Music of the United Kingdom refers to all forms of music associated with the United Kingdom and its people since its formation in 1707.[1] It is informed by the History of the United Kingdom as a union of four countries, each with their own musical traditions including Church music, court and popular music that we now term folk music. Church music and religious music in general had been profoundly affected by the Reformation from the sixteenth century, which curtailed many of the events associated with such music and forced the development of a distinctive national music of worship and belief. In contrast court music, although having many unique elements remained much more integrated into wider European culture, often drawing on composers born in continental Europe as it developed into modern classical music. It began to obtain clear national identities in the components of the United Kingdom towards the end of the nineteenth century, producing many composers and musicians of note and drawing on the folk tradition. Folk music flourished until the era of industrialisation when it began to be replaced by new forms of popular music, including Music hall and brass bands. Realisation of this led to two folk revivals, one in the later nineteenth century and the other in the mid-twentieth, which kept folk music as an important sub-culture within society. In the early twentieth century American influences became most dominant in popular music, with young performers producing their own versions of American music, including rock n' roll from the late 1950s and developing a parallel music scene. This led to the explosion of the 'British Invasion' of America of the early 1960s, spearheaded by The Beatles, from which point rock music and popular music in general became something of an Anglo-American collaboration, with movements on one side of the ocean being exported to the other, where they tended to be adapted and turned into new movements, only to be exported back again. As a result of these factors the United Kingdom has remained a major source of musical innovation and participation in the modern era.
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Early Music
Music in the British Isles, from the earliest recorded times until the Baroque and the rise of recognisably modern classical music, was a diverse and rich culture, including sacred and secular music and ranging from the popular to the elite.[2] Each of the major nations of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales retained unique forms of music and of instrumentation, but British music was highly influenced by continental developments, while British composers made an important contribution to many of the major movements in early music in Europe, including the polyphony of the Ars Nova and laid some of the foundations of later national and international classical music.[3] Musicians from the British Isles also developed some distinctive forms of music, including Celtic chant, the Contenance Angloise, the rota, polyphonic votive antiphons and the carol in the medieval era and English madrigals, lute ayres and masques in the Renaissance era, which led particularly to English language opera developed in the early Baroque period of the later seventeenth century.[4]
Folk music
Each of the four countries of the United Kingdom has its own diverse and distinctive folk music forms. In addition, there are numerous distinct and semi-distinct folk traditions brought by immigrants from Jamaica, India, the Commonwealth and other parts of the world.
English folk music
England has a long and diverse history of folk music dating back at least to the medieval period and including many forms of music, song and dance. Through two periods of revival from the late nineteenth century much of the tradition has been preserved and continues to be practiced. It led to the creation of a number of fusions with other forms of music that produced sub-genres such as electric folk, folk punk and folk metal and continues to thrive nationally and in regional scenes, particularly in areas such as Northumbria and Cornwall.
Northern Irish music
Northern Ireland (along with the Republic of Ireland) has vibrant folk traditions. The popularity of traditional instruments such as fiddles has remained throughout the centuries even as analogues in Great Britain died out. Perhaps the most famous modern musician influenced by folk tradition is Van Morrison.
Scottish folk music
Scottish folk music includes many kinds of songs, including ballads and laments, sung by a single singer with accompaniment by bagpipes, fiddles or harps. Traditional dances include waltzes, reels, strathspeys and jigs. Alongside the other areas of the United Kingdom, Scotland underwent a roots revival in the 1960s. Cathy-Ann McPhee and Jeannie Robertson were the heroes of this revival, which inspired some revolutions in band formats by groups like The Clutha, The Whistlebinkies, The Boys of the Lough and the Incredible String Band.
Welsh folk music
Wales is a Celtic country that features folk music played at twmpathau (communal dances) and gwyl werin (music festivals). Welsh music also includes male voice choirs and songs accompanied by a harp. Having long been subordinate to English culture, Welsh musicians in the late 20th century had to reconstruct traditional music when a roots revival began. This revival began in the late 1970s and achieved some mainstream success in the UK in the 80s with performers like Robin Huw Bowen, Moniars and Gwerinos.
