Harmonicas first appeared in Vienna during the 19th century. By the mid-1800s, there were no less than three companies producing harmonicas. During World War II, the United States had a harmonica shortage due to the lack of the metal and wood materials used to make harmonicas.
By the end of the 19th century, harmonicas were being mass-produced throughout Europe, has evolved into a major business. New designs had been developed well into the 20th century, such as the chromatic harmonica, chord harmonica, and the bass harmonica. Singers were also used, which invented its own series of classical music, namely the Opera. Composers also wrote solo pieces for a specific instrument, accompanied by piano.
There are various styles of music that fall into the definition of classical; these include symphonies, opera, choral works and chamber music. There is a huge strength of classical music in Britain, and the city of London has more world-famous symphony orchestras than any other city across the globe.
The development of new and more complicated instruments seriously impacted styles of classical music as they become available. There are no set instruments that had to be used for classical music, composers wrote for different groupings including orchestras, wind ensembles or various combinations of instruments for chamber music. Top Russian musicians are attracted to play in London venues every year, and it has become the world's leading showcase for international performance.
Edward Elgar was the first internationally renowned British composer and headed the boom period, which produced a host of English late-Victorian and Edwardian composers. In the 20th century, a new "English" classical style of a more pastoral type arose, with Vaughan Williams.
Ralph Vaughan Williams was an English composer of modern classical music, active during the first half of the twentieth century. He is generally considered the greatest British composer since Henry Purcell. His works ranged from simple songs to ballet scores, full symphonies, and choral works. Vaughan Williams was one of the first people to show concern for the loss of the traditional music of the ordinary people, and he traveled around the countryside collecting folk songs from the mouths of singers and musicians.
Ralph Vaughan Williams was born on 12 October 1872 at Down Ampney, a village near Cricklade in Gloucestershire where his father was a vicar. He studied in Berlin with Max Bruch (1896-1897). On his return to England, Vaughan Williams served as organist and choirmaster in several churches and was a teacher of composition at the Royal College of Music. In 1896; he married Adeline Fisher, cousin of Virginia Woolf, and a cellist and pianist. He returned to Cambridge and graduated in 1899 with a Doctorate in Music. During the 1920’s his music became more dramatic, tense and dissonant, including ballets such as Job: A Masque for Dancing and his Symphony No.4 in F Minor.
At fourteen, he was sent to Charterhouse School, a private boarding school in Surrey and one of the few schools at the time to encourage young musicians. There he played in the orchestra and one of his very first compositions – a piano trio – was performed at a school concert.
Music notation from the classical era does, however, leave some interpretation open in several areas like performance, apart from directions for dynamics, tempo, and expression; this is left to the discretion of the performers, who are guided by their personal experience and musical education or their knowledge of the work's idiom.
He was an active member of The Folk-Song Society, which was founded in 1898 and was later to become the still-active English Folk Dance and Song Society, of which Vaughan Williams was president of for many years. Hardly a musical genre was untouched or failed to be enriched by his work, which included nine symphonies, five operas, film music, ballet and stage music, several song cycles, church music and works for chorus and orchestra.
As passionate and romantic as his music, Vaughan Williams was politely described as a ‘red-blooded male’ and was often surrounded by young, adoring female fans who knew him as ‘Uncle Ralph’.
Vaughan Williams edited The English Hymnal in 1904, composed some stunning Christian choral music, and wrote an opera of The Pilgrim’s Progress. In 1907-1908, Vaughan Wiliams studied orchestration in Paris with Ravel. It inspired one of his most fruitful periods of composition.
Aged 41 when World War I began, Vaughan Williams served in France and Salonika. Prolonged exposure to gunfire began a process of hearing loss that eventually caused severe deafness in his old age. The composer never took his privileged background for granted and worked all his life for democratic and egalitarian ideals. The theme from Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, pictured, was discovered by Vaughan Williams when he was commissioned to put together the 1906 edition of the English Hymnal.
To fully understand the various styles of this genre of music, it is recommended that listeners explore the styles of these composers to understand the richness and variety of the form. The Lark Ascending was written in 1914 but the outbreak of World War I meant he had to put its premiere on hold. He died on the 26th August 1958; his ashes are interred in Westminster Abbey, near Purcell.
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