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Propaganda Music in Second World War Britain: John Ireland's Epic March

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Kate Guthrie
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Abstract

While biographical studies of British composers' experiences in the Second World War abound, little attention has been paid to how the demands of ‘total’ war impacted on music's ideological status. This article sheds new light on how composers and critics negotiated the problematic relationship between art music and politics in this period. John Ireland's Epic March – a BBC commission that caused the composer considerable anxiety – provides a case study. Drawing first on the correspondence charting the lengthy genesis of the work, and then on the work's critical reception, I consider how Ireland and his audiences sought to reconcile the conflicting political and aesthetic demands of this commission. With its conventional musical style, Epic March offers an example of a ‘middlebrow’ attempt to bridge the gap between art and politics.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 139 , Issue 1 , 2014 , pp. 137 - 175
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 The Royal Musical Association

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References

1 The series was initially going to be called ‘What's the Use of …?’, but this was changed after a member of the BBC Talks Department, Geoffrey Grigson, complained that ‘it seems to me pretty appalling to suggest that people should go to poetry, painting, music, for example, simply because they can find them useful, or simply because delighting oneself and ordering oneself has a utilitarian function’. Geoffrey Grigson, ‘Memo: What's the Use of …’ (21 February 1945), BBC Written Archives Centre (hereafter WAC), R51/637 (see note 61 below for further details of archival materials consulted).

2 Reginald Jacques, ‘What's the Point of Music?’, Home Service (11 June 1945, 7.40 pm). A transcript of the broadcast can be found in BBC WAC, Radio Talk Scripts Pre 1970: JAB-JAM, T258.

3 Michael Powell, A Life in the Movies: An Autobiography (London, 1986), 638.

4 George Reginald Barnes, ‘Memo: “What's the Point of …?”: Announcement’ (16 April 1945), BBC WAC, R51/637.

5 Grigson, ‘Memo’.

6 As early as June 1943, a BBC employee had suggested that Vaughan Williams might be approached to write ‘an anthem for the Service of Thanksgiving for victory’. Cyril Vincent Taylor, ‘Memo’ (15 June 1943), BBC WAC, R27/55/2. After the success of the Normandy Landings in June 1944, victory seemed to most people inevitable. See Philip Ziegler, London at War 1939–1945 (London, 1995), 308–11, and Mark Donnolly, Britain in the Second World War (London, 1999), 104–6.

7 According to Anderson, ‘total’ war is ‘a concrete historical phenomenon’ associated with the twentieth century, when new technologies allowed war to be conducted on a previously unimaginable scale. In particular, advances in aeroplane and bomb technologies forced civilians into the front line, while the expansion of mass media made psychological warfare viable. Ben Anderson, ‘Modulating the Excess of Affect: Morale in a State of “Total War”’, The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Gregory J. Seigworth and Melissa Gregg (Durham and London, 2010), 161–85, esp. pp. 169–71.

8 ‘Memo: Note on a Scheme for Commissioning of Patriotic Songs’ (August 1940), BBC WAC, R27/58. The idea for a patriotic march came from a Mr Pick. See Lewis Foreman, ‘John Ireland and the BBC’, The John Ireland Companion, ed. Foreman (Woodbridge, 2011), 79–115 (p. 94).

9 The publisher's hire records appear to be incomplete, so it is difficult to chart the work's performance history exactly. The records suggest that performances of Epic March peaked in 1945–6, averaging almost one a month, then began to dwindle around the turn of the decade, before increasing again (although not to previous highs) during the coronation year and its immediate aftermath. The last hire recorded in these old records was by Fulham Borough Council for a rehearsal in 1962. Boosey & Hawkes, Hire Records for John Ireland's Epic March (1943–62).

10 Daniel Grimley finds a similar tension between autonomy and appropriation in Elgar's music. See his ‘“The Spirit-Stirring Drum”: Elgar and Populism’, Elgar and his World, ed. Byron Adams (Princeton, NJ, 2007), 97–123.

11 Nicholas Mathew, ‘Heroic Haydn, the Occasional Work, and “Modern” Political Music’, Eighteenth-Century Music, 4 (2007), 7–25.

