This collection of essays, as described by its editors, is the first scholarly work to document the musical life of English composer Joseph Holbrooke (1878–1958). It is in fact the first sustained discussion of Holbrooke since a largely promotional biography by George Lowe was published in 1920, and an anthology of Various Appreciations by Many Authors in 1937 was edited by the composer himself.Footnote ¹ The few musical analyses dedicated to Holbrooke include two brief studies by Arthur Eaglefield Hull in 1919 and a 1994 article by Anne-Marie Forbes, one of the present volume’s editors, on the composer’s operatic cycle The Cauldron of Annwn.

The purposes of this book are fourfold: to place Holbrooke in historical context the better to evaluate his work as a composer; to consider Holbrooke in various extra-musical contexts such as his relationship to Celticism, mass culture and musical nationalism; to be a resource for students, performers and artistic directors by correcting factual errors found in previous sources of information about Holbrooke; and finally, to publish for the first time a comprehensive catalogue of Holbrooke’s works as well as a discography.

To accomplish these aims, editors Paul Watt and Anne-Marie Forbes have marshalled the small network of scholars currently working on Holbrooke. There are eight chapters by individual contributors, including one by each editor respectively. The editors also co-wrote the introductory chapter. All owe a debt to Rob Barnett, long-time classical editor of the MusicWeb International website.Footnote ² Though not an academic, Barnett has spent years piecing together an accurate chronology of Holbrooke’s life and works as well as assembling a comprehensive list of Holbrooke’s compositions; these two compendiums bookend this volume. Their publication largely fulfils the editors’ goal of creating a source of basic information for future work on this composer. The discography itself already is out of date as more recordings of Holbrooke’s works appear.

The chapters fall into two groups: those that place Holbrooke further in context and those that explore specific aspects of his music. Thus, the first chapter is titled ‘Situating Holbrooke in British Musical History’. Here Watt and Forbes address Holbrooke’s difficult reception history, chronicling the attitudes of his contemporaries as well as more recent scholarly judgments. Almost all have been negative. The editors describe most of the existing literature on Holbrooke as ‘ambivalent and dismissive’ (p. 2). Even Holbrooke’s defenders seemed to agree with Sydney Grew, a contemporary who claimed that his music would do better in the world ‘when he is no longer in it to interfere’ (p. 3). Watt and Forbes use the remainder of the chapter to introduce the other contributors. It is unfortunate that their brief but dense discussion of Holbrooke’s reception – lasting only two pages – is not unpacked further. Their effort nevertheless successfully illuminates the vagrant fortunes of a composer once well received but later judged to be ‘verbose and derivative’ (p. 1).

Chapter Two, by Rob Barnett, fleshes out Holbrooke’s biography. Its placement in the collection was designed to alleviate the need for other contributors to provide biographical background in later chapters. Though Barnett describes it as merely a ‘compressed sketch’ (p. 10) of an eventful life, this chapter fulfils its purpose admirably, particularly when paired with the comprehensive timeline of Holbrooke’s life and works. Though Holbrooke lacks a standard life and works biography, to write one would necessitate a book as large as the present volume. In these circumstances an outline suffices.

On the subject of Holbrooke’s ‘cantankerous personality’ (p. 3), Chapter Three by David Craik considers Holbrooke’s long friendship with Granville Bantock (1868–1946). Bantock is another British composer being rediscovered today, one who provided both financial and emotional help to many colleagues including Joseph Holbrooke, Havergal Brian and Rutland Boughton. All three could prove very self-interested in their relationships; nevertheless, Craik emphasizes the ‘affectionate and jocular’ (p. 25) nature of Holbrooke’s friendship with Bantock. Although acknowledging Bantock’s paternal as well as fraternal role in Holbrooke’s life, Craik concludes that the older man was ‘a bastion of unconditional support’ (p. 23) for the often-frustrated Holbrooke in his quest for official recognition as a composer. The only disappointment here is again the chapter’s short length relative to the abundance of its sources. Craik notes a collection of 150 letters from Holbrooke to Bantock alone. Such a wealth of correspondence could provide enough material for its own book on the lines of Lewis Foreman’s anthology From Parry to Britten: British Music in Letters 1900–1945 if interest in these two composers continues to grow.Footnote ³

Chapter Four considers Holbrooke’s relationship with another supporter, his aristocratic patron Thomas Evelyn Ellis, eighth Lord Howard de Walden. Editor Anne-Marie Forbes views this relationship though the lens of the ‘Celtic enthusiasm’ (p. 41) that gripped the arts in England during the early twentieth century. She identifies three strains of this Celticism: Irish, Scottish and Welsh, respectively. Forbes then traces Holbrooke’s many works reflecting Welsh landscape, literature and mythology to his long friendship with Ellis, who was of Welsh descent, and who actively promoted Welsh culture. She gives evidence from the genesis of two major compositions, the Piano Concerto No. 1 The Song of Gywn ap Nudd and the operatic cycle The Cauldron of Annwn. Both use literary works by Ellis as foundations: a poem for the former and a stage play for the latter. Ellis became the librettist for all three members of Holbrooke’s operatic trilogy. Both Gwyn ap Nudd and the Cauldron of Annwn draw from the Mabinogion, compendium of Welsh legend and mythology. Full of biographical, musical and literary detail, Forbes’s argument ably grounds her assertion that Holbrooke’s ‘Welsh enthusiasm’ (p. 43) was due in large part to his relationship with Ellis in the role of composer to a ‘modern Welsh bard’. (p. 56)

