Abstract
The familiar adage directs us not to judge a book by its cover, but the beautiful cover illustration of the English coastline from a 1950s British Railways poster is undoubtedly indicative of the pleasures which lie within The Sea in the British Musical Imagination. In the Acknowledgements, the editors express surprise that ‘considering the degree to which British culture has been shaped by the sea throughout its history, it seemed nearly impossible that no one had bothered to take up the topic’ (p. xviii). Indeed, this volume has undeniable potential to advance our understanding of the cultural impact of British maritime history.
The book is organised in three sections: The Sea as Geography, The Sea as Profession and The Sea as Metaphor. Although these themes are neatly packaged within a thought-provoking introduction (stemming from an insightful analysis of the cultural importance of the Shipping Forecast on BBC Radio 4), their articulation through the chapters was perhaps a little less clear and consistent. To an extent this is inevitable in an edited volume, but actually a broad contextualising piece scoping out the extent and nature of the impact of the sea on British music would have been genuinely useful, given that this is the first major scholarly project in this area. In addition, this would have helped the reader to make the most of the case studies of particular works and understand how they related to the three themes. So, for example, Jennifer Oates includes a useful list of British sea-inspired works from the early twentieth century as the context for her essay on Bantock’s Hebridean Symphony (p. 32). Some of these works are picked up elsewhere in the volume, but many others are not. Likewise, the arguments in Christopher Scheer’s excellent chapter critiquing Benjamin Britten’s relationship with the sea would have been opened up to a wider readership if key works (like the opera Peter Grimes) had been introduced early on.
Along similar lines, shanties and related work songs are curiously absent throughout much of the volume, and would have provided a good foundation for Frances Wilkins’ fascinating chapter on gospel singing of Scottish fishermen over maritime radio as an accompaniment to seafaring work in the mid-twentieth century. The continuation of maritime work songs on land (often as an oral tradition via folk collectors and performers) evidences their continued influence on British perceptions of the sea and inclusion of further material of this type could have enriched the content. Indeed, Wilkins’ chapter provided insights into the profound relationships between music and seafaring which perhaps stretched the ‘imaginary’ remit of this particular publication in one particular direction, but which provided a welcome compliment to the studies of musical works.
There are several chapters in the volume that would be of particular use and relevance for maritime historians. Alyson McLamore considers maritime music and national identity in the eighteenth century, and a pair of chapters by Amanda Eubanks Winkler and James Brooks Kuykendall examine the portrayal of the nautical profession in music. Indeed, these three chapters would have worked rather nicely as a section covering over three centuries of rich musical representation of seafaring which undoubtedly influenced public perceptions (particularly of sailors), together providing a broad sweep to compliment the close readings of particular songs. Many of the essays are musical-analytical in nature, and as such might seem to have rather more limited relevance for maritime historians. However, consideration of these artistic responses can undoubtedly enrich our understanding of Britain as an island, maritime nation, and are valuable as contributions towards the development of social and cultural aspects of maritime history. Byron Adam’s essay on Frank Bridge’s evocative Lament explores just such a response – in this case to the torpedoing of the Lusitania in the First World War. Adams’ thorough and beautifully written exploration of both the micro- and macro-context for this compositional response provides an excellent illustration of the symbiosis between music and the maritime. Scheer’s aforementioned chapter on Benjamin Britten’s oft-stated affinity with the sea via his residence in Aldeburgh on the Sussex coast contributes to key debates around the cultural heritage of maritime places in which preservation and regeneration compete in their claims for authenticity. Although readers without a musical background may struggle with the detail of some of the analytical essays in the final section, these are uniformly well-written, convincingly framed through the specific lens of the sea, and closely linked with historical context. This enables the authors to offer new perspectives on established works and understanding of ways in which the sea has impacted upon British musical culture. I would certainly encourage those who might not read musical notation to listen to recordings of the works in question alongside reading those chapters.
The perspective of the cover illustration, looking down and out to the sea from the safety of the land, is also indicative of the perspective on the sea addressed by the majority of the contributors. As such, the ‘British musical imagination’ often seemed to equate to a British composer’s musical imagination. This could have been broadened through the incorporation of studies of relevant musical material from popular and folk traditions which are variously and freely adopted and adapted by a wider constituency of musicians and audiences to express national identity, including in relation to the sea. Moreover, the concept of a ‘British musical imagination’ with reference to the sea is perhaps especially relevant for those many Britons without direct experience seafaring, who are perhaps resident in land-locked locations, and whose maritime-musical imagination might be fired by Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture (which is given rather short shrift despite – or because of – its popularity), learning a shanty at school or, indeed, an idle encounter with the Shipping Forecast. This idea is tantalisingly implied by the editors in the introduction (‘the sea as a site of limitless evanescent meanings, ones that lend themselves to being perceived and transformed by individuals in pursuit of artistic expression’ (p. 6)), but could have been explored more rigorously with respect to the reception, listening and performances of a wider public.
However, these reservations do not impact on my overall assessment that this is a splendid volume of thoughtful work which undoubtedly enriches the already substantive body of work on British music and identity, but moreover encourages cross-fertilisation of music and maritime history which is key to understanding the cultural importance of the sea in Britain and, indeed, other island nations.