12 Andreas Huyssen, After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (Bloomington, IN, 1986), vii.

13 Among recent critiques of traditional understandings of modernism are Huyssen, After the Great Divide; Lawrence Napper, ‘British Cinema and the Middlebrow’, British Cinema, Past and Present, ed. Justine Ashby and Andrew Higson (London, 2000), 110–23; Jed Esty, A Shrinking Island: Modernism and National Culture in England (Princeton, NJ, 2004); Christopher Chowrimootoo, ‘The Timely Traditions of Albert Herring’, Opera Quarterly, 27 (2011), 379–419; and Heather Wiebe, Britten's Unquiet Pasts: Sound and Memory in Postwar Reconstruction (Cambridge, 2012).

14 Chowrimootoo explains in ‘The Timely Traditions of Albert Herring’ how the modernist reaction against tradition, arising in part from the belief that the unprecedented experiences of twentieth-century life could not be adequately represented by traditional art forms, manifested itself in a new emphasis on topicality. That the question of art's relevancy to modern life greatly influenced Britain's left-leaning artists in the 1930s has long been recognized; but recent work has shown that this was not a concern solely of the Left. See, for example, Thomas Irvine, ‘Hindemith's Disciple in London: Walter Leigh on Modern Music, 1932–1940’, British Music and Modernism, 1895–1960, ed. Matthew Riley (Farnham, 2010), 197–220.

15 Cited in the front matter of Ivor Thomas, Warfare by Words (Harmondsworth, 1942).

16 This quotation was taken from an 1842 text. ‘Propaganda, n.’, Oxford English Dictionary (Being a Corrected Re-Issue with an Introduction, Supplement, and Bibliography), 13 vols. (Oxford, 1933), viii, 1466.

17 Evidence of this is offered by the changes to the Oxford English Dictionary's definition of propaganda. In the 1933 edition (see above, note 16), two definitions are offered: ‘1. (More fully, Congregation or College of the Propaganda.) A committee of Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church having the care and oversight of foreign missions, founded in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV’; and ‘2. Any association, systematic scheme, or concerted movement for the propagation of a particular doctrine or practice’. The latest edition includes a third definition: ‘3. The systematic dissemination of information, esp. in a biased or misleading way, in order to promote a political cause or point of view’ (the emphasis is mine). ‘Propaganda, n.’, Oxford English Dictionary, <http://www.oed.com> (accessed 1 August 2012).

18 The term ‘propaganda’ has been dated back to a papal bull of 1622. Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell, Propaganda and Persuasion (5th edn, London, 2012), 2; Robert Jackall, Propaganda (Basingstoke, 1995), 1.

19 Philip M. Taylor explains that ‘before 1914, Britain's prestige in the world was thought to have been so readily apparent that there was felt to be little, if any, need for a policy of self-glorification or national advertisement’. See his The Projection of Britain: British Overseas Publicity and Propaganda, 1919–1939 (Cambridge, 1981), 125–8.

20 Indeed, contrary to what one might have expected, the First World War actually helped consolidate the negative connotations of ‘propaganda’. One contributing factor was the increasingly widespread American belief that US intervention in 1917 had been a mistake, and one for which British propagandists should be held accountable. Another was the public's growing awareness in the aftermath of war of the widespread usage of atrocity propaganda: the practice of spreading malicious fabrications about enemy activity with a view to inciting hatred. The literary scholar Marina MacKay comments on the long-term impact of the public's awareness of such practices in her Modernism and World War II (Cambridge, 2007), 11. See also Jowett and O'Donnell, Propaganda and Persuasion, 225, 239; and Philip M. Taylor, British Propaganda in the 20th Century: Selling Democracy (Edinburgh, 1999), 63–73.

21 The MoI was founded in 1918, replacing the Department of Information that had been created the previous year. In a review of the MoI carried out in 1918, concern was expressed over its direct accountability to the Prime Minister (rather than the government), which ministers feared might leave it open to abuse. The Foreign Office, more savvy than some governmental departments about the benefits of propaganda, decided to maintain a News Department to publicize Britain abroad. Taylor, British Propaganda, 63–73.

22 The MoI was founded in 1918, replacing the Department of Information that had been created the previous year. In a review of the MoI carried out in 1918, concern was expressed over its direct accountability to the Prime Minister (rather than the government), which ministers feared might leave it open to abuse. The Foreign Office, more savvy than some governmental departments about the benefits of propaganda, decided to maintain a News Department to publicize Britain abroad. Taylor, British Propaganda, 86–7.

23 Adolf Hitler, My Struggle, trans. James Murphy (London, 1939), 80–5 (p. 80).

24 Jowett and O'Donnell, Propaganda and Persuasion, 228–53; Taylor, British Propaganda, 88–9.

25 The British Council was not the first organization to be dedicated to the projection of Britain. As early as 1926, entrepreneurs of the tourist industry had joined forces with the Board of Trade to form the ‘Come to Britain’ movement, out of which emerged the Travel and Industrial Development Association of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in 1928 (see below, note 30). Taylor, British Propaganda, 73–5.

26 Michael Balfour, Propaganda in War, 1939–1945 (London, 1975), 53–71; Taylor, British Propaganda, 63–87.

27 This is demonstrated by a simple text search using Google Ngram. The pattern of use is very similar for both ‘British English’ and ‘American’ texts.

28 The full title of the Nazis’ organization was Das Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, often translated as the ‘Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda’; Beller referred to it by its usual short title, ‘Ministry of Propaganda’. Elmer A. Beller, ‘Propaganda or Information’, Times Literary Supplement, 28 December 1940, 655.

29 Diana Jane Eastment, ‘The Policies and Position of the British Council from the Outbreak of War to 1950’ (D.Phil. dissertation, University of Leeds, 1982), 3–4.

30 A notable early example was the foundation of the Travel and Industrial Development Association of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in 1928, which, according to Taylor, ‘provided the first real recognition in peacetime of the need to conduct a national, permanently active publicity campaign abroad in an attempt to make Britain more widely known and understood’. Taylor, British Propaganda, 74–5. Stephen Tallents's The Projection of England (London, 1932), which argued that ‘no country can to-day afford either to neglect the projection of its national personality or to resign its projection to others. Least of all countries can England afford either that neglect or that resignation’ (pp. 11–12), was also a significant stepping stone.

31 Thomas, Warfare by Words, 61.

32 Taylor, British Propaganda, 178.

33 Kingsley Martin, Propaganda's Harvest (London, 1941), 64.

34 Such dualisms continue to influence the way the Second World War is understood today. For example, see Michael Burleigh, Moral Combat: A History of World War II (London, 2010), esp. pp. ix–x. Norman Davies is among those to have challenged such black-and-white characterizations of the Second World War (in Europe at War, 1939–1945: No Simple Victory (Basingstoke, 2006), 481–7). Angus Calder similarly observes the prominence of this narrative in The Myth of the Blitz (London, 1991), 2.

35 Desmond Hawkins, cited in ‘The Proletarian Writer: A Discussion between George Orwell and Desmond Hawkins’, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, 4 vols. (London, 1968), ii: My Country Right or Left, 38–44.

36 Angus Calder, The People's War (London, 1969), 35–76. The summary of news published in The Times on 2 September gives a sense of the extent of disruption: it lists nothing other than a series of closures (including Radiolympia, the Houses of Parliament and Smithfield Market), postponed events (including the Gravesend Regatta) and the suspension of the BBC television service. ‘News in Brief’, The Times, 2 September 1939, 7.

37 Calder, The People's War, 45.

38 During the first months of war, British fascists and communists continued their attempts to undermine the Conservative government, though they were increasingly unpopular with the public at large. Meanwhile, in early 1940 controversy over the Norwegian Campaign, a badly managed Allies’ offensive that culminated in the hurried withdrawal of British troops and the Nazi occupation of Norway, only further destabilized Chamberlain's already precarious position. Ibid., 77–81.