Chapter Five, by Paul Hopwood, moves from large-scale works to chamber music. Hopwood argues the neglect of Holbrooke’s chamber music within his own lifetime was due to the ‘specter of mass culture’ (p. 61). What frightened were stylistic allusions to the palm court orchestra or music hall. Hopwood contends this ‘whiff of something popular’ (p. 88) in Holbrooke’s chamber music drove critics, anxious to protect a canon of high-art masterpieces, to denigrate Holbrooke’s chamber music. Such a dismissal allowed critics to exclude works bearing any stamp of consumer culture from the realm of serious art. Hopwood goes into great analytical detail to support his conclusions; at 32 pages this is the second longest chapter, with many musical examples from Holbrooke’s ‘Fantasie’ String Quartet and Second Clarinet Quintet.

Chapter Six returns to the genre of opera. Rather than the large-scale Cauldron of Annwn trilogy, however, Paul Rodmell discusses two early short operas by Holbrooke, Pierrot and Pierrette (1908) and The Enchanted Garden (1915). He situates these within the ‘almost exclusively commercial’ (p. 94) world of English music in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as chamber-sized operas designed for the provincial market of small touring opera companies.

Rodmell discusses the scenario, libretto and music of each in detail, noting particularly Holbrooke’s adaptability to less-than-favourable artistic conditions – poorly written libretti, stultifying scenarios and concessions to star performers – in pursuit of commercial success. Rodmell also well articulates Holbrooke’s ambitious approach to the genre by highlighting the fact that Pierrot, The Enchanted Garden, and the first two operas of the Cauldron of Annwn were all written within the same six-year period. Whatever shortcomings are found within individual works, Rodmell argues, such adaptability displays Holbrooke’s ‘manifest talent’ (p. 111) as a composer. The chapter includes extensive passages of musical analysis and score examples from both chamber operas. Rodmell’s persuasive argument displays wide knowledge of the English operatic world at the turn of the twentieth century, drawing on his earlier monograph Opera in the British Isles, 1875–1918.Footnote ⁴

Chapter Seven contains the most ambitious reading of a Holbrooke score. Michael Allis, who has explored the literary inspirations of composers such as Granville Bantock and Hubert Parry, here discusses Holbrooke’s affinity for the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Allis draws out this affinity by connecting Holbrooke’s early tone poem The Raven with the psychological concept of the uncanny. In order to ‘reformulate’ (p. 117) Poe’s eponymous poem as a piece of orchestral music, Allis demonstrates, Holbrooke relied upon various strategies to replicate Poe’s own uncanny elements. These strategies centred on unusual orchestration, dissonant harmonies, compulsive repetition and distorted formal structures. Allis’s command of cultural and musical detail is impressive, as he traces the wider English interest in Poe, contemporary reformulations of Poe in other artistic mediums, the formulation of the uncanny as a category in psychoanalysis and Holbrooke’s ability to create the ‘musical uncanny’ (p. 117) in The Raven.

The final chapter considers Holbrooke as the ‘musical patriot’ of the book’s subtitle. Editor Paul Watt uses Holbrooke’s 1925 prose study Contemporary British Composers Footnote ⁵ as a lens through which to view competing visions of English artistic nationalism. Watt notes that despite blaming ‘the public, the critics, and British musical culture’ (p. 157) for his artistic misfortunes, Holbrooke believed even his opponents ought to share his ‘nationalist proclivities’ and support English composers as their ‘rightful and civic duty’ (p. 157). Holbrooke’s opposition was personified in his fiercest critic and one-time friend Ernest Newman. As Newman came to disagree with Holbrooke’s narrow and often inconsistent vision of ‘native music’ (p. 155) the two quarrelled in print for the remainder of their careers. Watt reads Holbrooke’s study, a highly subjective evaluation of composers such as Elgar, Bantock, Vaughan Williams, Bax and Holst, as an attempt to create a sense of national musical identity on Holbrooke’s own terms. Watt’s exploration of the ideology behind Holbrooke’s strident calls for support of ‘native music’ gives insight into a difficult topic, one in which Holbrooke can seem not merely patriotic but xenophobic. This will be an especially rich area for future scholarship to pursue.

The rediscovery of British music from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century continues apace. Formerly consigned to oblivion, composers like Holbrooke are now gathering weight in musicological studies. This collection is invaluable to such a reappraisal. Watt and Forbes remind readers it is necessarily selective in content as ‘research on Holbrooke is in its infancy’, lacking a ‘critical, scholarly mass’ (p. 4). Yet if an extended network of scholarship on Holbrooke and other English Romantic composers is to grow, this is the kind of volume that will help to seed it. The level of commitment of the project as a whole more than balances any shortcomings in individual chapters. Indeed, unexplored opportunities, variant readings of analyses or different conclusions should be welcomed as an opportunity for further research and discussion as the life and music of Joseph Holbrooke makes its way ‘out of the shadows of history’ (p. 4) and back into the light of day.