I'm profoundly skeptical of this notion. Music crosses borders too
easily for it to be of much use as an explanation. A lot of Elgar is
distinctly late-Romantic German, a lot of Ives is Debussian
Impressionist, Bach wrote acres of music extending the techniques and
the sound of Vivaldi (including transcriptions of Vivaldi for
different instruments, Handel and Mendelssohn wrote the great English
oratorios that defined much of English choral music. But it's a pleasant idea.
Mark
At 10:50 AM 1/2/2008, you wrote:
>Well, like Fred, I found the footnote fascinating, & the comment on
>Janacek, whose String Quartets I am coming to love.
>
>This point is interesting to me with reference to the quartets of
>Daniel Jones -- romantically modern in their Welsh way....
>
>Doug
>On 31-Dec-07, at 3:27 PM, Roger Day wrote:
>
>>the cadences of all the various Englishes are different also. I wonder
>>if Patel means English English, which as chalk to cheese compared to,
>>say, Welsh English etc. It's PC to say British English but as we all
>>know, Britain doesn't really exist.
>>
>>Roger
>>
>>On Dec 31, 2007 10:09 PM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>> From a footnote [p.242]in Oliver Sacks's new book, Musicophilia...
>>>
>>>'What makes the music of Sir Edward Elgar sound so distinctively English?'
>>>they [Iversen, Patel and Ohgushi of the Neurosciences Institute] ask. 'What
>>>makes the music of Debussy sound so French?
>Douglas Barbour
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>Oh, goddamnit, we forgot the silent prayer.
>
> Dwight D, Eisenhower
> [at a cabinet meeting]
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