Rutland Boughton

Rutland Boughton (born January 23, 1878 in Aylesbury ( Buckinghamshire ), † January 25, 1960 in London ) was an English composer.

Life

Boughton was born the son of a merchant in simple circumstances. Although he showed musical talent at an early age, no appropriate training was possible for financial reasons. In 1892 he joined a London concert agency as an apprentice. As an autodidact, he attracted attention with his compositions and benefited from a scholarship that enabled him to study at the Royal College of Music in London with Charles Villiers Stanford and Henry Walford Davies (1869–1941) from 1898 to 1901 .

From 1902 to 1904 Boughton worked at the Haymarket Theater . In 1905 he received a position at the Midland Institute of Music in Birmingham , which was directed by Granville Bantock . Together with the writer Reginald Buckley , he campaigned for a “British Bayreuth” with the work The Music Drama of the Future , which should be based on cooperation according to socialist principles. In 1914 he founded the Glastonbury Festival with the premiere of the opera The Immortal Hour . These should mainly focus on musical dramas from the world around King Arthur , who according to legend is buried there. In 1922 The Immortal Hour had its London premiere with great success. In 1926 his festival ensemble was dissolved. Boughton retired to a small farm in Gloucestershire in 1927 and made a living as a farmer. He also composed, was politically active and conducted the London Labor Choral Union . Attempts to initiate new festivals in Stroud in 1934 and in Bath in 1935 were unsuccessful.

plant

Boughton's music is melodious and follows the tonal tradition of late English Romanticism; occasional echoes of Edward Elgar can be felt.

Opera was at the center of Boughton's work. In doing so, he oriented himself towards Richard Wagner , but expanded the choir's part and described his stage works as "Choral Dramas". Between 1908 and 1945 he dealt with a cycle of five musical dramas about the Arthurian legend . In 1909 the first opera The Birth of Arthur or Uther and Igraine was completed. The second part followed in 1916 with The Round Table , which premiered in Glastonbury in 1916 as the first work in the cycle. Eighteen years later, the third part, The Lily Maid, was performed; the last two parts, Galahad and Avalon , were written in 1943-45, but Boughton never saw their premiere.

In addition, Boughton wrote three symphonies (the first he later withdrew), solo concerts, chamber music, choral works and songs.

Discography

• 1983 'The immortal hour' (Label Hyperion Records )
• 1988 3rd symphony + concert for oboe and strings (the same recording was later released as a CD by the second label 'Helios').
• 2000 Concerto for String Orchestra + Concerto for Flute and Strings in D major + Aylesbury Games + 3 folk dances (Hyperion 3220216)
• 2010/11: 'The Queen of Cornwall' ( Dutton 4951634, composed 1923-24)

More CDs see here:

Others

Boughton's biographer Michael Hurd (* 1928) died in 2006.

literature

• Meinhard Saremba: Elgar, Britten & Co. A history of British music in twelve portraits. Zurich / St. Gallen, M&T Verlag, 1994. ISBN 3-7265-6029-7

Web links

• The Rutland Boughton Music Trust

Individual evidence

1. ↑ No. 5425295, still available (as of 2011)
2. ↑ Details ( Memento of the original from April 19, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ The Rutland Boughton Music Trust ( Memento of the original from July 22, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ www.rutlandboughtonmusictrust.org.uk  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.