39 For the War Artists’ Advisory Committee, see Meirion and Susie Harries, The War Artists: British Official War Art of the Twentieth Century (London, 1983); Stuart Sillars, British Romantic Art and the Second World War (Basingstoke, 1991); and Brian Foss, War Paint: Art, War, State and Identity, 1939–1945 (London, 2007). For British cinema and the war, see Neil Rattigan, This is England: British Film and the People's War, 1939–1945 (Madison, WI, 2001); Jan G. Swynnoe, The Best Years of British Film Music, 1936–1958 (Woodbridge, 2002); and Anthony Aldgate and Jeffrey Richards, Britain Can Take It: British Cinema in the Second World War (London, 2007). For British writers and the war, see Robert Hewison, Under Siege: Literary Life in London 1939–45 (London, 1988); Richard Weight, ‘State, Intelligentsia and the Promotion of National Culture in Britain, 1939–45’, Historical Research, 69 (1996), 83–101; and MacKay, Modernism.

40 Calder's The People's War and The Myth of the Blitz explore in detail how this ideology was constructed.

41 Foss, War Paint, 157–69. In its aftermath, the Second World War has often been described as ‘the Good War’, in which a noble Britain and her Allies put up a righteous and well-founded opposition to Nazi rule; but this Britain–good / Germany–bad dichotomy was not so clear-cut in the 1930s and 1940s, not least because Britain's reputation was more that of a belligerent, imperial power, lacking in national culture. Presenting Britain as a cultured nation was a way of challenging this negative image – one that was drawn on frequently during the war. Calder, The Myth of the Blitz, 196.

42 Arnold Haskell, ‘War, Ballet and National Culture’, Ballet – To Poland (in Aid of the Polish Relief Fund), ed. Haskell (London, 1940), 45–7 (p. 45).

43 Calder, The People's War, 62.

44 Stephen Spender, The Thirties and After (Glasgow, 1978), 101.

45 Arthur Bliss, As I Remember (London, 1970), 130.

46 Peter Dickinson, Lord Berners: Composer, Writer, Painter (Woodbridge, 2008), 2.

47 Letter from Henry Moore to Kenneth Clark, quoted in Peter Stansky and William Abrahams, London's Burning: Life, Death and Art in the Second World War (London, 1994), 15. Muriel V. Searle, John Ireland: The Man and his Music (Tunbridge Wells, 1979), 92.

48 ‘Britain's voice – where is it?’, Daily Mirror, 25 September 1939, 7.

49 James Agate, ‘Who will be the plain man's war poet? – or won't there be one?’, Daily Express, 28 October 1939, 4.

50 During the 1930s, these three poets had been among a diverse group of intellectuals who had become actively involved in leftist politics, a trend that reached its apex when a number of them went to fight for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. The fashion for political activism proved, however, to be short-lived: the defeat of the Spanish Republicans in April 1939 and the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union signed in August of the same year were major blows to the holders of such ideals. Disillusionment quickly set in, and whereas formerly young intellectuals had waved the flag of political involvement, they now began to retreat to the ivory tower, questioning art's capacity to change the world as they went. Their retreat, however, was ill-timed: it roughly coincided with the outbreak of world war – an event that increased the demand for politically engaged art virtually overnight. Samuel Hynes, The Auden Generation (London, 1976); Weight, ‘State, Intelligentsia and the Promotion of National Culture in Britain’, 83–101; Suzanne Robinson, ‘From Agitprop to Parable: A Prolegomenon to A Child of Our Time’, Michael Tippett: Music and Literature, ed. Robinson (Aldershot, 2002), 78–121 (pp. 103–4).

51 MacKay, Modernism, 5–6. The passing of time did little to assuage the lack of poetic inspiration. MacKay argues that the idea that ‘this was “a war to which literature conscientiously objected”’ quickly became a commonplace – so much so that by 1941 Cyril Connolly could open a Horizon editorial with the observation: ‘About this time of year articles appear called “Where are our war poets?” The answer (not usually given) is “under your nose”.’ Ibid., 5. ‘Where Are the War Poets?’ is also the title of a poem by Cecil Day-Lewis (<http://www.cday-lewis.co.uk/#/where-are/4525050888>, accessed 18 March 2013).

