An Imperishable Heritage: British Choral Music from Parry to Dyson
A Study of Selected Works

The rehabilitation of British music began with Hubert Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford. Ralph Vaughan Williams assisted in its emancipation from continental models, while Gerald Finzi, Edmund Rubbra and George Dyson flourished in its independence. Stephen Town's survey of Choral Music of the English Musical Renaissance is rooted in close examination of selected works from these composers. Town collates the substantial secondary literature on these composers, and brings to bear his own study of the autograph manuscripts. The latter form an unparalleled record of compositional process and shed new light on the compositions as they have come down to us in their published and recorded form. This close study of the sources allows Town to identify for the first time instances of similarity and imitation, continuities and connections between the works.

List of Chapter Appendices, List of Tables, List of Figures, List of Music Examples, Preface, Acknowledgments, 1. Hubert Parry and The Vision of Life Reconsidered: “And we are faint with longing to hear the message clearly”, 2. Voces Clamantium and Beyond These Voices There Is Peace: The Embodiment of Parry’s Character Polarities, 3. Two Versions of The Three Holy Children by Charles Stanford: Context, Design, and Extant Scores, 4. Elegiac Ode by Charles Stanford: An Inspired Setting, Influential Exemplar, and Filial Tribute, 5. Flos Campi by Ralph Vaughan Williams: “From Raw Intimations to Homogeneous Experience”, 6. “The light we sought is shining still”: An Oxford Elegy by Ralph Vaughan Williams, 7. “So great a beauty on these English fields”: Requiem da Camera and Gerald Finzi (1901–1956), 8. “The visionary gleam”: Gerald Finzi, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Intimations of Immortality, 9. Symphony No. 9, Sinfonia Sacra by Edmund Rubbra, 10. The Morning Watch, Op. 55 by Edmund Rubbra, 11. “A home of unfading splendour”: Quo Vadis by George Dyson (1883–1964), 12. George Dyson’s Nebuchadnezzar and the Stimulus of Parry, Stanford, and Walton, Afterword, Bibliography, Index

Stephen Town is Professor of Music at Northwest Missouri State University. He is a recipient of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Fellowship and has published widely on music from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries.