Exactly as you say!! There is no reason to think that the English were
not as 'musical' as anybody else. And given the enormous economic
infrastructure that had developed around the musical industry, and the
stuff available to the 'consumer', why was there no commensurable
towering musical talent? Italy was a musical backwater in the 19c in
terms of its institutional structures, yet it produced a Rossini and a
Verdi and later a Puccini - all operatic but who's quibbling? This stuff
is still making record companies millions! as well as producing the
musicians to perform them. What piece of English music prior to the
Beatles has made international recording history? Don't anybody say
Gilbert and Sullivan!! It has to be said that Gilbert and Sullivan, like
the Beggar's Opera, is a literary, rather than a musical phenomenon.
Sullivan was a very gifted composer who made no impact whatsoever upon
musical history. If Gilbert hadn't come along, he would have been, not
another Brahms, but another nobody, like Sterndale Bennett. Tell me I'm
wrong. :)
Ann Beedell
Humanities
Griffith University, Q. Australia. 4111
A.Beedell@hum.gu.edu.au