52 Hewison, Under Siege, 8. Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears famously followed Auden and Isherwood to America in May 1939, but returned to England in April 1942, allegedly having been inspired to do so by an E. M. Forster article about the Suffolk-born poet George Crabbe.

53 Some aesthetic modes were, of course, more readily adaptable. Soon after the outbreak of war, Richard Addinsell agreed to compose music for Alexander Korda's propaganda film The Lion Has Wings (1939), while Walter Leigh set to work on a score for Squadron 922 (1940).

54 In the light of this, it is somewhat ironic that the Second World War is often referred to as the ‘Good War’ (see above, note 41).

55 Mackay, Modernism, 11.

56 This demand also proved problematic in the light of the high/low dichotomy: ‘hostility to mass culture’ was one of the grounds on which art distinguished itself. Huyssen, After the Great Divide, vii.

57 Ralph Vaughan Williams, ‘The Composer in Wartime’, The Listener, 13 (1940), 989.

58 Patrick Bade, Music Wars: 1937–1945 (London, 2012), 4–11.

59 Fiona Richards, The Music of John Ireland (Aldershot, 2000), 177.

60 Letter from Adrian Boult to Vaughan Williams (2 September 1940), BBC WAC, RCONT-1: Composer: Williams, Ralph Vaughan, 1939–1941 File 2a. Vaughan Williams's song England, My England was temporarily withdrawn by the composer in protest against the BBC's decision to ban Alan Bush's music on the grounds that he was a communist. Dyson's contribution, Motherland, was an adaptation of a William Watson poem and received a radio première on Empire Day (24 May) 1941. Quilter was the only person to opt for a collaborative project, which he undertook with the poet Rodney Bennett. The result was Song of Freedom. The BBC also considered commissioning a ‘popular ballad’ from Frederick Keel, with Victor Hely-Hutchinson and Walter Leigh as reserves, and a ‘better ballad’ or ‘more serious song’ from Noël Coward. Perhaps unsurprisingly in the light of the political circumstances, none of the composers who had fled Nazi-occupied territories for the relative safety of Britain was considered. ‘Note on a Scheme for Commissioning of Patriotic Songs’ (August 1940), BBC WAC, R27/58.

61 Archival materials consulted include the following. BBC WAC, R27/55/2: Music – General: Commissioned Works, 1942–1946 (File II); BBC WAC, R27/58: Music – General: Commissioned Works: Patriotic Songs, 1940–1944; BBC WAC, R51/637: Talks: What's the Point of …?, 1945; BBC WAC, RCONT-1: Composer: John Ireland, 1939–1941 File 2a, 1942–1943 File 2b and 1945–1947 File 2c (hereafter RCONT-1-2a, RCONT-1-2b and RCONT-1-2c); John Ireland Papers, British Library, Add. 60535 and Add. 60536 (hereafter JIP); Cecil Gray Papers, Vol. XII, British Library, Add. 57785 (hereafter CGP); the George and Ann Dannatt Archive, Cambridge University Library, Add. 9473/A/22/32 (hereafter GADA). The Correspondence of Alan Bush and John Ireland, 1927–1961, ed. Rachel O'Higgins (Aldershot, 2006), also contains useful primary materials.

62 Incidentally, Ireland also avoided fighting in the First World War because he failed the medical examination.

63 Letter from Ireland to Kenneth Thompson (26 June 1941), JIP.

64 Had he not left, he would almost certainly have been deported to a German prisoner-of-war camp. Ireland was accompanied by Longmire and another composer, Percy Turnbull, who had been visiting them. John Longmire, John Ireland: Portrait of a Friend (London, 1969), 62–3; Fiona Richards, ‘John Ireland's Personal World’, The John Ireland Companion, ed. Foreman, 42–53 (p. 50).

65 From mid-1942 until the end of the war, Ireland lived in the rectory in Little Sampford, a village in Essex, with his friends the Waldes.

