An avowedly cross-disciplinary study – the author is
a cultural historian not a musicologist – this work is bound by two
dates that seek to promote and amplify its theme. Under The Royal Titles
Act of 1876 Queen Victoria was created Empress of India and 1953 is
the date of what Richards calls the last Imperial Coronation. Or, to
put it another way, roughly the span of Arnold Bax’s life. Ranging widely
through musical life he describes pageants and bands, music halls and
choirs, from high to popular culture (though significantly more of the
latter) constantly relating musical performance to its function and
meaning in an imperial society. This is not, perhaps, the place to investigate
further the themes of national inclusion, the inculcation of Protestant
values and the furtherance of Empire generally, in what Richards terms
the "ideological cluster" but it is necessary to point out
that that in this work music, whilst often viewed absolutely, is specifically
seen as a piston in the British imperial machine. Not a narrative as
such the text is more a collection of essays on given themes – Festivals,
films, hymns, Dominions’ Tours by such as Albani, Melba and Butt and
the Aldershot Tattoo amongst them. Extensive use is made of contemporary
quotation and equally of poems, lyrics and texts as well as reportage
and relevant biographical material. Whilst the rather exhausting lists
of Anthems, Marches and Hymns hinders narrative flow they do at least
support the author’s contention that Imperial thought – in its widest
sense – saturated popular culture. What will prove to be most controversial
concerns the chapter Elgar’s Empire. Sullivan having failed to
provide much of a lead, Richards holds up Elgar as the Imperial laureate
in analogue to Kipling (his earlier conflation of Tennyson and Sullivan
is forced and unconvincing). To properly establish Elgar’s credentials
it is necessary to rebut counter-claims or ambiguities. To this end
Richards launches an attack on what he sees as 1960s revisionism – specifically
on Michael Kennedy and Ken Russell and whilst discussing Caractacus
he notes that Kennedy once rewrote the final words. In a sneering
Ad Hominem passage he disdains Kennedy’s supposedly anti-imperial sensibilities
and triumphantly reinstates Elgar on the plinth of monolithic Imperialism.
His further comment that The Dream of Gerontius contains "the
idea of Empire as a vehicle for struggle and sacrifice" is so far-fetched
that it brings into question his judgement as does similarly his idea
that the concluding EDU Variation is in "full imperial idiom"
an idea he seems to have appropriated from a ridiculous Cecil Gray article
of 1924 (the same Cecil Gray who wrote so wittily that Elgar’s music
"smells so strongly of a peerage that I for one cannot stomach
it"). These examples point to a wider problem with this study;
it subsumes creativity and aspiration to a single theme. Serious composers
are reduced to Imperial engines. Elgar is solidified as a result, the
creative processes reduced to a cipher. When Richards treats less complex
issues he does so with tact but at the Imperial heart of his book, at
its centre, he has wielded a machete and cut off his own arm.
Jonathan Woolf
