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Members of the second generation of the English Musical Renaissance have long been associated with a break from the Teutonic influence of their predecessors to create a musical idiom that is quintessentially English. Scholarship has long looked at these composers, who include those born between Vaughan Williams and Moeran, in isolation from the artistic movements and political and social issues of Europe, when in fact they were part of them. This thesis places these composers within these currents by discussing them as part of England’s Lost Generation and within the historical contexts of Europe in the early twentieth century. Though the Lost Generation is often associated with the post-war period, I propose that the phenomenon existed prior to World War I by focussing on England’s aesthetic lostness in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. The Lost Generation of composers inherited a musical culture that had been aesthetically lost for two hundred years and rebelled against it to define a musical idiom that was quintessentially English. After placing the second generation of the English Musical Renaissance within its historical contexts, I call into question previous discussions on English music that define it according to single definitions largely associated with the Pastoral School or the Folk School. Instead, I propose that the music of this generation was stylistically diverse while simultaneously a manifestation of common cultural influences, ultimately rooted in the goal of creating a sense of community. To support this claim, I discuss the various stylistic techniques of individual composers within their collective cultural influences, including the music of England’s past, the landscape, and English literature. Furthermore, I explore the role of musical community, both as a central goal in the creation of a national idiom and as a source of compositional inspiration. By examining the influences and compositional styles of these composers, I conclude that the music of this generation broke from Continental influences by developing a national idiom that was both stylistically unique to the individual composer and tied to common cultural influences that were rooted in the goal of creating a musical community within England. . / Graduate

British musical style changed dramatically after 1880 primarily due to factors which may be subsumed under the general heading of nationalism. This change from an essentially Germanic style has been termed the British musical renaissance by many writers on the subject. Within this new musical language, several distinctive substyles arose. One of these, British pastoral style, has been alluded to by Frank Howes and others, but these allusions do not contribute to an understanding of the works purportedly belonging to that style. It is the purpose of this study to define British pastoral style and examine its relation to the British musical renaissance. The method employed for defining style will be that of Jan LaRue's as described in his Guidelines for Style Analysis. What is British pastoral style? Judging from the literature, British pastoral style is a type of British music written between 1900 and 1950 which evokes pastoral images, especially those associated with the British landscape. A stylistic analysis of selected works will define British pastoral style through enumeration and discussion of the style's musical constituents. A more refined definition of British pastoral style is achieved by an in-depth analysis of E. J. Moeran's Fantasy Quartet, which represents a large portion of British pastoral music, that is, works featuring the oboe. Finally, an examination of British pastoral style's relation to the British musical renaissance will reveal reasons for this particular manifestation of British musical style.