66 Longmire, John Ireland, 82.

67 Draft of letter from Boult to Ireland (undated), BBC WAC, RCONT-1-2a.

68 Letter from Ireland to Boult (30 November 1940), BBC WAC, RCONT-1-2a.

69 At the end of April 1941, Greece was defeated by the Axis. Letter from Ireland to Thompson (4 May 1941), JIP.

70 Longmire, John Ireland, 82.

71 The Blitz continued until 10 May 1941. Longmire claims that Ireland ‘hated war and was born a pacifist’. Ibid., 40.

72 Letter from Ireland to Thompson (26 June 1941).

73 Letter from Ireland to Alan Bush (10 September 1941), The Correspondence of Alan Bush and John Ireland, ed. O'Higgins, 137–9.

74 For example, see letter from Ireland to Margery Gray (13 October 1941), CGP; and diary entry by Kenneth Thompson (25 November 1945), GADA.

75 Letter from Ireland to Bush (10 September 1941).

76 For example, he alleged that Legend was inspired by a vision of dancing children from a past age that he had at Harrow Hill, Sussex Downs. He also frequently claimed to have a psychic sense. Longmire, John Ireland, 28. Such claims were not uncommon in this period: Tippett also claimed that his music sprang from ‘visions and dreams’ (Robinson, ‘From Agitprop to Parable’, 79).

77 Ireland, for example, ‘began his composer's career as a follower of Brahms’ at the Royal College of Music under Stanford, but subsequently ‘destroyed or withheld’ all his early works. Ralph Hill, ‘John Ireland’, British Music of Our Time, ed. Alfred Louis Bacharach (Middlesex, 1951), 97–110. For the place of Romanticism in contemporary British thought, see Joanna Bullivant, ‘Musical Modernism and Left-Wing Politics in 1930s Britain’ (D.Phil. dissertation, University of Oxford, 2009), esp. pp. 70–118.

78 The manuscript of this draft survives in BBC WAC, RCONT-1-2a.

79 Letter from Ireland to Julian Herbage (8 September 1941), BBC WAC, RCONT-1-2a.

80 As the critics unanimously agreed. Eric Blom went so far as to thank Ireland for ‘giving us the sixth Pomp and Circumstance’ that Elgar never completed. Eric Blom, ‘Some New Ireland Works’, Tempo, 6 (1944), 2–3.

81 R. E., [untitled], Music and Letters, 24 (1943), 187.

82 Richards, The Music of John Ireland, 175–203.

83 Ireland set Swingler's poetry in, for example, Ways of Peace, the product of a commission from the British National Committee of the International Peace Campaign, and Ballad of Heroes, which commemorated British people who had died in the Spanish Civil War. Philip Lancaster, ‘Songs of Innocence: The Part-Songs of John Ireland’, The John Ireland Companion, ed. Foreman, 285–303; Richards, The Music of John Ireland, 186–8.

84 Letter from Ireland to Bush (10 September 1941).

85 Letter from Ireland to Boult (2 September 1941), BBC WAC, RCONT-1-2a. Despite Bush's encouragement, however, Ireland was never willing to go as far as his student. The closest he came to joining a political group was in the winter of 1940, when, following a request from Bush, he agreed to sign the People's Convention (Bush was a member of the Convention's ‘Entertainments Professions Joint Committee’, a position that required him to drum up support among his fellow musicians). Within a matter of weeks, however, Ireland wrote to retract his support on the grounds that ‘you have quite a strong representation of the musical profession without me, and I really feel I cannot be a party to some of the aims of the Convention at a time like the present’. Letter from Ireland to Bush (14 December 1940), The Correspondence of Alan Bush and John Ireland, ed. O'Higgins, 119. O'Higgins says that Ireland's objection was probably to the Convention's fifth aim, which was to establish a People's Government (ibid., 120). When Bush reprimanded him, Ireland rebutted his criticism, reminding him that ‘in my own way I do my best to forward the ideals we have in mind, and […] I should never alter as regards the principles involved. You fail to recognize that one can do a good deal by quiet methods.’ If Ireland was inclined towards the Left, it was probably more as an idealist than as a political activist.