Classical music
The term Classical music in the sense of formally composed and written music of chamber, concert and church type as distinct from popular, traditional, or folk music emerged in the early nineteenth century, not long after the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland came into existence in 1801. Inheriting the European classical forms of the eighteenth century (above all, in Britain, from the example of Handel), patronage and the academy and university establishment of musical performance and training in the United Kingdom during the nineteenth century saw a great expansion. The traditions of composition and performance centred in the United Kingdom, including the various cultural strands drawn from its different provinces, have continued to evolve in distinctive ways through the work of many famous composers. Key composers include Arthur Sullivan, Gustav Holst, Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten.
Early British popular music
In the sense of commercial music enjoyed by the people, British popular music can be seen to originate in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the arrival of the broadside ballad, which were sold cheaply and in great numbers until the nineteenth century.[5] Further technological, economic and social changes led to new forms of music in the nineteenth century, including the brass band, which produced a popular and communal form of classical music.[6] Similarly, the Music hall sprang up to cater for the entertainment of new urban societies, adapting existing forms of music to produce popular songs and acts.[7] In the 1930s the influence of American Jazz led to the creation of British dance bands, who provided a social and popular music that began to dominate social occasions and the radio airwaves.[8]
Modern British popular music
Forms of popular music, including folk music, jazz, pop and rock music, have particularly flourished in Britain since the twentieth century. Britain, it has been argued, has had an impact on popular music disproportionate to its size, partly due to its linguistic and cultural links with many countries, particularly the United States, but also a capacity for invention, innovation and fusion, which as led to the development of, or participation in, many of the major trends in popular music.[9] This is particularly true since the early 1960s when the British Invasion led by the Beatles, helped to secure British performers a major place in development of pop and rock music, which has been revisited at various times, with genres originating in or being radically developed by British musicians, including: blues rock, heavy metal music, progressive rock, punk rock, electric folk, folk punk, acid jazz, drum and bass, grime and Britpop.
Timeline of music of the United Kingdom
See also
Notes
- ^ Life in the United Kingdom Advisory Group, Great Britain. Home Office, Life in the United Kingdom: a journey to citizenship The Stationery Office, 2nd edn., 2007), p. 17 [at http://books.google.com/books?id=2u8rD6F-yg0C&pg=PT14&dq=act+of+union+1707+great+britain&lr=&as_brr=3&ei=IWySSoOFFY6CyQSknfjABw#v=onepage&q=&f=false].
- ^ R. McKitterick, C. T. Allmand, T. Reuter, D. Abulafia, P. Fouracre, J. Simon, C. Riley-Smith, M. Jones, eds, The New Cambridge Medieval History: C. 1415- C. 1500 (Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 319.
- ^ W. Lovelock, A Concise History of Music (Frederick Ungar, 1953), p. 57.
- ^ R. H. Fritze and W. Baxter Robison, Historical dictionary of late medieval England, 1272-1485 (Greenwood, 2002), p. 363; G. H. Cowling, Music on the Shakespearian Stage (Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 6.
- ^ B. Capp, ‘Popular literature’, in B. Reay, ed., Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England (Routledge, 1985), p. 199.
- ^ T. Herbert, The British Brass Band: a Musical and Social History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 4-5.
- ^ Diana Howard London Theatres and Music Halls 1850-1950 (1970).
- ^ C. Parsonage, The evolution of jazz in Britain, 1880-1935 (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2005), pp. 197-200.
- ^ P. Childs, M. Storry, Encyclopedia of contemporary British culture (London: Taylor & Francis, 1999), p. 412.
References
- Mthembu-Salter, Gregory and Peter Dalton. "Lovers and Poets -- Babylon Sounds". 2000. In Broughton, Simon and Ellingham, Mark with McConnachie, James and Duane, Orla (Ed.), World Music, Vol. 2: Latin & North America, Caribbean, India, Asia and Pacific, pp 457-462. Rough Guides Ltd, Penguin Books. ISBN 1-85828-636-0
- Ritu, DJ. "One Way Ticket to British Asia". 2000. In Broughton, Simon and Ellingham, Mark with McConnachie, James and Duane, Orla (Ed.), World Music, Vol. 1: Africa, Europe and the Middle East, pp 83-90. Rough Guides Ltd, Penguin Books. ISBN 1-85828-636-0
External links
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