Bob Chen wrote:

>I would like to learn a bit more about the British composer Rutland
>Boughton.
>
>Specifically, I would like to know what Boughton's Glastonbury Festivals
>were and why they ended.  I read somewhere that the festival was Boughton's
>attempt to create a British Bayreuth.

Exactly.  The festivals were set up and backed mainly by old-line
Socialists like Shaw and Sybil Thorndyke.  There was a strong political
component to them.  Boughton's Bethlehem, for example, was produced in
reaction to the General Strike.  It was Bayreuth in that the productions
seemed to be Parsifal-like pageants, as far as I can tell.  They stopped
because they ran out of money.  It was, according to Shaw, always done on
the cheap - piano rather than orchestral accompaniment, although the works
were conceived in full orchestral form.  As far as I know, no other
composer was performed there other than Boughton, but I could be wrong.

>Also, there is an oblique reference to Boughton's activities after
>Glastonbury -- "politics and lecturing." What kind of politics? Lecturing
>about what?

Boughton was an idealist, in both the good and bad senses of the term.
He also had a penchant for grand schemes.  Politically, I gather he became
more conservative as he grew older, with a slight anti-Semitic, paranoid
tinge.  There's a letter to Vaughan Williams, for example, complaining
about VW's opera "Pilgrim's Progress." Vaughan Williams had changed
Christian's name to Pilgrim, and Boughton chaffed him about it, although
the kidding was in earnest.

>Finally, in addition to "The Immortal Hour," which appears to be available
>only on Hyperion as a mid-price two-fer, can anyone recommend other
>works/recordings?

Definitely Bethlehem, which I find the loveliest thing he wrote (on
Hyperion).  Boughton's music doesn't make my neck hairs stand up, but I can
easily imagine people enjoying his post-Wagnerian idiom more than I do.

Steve Schwartz