The Development of Music in England

For her recent presentation Club member Janet Presley illustrated the development of music in England. Starting a thousand years ago, she gave an overview of the Medieval period followed by pieces written by composers of that time. This led in turn to the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods up to 100 years ago.

At that time some music critics regarded England as a ‘land without music’, effectively playing second fiddle to Europe, but after listening to a burgeoning music from many, often little known composers we realised this was not the case.

However, with the arrival of Vaughan Williams, Holst, Elgar and others we became a leader in world music and its later developments. As we listened to Janet’s selections, it was evident that the quality of English music had been a well kept but enjoyable secret .