Covering works by popular figures like Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst as well as less familiar English composers, Eric Saylor's pioneering book examines pastoral music's critical, theoretical, and stylistic foundations alongside its creative manifestations in the contexts of Arcadia, war, landscape, and the Utopian imagination. As Saylor shows, pastoral music adapted and transformed established musical and aesthetic conventions that reflected the experiences of British composers and audiences during the early twentieth century. By approaching pastoral music as a cultural phenomenon dependent on time and place, Saylor forcefully challenges the body of critical opinion that has long dismissed it as antiquated, insular, and reactionary.| Cover Title Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1. What Is Pastoralism? 2. Arcadia 3. War 4. Landscape 5. Utopia Afterword Notes Bibliography Index Author | "This is a darn fine book, well-written and well-researched. " —Journal of Musicological Research
"With Eric Saylor's welcome reassessment of style, mode, and genre in English Pastoral Music, the relegation of the study of pastoralism in (English) music to the margins of scholarly discourse appears to be behind us." —Notes
"Even more fascinating than an interview can convey; it's a book very much worth reading for yourself."—Iowa Public Radio
|Eric Saylor is a professor of musicology at Drake University. He coedited Blackness in Opera and The Sea in the British Musical Imagination.