical baroque soul? i don't know...it's a whole new soundscape - you listen and you tell me what it is.

David McAlmont's soulful melodies and pure lyricism has found Michael Nyman's powerful, driving, sensual, highly emotive and unforgettable music. It's simply stunning - that's what it is.

Adam, I've come late into this discussion, but I tend to agree with these sentiments. The old claim that Britain was 'the land without music' bandied around so much in the C19th, and later, still sticks. I can remember a note to an LP bought in America many years ago that commented re the 1880s to 1914 that not much of any note was happening in British music, a real calumny if there ever was one. And more recently, the standing of the Darmstadt school in Germany cast much popstwar British muisic into the shadows.

Fortunately, there have been significant standard bearers for British CM like 'The Gramophone', which in turn is inevitably termed biased by critics who I suspect see the word 'British' and assume it is second rate without taking the trouble to hear it.

Did anyone else hear 'Townshend on Purcell' today on R4 at 1.30pm? Yes this was Pete Townshend of the Who discussing, quite convincingly, the influence of Purcell on his music with the Who from the early days onwards.

So we have Purcell to thank for all that was best about the Who.
We can now add that to the influence of Baroque music on Heavy Metal.

Anyone interested can of course catch up with it on the R3 website with 'listen again'.

The random recitation of the personal tastes of a self-selecting group of people isn't answering the question of if we celebrate our English composers enough.

I doubt even if the question is worth giving consideration and quite frankly Ikabod and co, I have no interest in your prejudices.

Please let's have an exchange of opinions and or information which might actually teach us something.

I am not sure what you mean by 'celebrate'. In terms of recordings English (and British) composers are well-served although individual enthusiasts always seem to find someone who is neglected. As far as live performances are concerned I think they are less fortunate.

Regarding spreading British music to a worldwide audience I am not sure what more can be done. CDs etc are widely available on the internet from numerous sellers. The British Council used to actively promote British culture around the world but its activities have been cut back over the years by successive governments, likewise the BBC World Service.

Is it not in the sphere of education that the lack of 'celebration' is so tragic? All attempts to transmit the values of classical music through the education system have been halted as far as I can tell. And yet, paradoxically, people are surrounded by music that has its basic vocabulary rooted in CM, namely film music. Surely it is not impossible to devise a pedagogy for assisting people in assembling that vocabulary into gradually more sophisticated semantic structures, until the full language of CM is acquired. I think the mistake here has always been to try and turn kids on to what the experts deem to be classics rather than music that has immediate relevance. You have to start with short pieces that tell an obvious story. I don't think English people are going to value English composers until English kids come to value classical composers of any nationality.