John France

I am well over sixty years old - at the end of the run of baby boomers! I was born and bred in Glasgow, moving south to York in 1977. I am now retired.

I have been interested in classical music since performing as a ‘pirate’ in a Grammar School production of the Pirates of Penzance. My main interest is British Music (and has been since 1971) from Sullivan/Parry/Stanford onwards. Over the years, my interests have grown rather than changed. I am now also an enthusiast of much ‘serial’ music, including Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg as well as their British counterparts, Lutyens and Searle. The so-called Cheltenham Composers are of interest to me.

I am an enthusiast of so-called ‘light’ music, G&S and still enjoy the rock and pop music of my generation (Led Zeppelin, Yes & of course the Fab Four).

My favourite composers change by the hour! But must include Finzi, Moeran, Bowen, Scott, Ireland, Bax, Alwyn and Whitlock. But not forgetting Sorabji, Messiaen and Rachmaninov. 

I play the piano for my own pleasure (about Grade 6) and have been an organist in earlier days.
 
I am also interested in Ecclesiology (Very High Church!! & and, perhaps contrarily, am a member of the Prayer Book Society), railways and trams (but not an anorak!) and I try to read as widely as possible. I like Scottish literature and still read a bit of Latin now and again!

I enjoy Real Ale, and Lancashire Cheese from Garstang. My favourite place in the UK is Morecambe Bay. I love the British countryside – and have always wanted to ‘Go West, Boy. Go west’. A.E. Housman a huge influence on my aesthetic. But also, The Garden of Fand'.

Have spent most of my life looking for the ‘Land of Lost Content’ and only occasionally glimpsed it…somewhere in…???

In fact that is what I now call my British Music Blog - The Land of Lost Content - British Music Blog