This thesis surveys all the found British settings of A. E. Housman's A
Shropshire Lad (1896) but concentrates on the period after 1940, which, the author
believes, has not previously received critical attention. A new study is timely
especially because of a renewed interest among composers in the poet's highly
influential lyric collection. The author found about 110 British composers with about
340 settings of individual poems not listed in previous Shropshire Lad catalogues.
This number adds more than fifty per cent to the known repertoire.
The search was not restricted to art song; it found, in addition, multi-voice
settings, settings in popular styles and non-vocal music. Largely because of the work
of broadly trained musicians, there is now a much wider range of medium, style and
compositional technique applied to A Shropshire Lad. There are also new ways in
which words and music relate. Different catalogues in the thesis list settings according
to period, genre, poem and composer.
The author hopes to broaden the British canon of Shropshire Lad music,
which, despite recent commissions and competitions, is still mostly limited to the
major composers of the English musical renaissance (the early decades of the
twentieth century). Accordingly, the catalogues let performers know how to obtain the
settings.
In preliminary chapters, the thesis attempts a literary examination of A
Shropshire Lad and reviews the already-researched pre-Second World War settings. It
then divides the post-1940 period into two parts–a Decline (to c.1980) and a
Renewal (since c.1980)–and surveys them. The compositions of this period are
placed in three tonal-stylistic streams of development: a mainstream tonal with ultraconservative
and atonal tributaries. Then follow detailed literary-musical analyses of post-1940 songs, song cycles, collaborative sets, and multi-voice settings. A final
summary draws together the conclusions of the individual chapters, summarizes and
evaluates the achievement of the post-1940 composers, and suggests how further
research might be carried out. / Art History, Visucal Arts and Music / D. Litt. et Phil. (Musicology)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:unisa/oai:uir.unisa.ac.za:10500/2285 |
| Date | 31 January 2008 |
| Creators | Whittingham, Kevin Robert |
| Contributors | Gregory, E.D. (Prof.), Geldenhuys, Daniel Gerhardus, 1948- |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (vii, 509 leaves : music) |
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