1914 in British music

This is a summary of 1914 in music in the United Kingdom.

Events

• 21 January – Edward Elgar makes the first recordings of his music, including the miniature "Carissima" prior to its public premiere.
• February – Regal Recordings issues its first records.
• 2 February – The restrictions on performances of Wagner's opera Parsifal outside of Bayreuth having been withdrawn, the first staged British performance opens at London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
• 27 February – George Butterworth's The Banks of Green Willow is premièred at West Kirby, Liverpool, conducted by Adrian Boult.
• 16 March – A new concert hall, the Usher Hall, opens in Edinburgh.
• c. June – First publication of Orchestration, the classic book by Cecil Forsyth.
• 26 August – Rutland Boughton's "fairy opera" The Immortal Hour is premièred at Glastonbury Assembly Rooms as part of the inaugural Glastonbury Festival, co-founded by the socialist composer. On 5 August the first concert concluded with the choral song "The Last Post" by Charles Villiers Stanford in lieu of the Grail Dance from Parsifal "owing to the outbreak of war."
• 24 October – Italian-born Welsh-resident operatic soparano Adelina Patti gives her final public performance, in a Red Cross concert for the benefit of First World War veterans, at London's Royal Albert Hall.
• 31 December – English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, aged 42, volunteers for war service, initially as a private with the Royal Army Medical Corps.

Popular music

• Paul Rubens – "Your King and Country Want You"

Classical music: new works

• Kenneth J. Alford – Colonel Bogey March
• Granville Bantock – The Song of Liberty
• Frederick Delius – Violin Sonata No. 1
• Edward Elgar – "The Shower" and "The Fountain", SATB unacc., words by Henry Vaughan, Op. 71 Nos.1 and 2
• Herbert Howells – Piano Concerto No. 1
• Roger Quilter – A Children's Overture
• Ralph Vaughan Williams
• The Lark Ascending (original version completed)
• Symphony No. 2, A London Symphony

Opera

• Rutland Boughton – The Immortal Hour (see Events)

Musical theatre

• 4 November – Revival of The Earl and the Girl by Seymour Hicks, with lyrics by Percy Greenbank and music by Ivan Caryll, at the Aldwych Theatre.

Births

• 11 March – William Lloyd Webber, organist and composer (died 1982)
• 24 May – Harry Parr Davies, composer and songwriter (died 1955)
• 23 August – Harold Truscott, composer, pianist, broadcaster and writer on music (died 1992)
• 14 December – Rosalyn Tureck, pianist (died 2003)

Deaths

• 7 January – Patrick Weston Joyce, historian and musicologist, 86
• 23 July – Harry Evans, conductor and composer, 41
• 13 September – Robert Hope-Jones, inventor of the theatre organ, 55 (suicide)

See also

• 1914 in the United Kingdom

References