Thesis (M.M.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2999-01-01

This thesis involves a comprehensive study of the letters written by Philip Heseltine (Peter Warlock) to Colin Taylor from 1911 to 1929. Warlock first came into contact with Taylor at Eton in 1908 when he studied the piano with him as a schoolboy. Through Taylor's imaginative teaching during the next four years Warlock's interest in and understanding of music, particularly modern music, grew and matured. At the same time a strong bond of friendship developed between the two men and continued until Warlock's early death in 1930. This is clearly illustrated in the surviving 87 letters. Warlock was a great letter writer and over a thousand of them have been preserved, mostly in the British Library. His letters to Taylor have a special significance in that they were written during the entire period of his adult life, most of them during the early formative and creative years. They cover a wide range of topics including the influential friendships with the composers Frederick Delius and Bernard van Dieren, contemporary British and foreign music and his own work as a composer, writer, and scholar. They also give us many important insights into his life and personality, written as they are with rare candour and humour. In this thesis each letter has been carefully and systematically studied and the resulting information used to augment and expand the existing knowledge of Warlock's life and personality, his friendship with Taylor, his music and writings. Because of the wide field which the life and works of Peter Warlock cover, this study has been limited to subjects arising out of the correspondence with Taylor. Where necessary, additional information has been interpolated from other sources, mainly to give a sense of continuity and to explain references which might otherwise seem obscure. For a detailed study of Warlock's music readers are referred to Ian Copley's book, The Music of Peter Warlock, (Dennis Dobson, London, 1979). A definitive biography has yet to be written.

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