86 Letter from Ireland to Bush (15 July 1941), The Correspondence of Alan Bush and John Ireland, ed. O'Higgins, 134.

87 At the outset, Boult had suggested to Ireland that something in the vein of These Things might be appropriate, an idea that seemed immediately to inspire Ireland. Letter from Ireland to Boult (30 November 1940).

88 Letter from Ireland to Bush (10 September 1941). The idea of including the Internationale may in part have been a response to recent political developments: in July 1941, Russia formed an alliance with Britain, after Germany violated the Soviet–Nazi non-aggression pact of August 1939 by invading Russia. At some point during the immediate post-war years, a member of the musical public spotted the Internationale reference in These Things and denounced Ireland as a communist – a label that was by that time less acceptable than it had been in the 1930s. In response to this episode, Ireland removed the reference. See letter from Thompson to The Rt Hon. Mr P. Morris MP (22 January 1951), JIP; and Alan Bush, ‘Appendix A: “These Things Shall Be”’, in Longmire, John Ireland, 149–51.

89 Letter from Ireland to Bush (10 September 1941).

90 Letter from Ireland to Boult (31 March 1942), BBC WAC, RCONT-1-2b. Richards explains that ‘Herbert Brown advised against this, on the grounds that the sentiments of These Things Shall Be were not at all jingoistic, but rather “pacific and idealistic”, and suggested instead that Ireland might reuse one of his “last war tunes”’. Richards, The Music of John Ireland, 197–8.

91 E♭ major is also the key of his song O Happy Land, another politically explicit product of the war years. Richards, The Music of John Ireland, 197–9.

92 Letter from Ireland to Dr Thatcher (19 July 1941), BBC WAC, RCONT-1-2a. An ‘attractive title’ was one of the conditions set out in the commission (see above, note 67).

93 The opening quaver-triplet–dotted-crochet motif of Ireland's march was similar to the ‘three short taps followed by a long’ that famously begin Beethoven's Symphony no. 5. Long popularized as ‘fate knocking on the door’, this motif developed an alternative meaning among the Allies as a code for ‘victory’ after it was hijacked by the ‘V for Victory Campaign’ because the rhythm was the same as that of the letter ‘V’ in Morse code (). Ireland insisted that the rhythmic similarity was pure chance – a claim that seems likely given that the V for Victory Campaign was in its early stages at the time of Epic March's composition. However, he also proved keen to exploit the potential of this happy coincidence, suggesting that ‘a short version of a few bars [of Epic March], as a sort of signature tune, could be prepared’. Letter from Ireland to Thatcher (14 July 1941), BBC WAC, RCONT-1-2a. The campaign is discussed in Charles Roetter, Psychological Warfare (London, 1974), 110–16.

94 Letter from Ireland to Boult (31 March 1942).

95 Letter from Ireland to Margery Gray (13 October 1941).

96 Letter from Ireland to Bush (10 September 1941). The emphasis is Ireland's.

97 The latter was one of ‘only four cases of extreme censorship or threats of censorship’ during the war in Britain. Balfour, Propaganda in War, 66.

98 Letter from Ireland to Nancy Bush (20 June 1942), The Correspondence of Alan Bush and John Ireland, ed. O'Higgins, 271–2.

99 The performance was recorded by the BBC and re-released as a cover-mounted CD by BBC Music Magazine (July 2008). Great Prom Premiers (2008), BBC Music Magazine Collection, BBC MM295. The brief introduction reproduced on this recording suggests that radio audiences were not told about the work's origin. The announcer simply said: ‘And now the Epic March for full orchestra by John Ireland. Bartley Mason is at the organ and the work is now to be heard for the first time.’

100 ‘The Promenade Concerts’, The Times, 29 June 1942, 6.

101 George Orwell, ‘War-Time Diary: 14 March 1942–15 November 1942’, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, ed. Orwell and Angus, ii, 411–50 (p. 428).

102 This included two first performances in England in 1939 and three world premières in 1940. David Cox, The Henry Wood Proms (London, 1980), 276–8.

