Empire and Nation

PUNCTUATED by a series of military and diplomatic conflicts and set against a background of shifting strategic alliances, the reception of Russian and Eastern European music in Britain from 1850 to 1950 vividly illustrates how geopolitical concerns can impinge upon discussion of culture and the arts. In particular, the condition and legacy of empire are at the heart of the relationship between Russia and Britain, whether in the second half of the nineteenth century, or in the first half of the twentieth. Although Russia and Britain found themselves on opposite sides of the Crimean War (1853–6), they were later to become uneasy allies in the major conflicts of the twentieth century. Even when not involved in military conflict, the ideological interaction between the two countries was shaped in the long nineteenth century by territorial rivalries in Central Asia and the Far East (what historians often refer to as the ‘Great Game’), and in the twentieth by revolutionary politics (something that would eventually give rise to the so-called ‘Cold War’).

Empire shaped the reception of the cultures of Eastern Europe too. Until 1918, many of Eastern Europe's national cultures were part of broader, multilingual and multi-ethnic entities. Poland was divided between Austria, Prussia and Russia; Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia were subject to Austro-Hungarian rule. The South Slavonic peoples were governed either by Austro-Hungary or the Ottoman Empire, whether directly or through fealty. Even countries seldom considered part of Eastern Europe share the legacy of imperial rule. Between 1809 and 1917, Finland was a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire, and its nineteenth- and early twentieth-century history was shaped as much by this relationship as it was by that with its Scandinavian neighbours to the west. Long subject to Ottoman rule, Greece won its independence against a backdrop of widespread European philhellenism, something that has masked its cultural affinities with other nations in the Balkans until comparatively recently.

It is this imperial framework that makes the study of the British reception of Russian and Eastern European music such a complex topic, not least because Britain – like Russia – was itself caught between imperial and national (not to say nationalist) agendas.

It has been widely asserted and accepted that Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes (1945) has little in common with its source text, the twenty-second chapter of George Crabbe's The Borough: A Poem, in Twenty-Four Letters (1810). As early as 1945 the libretto published to coincide with the first run of performances at the Sadler's Wells Theatre in London contained a disclaimer about the nature of the relationship between the original literary text and its subsequent operatic adaptation:

That same year, in a volume of essays about the opera, its librettist, Montagu Slater, was yet more explicit about the lack of correspondence between the two works:

This point was reiterated in a lecture given at the first Aldeburgh Festival in 1948 by none other than E. M. Forster, whose 1941 radio broadcast on Crabbe (subsequently published in The Listener) had provided the original inspiration for Britten's opera:

52, CAMPDEN HILL SQUARE, W. London. 15. January [1906].

Most honoured Maestro,

Are you still in Paris? In which case I should beg you to come to my assistance. I have been invited to give a lecture at the ‘Concert Goer's Club’ at the end of next month. With great temerity I have chosen ‘The Music of Jean Sibelius’ as my subject. Breitkopf & Härtel (via Mr Kling) have provided me with your compositions. I confess to you, in all frankness, that my abilities in the technical analysis of music are not very strong. As far as possible I shall try to avoid saying anything stupid in this respect and shall treat your works from a literary, poetic and national perspective. I shall be on firmer ground there. I have dipped into all the books about the life and literature of Finland that I can find in London. But if there exists a fairly detailed study about you yourself (in whatever language), I should ask you to let me know. Also, if you have anything to impart to me yourself about your ideals and your artistic views, and which you would be happy to discuss with me, I shall use it with discretion. The public that attends the soirées of the ‘Concert Goer's Club’ are relatively intelligent amateurs.

As for the music I want to have performed, I have arranged for an admirable pianist, Mr Richard Epstein, to be at the piano.

FIRST ENCOUNTERS

When, on 4 December 1905, Jean Sibelius set off for Paris after his first brief trip to Britain, he left behind him a small but influential coterie of individuals who were to play a crucial role in encouraging the cause of his music in the English-speaking world over the next three and a half decades or so. At Queen's Hall in London, Henry Wood had been the first British conductor to programme Sibelius's works in his concerts, rapidly followed in both Birmingham and Liverpool by the composer Granville Bantock. Ernest Newman had written some of the earliest and most enthusiastic reviews of these concerts, and Sibelius was to find a durable place in his criticism thereafter. As London representative of Sibelius's German publisher, Breitkopf & Härtel, Otto Kling also laboured to promote Sibelius's compositions with the concert-going (and music-buying) public. It was, though, with Rosa Harriet Newmarch that Sibelius enjoyed the closest and most sympathetic of all his British friendships. They met frequently during his five trips to Britain (in 1905, 1908, 1909, 1912 and 1921), and Newmarch visited him twice in Finland (in 1910 and 1915) and once in Paris (in 1911). As well as programme notes, journal articles and translations of his songs, Newmarch published three short books about the composer and his music: Jean Sibelius: A Finnish Composer (1906, also translated into German), Jean Sibelius: Symphony No. 4 in A minor, Op. 63 (1913, also translated into German) and Jean Sibelius: A Short Story of a Long Friendship (US edition 1939; UK edition 1944, under the title Jean Sibelius).