British Classical Music: The Land of Lost Content

‘Smart, well-written and knowledgeable’ – Saga Magazine

Tuesday, 9 December 2025

Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel: Prelude

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Until the early seventies, I genuinely thought Engelbert Humperdinck was just one person - the singer behind “Release Me” and other swooning...
Saturday, 6 December 2025

Early One Morning in Kensington: Music for flute and piano

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More than fifty years ago, when I fondly and mistakenly imagined that I might become a composer, I found a remarkable set of books by Ebenez...
Wednesday, 3 December 2025

Minor Masterpieces of Organ Music No.3: Louis Vierne’s Berceuse

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Most readers of this journal will have played on a harmonium at some stage in their career. If, like me, you have not been overimpressed by ...
Sunday, 30 November 2025

Heathcote Statham: Fantasia on ‘Veni Emmanuel’ for organ

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Advent Sunday is the “official” start of the Church Year. To be sure, Christmas merchandise has been available in the shops since mid-Septem...
Thursday, 27 November 2025

Jack Strachey’s Shaftsbury Avenue

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In 1948, London’s Shaftesbury Avenue, was three years into peace. The war may have ended, but its legacy lingered in the soot-streaked façad...
Monday, 24 November 2025

Ralph Vaughan Williams: Mantegna – Hymnody and Beyond

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Albion Records never cease to amaze me with their imaginative releases of music written or inspired by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The present r...
Friday, 21 November 2025

Arnold Bax: Peter Pan of Music Part II

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Completed by D.C. Parker in Glasgow, on 1 April 1922, the following word portrait was published in Musical America, 22 April 1922, p.5. Of ...
Tuesday, 18 November 2025

Arnold Bax: Peter Pan of Music Part I

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During the 1920s, the music writer D.C. Parker was known professionally as Douglas Charles Parker, a distinguished music critic for the Even...
Saturday, 15 November 2025

Francis Edward Bache: Piano Concerto in E major op.18 (1851)

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Francis Edward Bache (1833-1858) was a pupil of William Sterndale Bennett. These two composers have quite different biographies but were sim...
Wednesday, 12 November 2025

Nocturnes and Nerves: Debussy’s Curious Afternoon in London

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In a recent post, I gave J.C. Squire’s account of a performance of Claude Debussy’s Nocturnes conducted by him on 27 February 1909. This rec...
Sunday, 9 November 2025

William Sterndale Bennett: Piano Concerto No.4 (1838)

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For far too long it has been the lazy person’s view to assume that all early nineteenth century British music was influenced solely by Hande...
Thursday, 6 November 2025

Echoes of England, Music, and Mischief: Debussy’s 1909 Concert in London

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J.C. Squire was a spirited figure in early 20th-century British literary circles - part poet, part critic, part cricket enthusiast. Born in ...
Monday, 3 November 2025

Christian Darnton: Piano Concerto in C major

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This composer was an unknown quantity to me, and I imagine for many other listeners as well. However, the Piano Concertino in C Major is a f...
Friday, 31 October 2025

G&S: The Ghosts’ High-Noon from Ruddigore

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Ruddigore was the very first Gilbert and Sullivan opera I heard. That would be in 1968. It was the annual production of a Savoy Opera by the...
Tuesday, 28 October 2025

Looking Back: A Review Revisited: Egon Wellez's Symphonies Nos.4, 6, and 7

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This review originally appeared on MusicWeb International on 5 June 2005. Considering my recent engagement with a recording of Wellesz’s St...
Saturday, 25 October 2025

Masks – An unusual introduction to the music of Sir Arthur Bliss Part II

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Masks were first performed at a concert on 2 Feb 1926, by the composer and pianist Arthur Benjamin, during a 'Concert Spirituel' at ...
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About Me

John France
United Kingdom
I am over sixty years old: the end of the run of baby boomers! I was born in Glasgow, moving south to York in the late ‘seventies. My main interest is British Music from the nineteenth century onwards. I love the ‘arch-typical’ English countryside – and have always wanted to ‘Go West, Boy’. A. E. Housman and the ‘Georgian’ poets are a huge influence on my aesthetic. I have spent much of my life looking for the ‘Land of Lost Content’ and only occasionally glimpsed it…somewhere in…??? My recently published work includes essays on Ivor Gurney’s song ‘The Carol of Skiddaw Yowes.’ for the Gurney Society Journal, Alan Rawsthorne’s Cello Concerto for the Rawsthorne Society Journal and Delius song ‘I Brasil’. I have contributed to the journals of the British Music Society, the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society, the Finzi Society, the Bliss Society, the Glasgow Society of Organists, the Berkeley Society, and regular CD reviews for MusicWeb International. I regularly contribute programme notes to the English Music Festival.
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