Canonizing remembrance: Music for Armistice Day at the BBC, 1922–7

Cowgill, Rachel ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9835-4039 2011. Canonizing remembrance: Music for Armistice Day at the BBC, 1922–7. First World War Studies 2 (1) , pp. 75-107. 10.1080/19475020.2011.555499

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Abstract

Broadcasting was one of the principal means by which the affective, social, and political meanings of Armistice Day were constituted in British culture, and music programming was crucial to that process. In the years leading up to its nationalization in 1927, the BBC was inventing itself; and its varying approaches to the selection and scheduling of specific musical repertoire for 11 November over that period have much to tell us about changing responses to the Great War, as well as conflicting notions of national identity, modernity, and tradition. Building on recent historical and musicological scholarship, this article examines the basis of Armistice Day programming decisions at the BBC; reconstructs the internal dialogue surrounding specific works, genres, and composers; and illuminates processes of canonization whereby Elgar’s wartime cantata The Spirit of England emerged pre-eminent over works such as John Foulds’s A World Requiem.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Music
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > D History (General) > D501 World War I M Music and Books on Music > M Music
Uncontrolled Keywords:	anti-nationalism, Armistice Day, broadcasting, clairaudience, commemoration, Edward Elgar, John Foulds, Field-Marshal Earl Haig, internationalism, Maud MacCarthy, modernism, modernity, music of the First World War, nationalism, non-sectarianism, occultism, Protestantism, John Reith, ritual, Roman Catholicism, sectarianism, socialism, spiritualism, theosophy
Additional Information:	Special Issue: Literature and Music of the First World War
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
ISSN:	1947-5020
Last Modified:	18 Oct 2022 13:43
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/15058

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