103 The fate of the Proms during the war years is described in Jenny Doctor, ‘A New Dimension: The BBC Takes on the Proms, 1920–44’, The Proms: A New History, ed. Jenny Doctor and David Wright (London, 2007), 116–29.

104 A quick glance over first-night programmes from the 1930s and 1940s reveals that this was the only première to open the season. The favourite opening pieces were Berlioz's Le carnaval romain, which was used on six occasions, and Elgar's overture Cockaigne (In London Town), which appeared on five.

105 Ralph Hill, ‘The Proms are Forty-Eight!’, Radio Times, 75 (19 June 1942), 4; ‘Promenade Concerts’, The Times, 29 June 1942, 6.

106 W. R. A., [untitled], The Gramophone (February 1943), 4.

107 Hill, ‘The Proms are Forty-Eight!’; ‘Promenade Concerts’, The Times; ‘New Music’, Musical Times, 84 (1943), 179–81 (p. 179).

108 ‘New Publications, July 1941–December 1943’, Tempo, 6 (1944), 16–24.

109 Aldgate and Richards, Britain Can Take It, 11–12.

110 Christina Baade, Victory through Harmony: The BBC and Popular Music in World War II (Oxford, 2012). Bliss's strong opinions about popular music are well known: viewing it as ‘at best diverting and at worst morally suspect’, he worked hard throughout his time as director of music to bring listeners what he considered to be the best in music (ibid., 134). An unequivocal statement from Bliss of his opinions on broadcasting is reproduced in Lewis Foreman, ‘In Search of a Progressive Policy: Arthur Bliss at the BBC’, Arthur Bliss: Music and Literature, ed. Stewart R. Craggs (Aldershot, 2002), 227–65 (pp. 250–2).

111 Alison Light, Forever England: Femininity, Literature and Conservatism between the Wars (London, 1991). See also Foss, War Paint, 64. German authorities exhibited a similar anxiety about soldiers’ penchant for sentimental songs, not least Lili Marlene. John Bush Jones, The Songs that Fought the War: Popular Music and the Home Front, 1939–45 (Waltham, MA, 2006), 78–9.

112 Conversely, music like Epic March was considered unsuitable as international propaganda. When Britain wanted to project a positive image of its culture to its enemies and Allies, it chose to do so using ‘non-political’ art music. Indeed, in 1942 Ireland bemoaned the fact that the British Council had contributed £1,000 towards recording Walton's Belshazzar's Feast for propaganda – a role that he felt would have been better filled by These Things. Letter from Ireland to Bush (4 August 1942), The Correspondence of Alan Bush and John Ireland, ed. O'Higgins, 144–5. Furthermore, Epic March was not even included in the BBC's Special Music Recordings Catalogue of the era, in which Ireland was represented by 13 wartime recordings: ten solo songs, his Second Sonata for Violin and Piano, Sea Fever and Comedy Overture. BBC, Special Music Recordings Catalogue (1947), 144.

113 W. R. A., [untitled].

114 H. R., ‘A Fine Ireland March’, Sunday Times (28 June 1942), 6; R. E., [untitled]; ‘London Concerts’, Musical Times, 83 (1942), 222–3.

115 H. R., ‘A Fine Ireland March’.

116 Blom, ‘Some New Ireland Works’, 3.

117 Blom, ‘Some New Ireland Works’, 3.

118 In one of his most bitter letters to the BBC on the subject, Ireland exclaimed: ‘This work was commissioned by the B.B.C. at the request of the Ministry of Information, and at the time I accepted the commission I was led to infer that it was for the purpose of stimulating the war effort. Otherwise, i.e. if the only object was to give a British composer a small job, there was not much point in the idea, and I did not undertake the work to earn the small fee I was paid but in order to produce something in music that would really assist the national war effort, by stirring up people's feelings. It is therefore not unnatural that I feel disappointed that my efforts have been in vain. I quite realize that 5 or 6 broadcasts of any ordinary work in 18 months is considerably more than one could reasonably expect, but in this case the circumstances are different, as the work was written for propaganda purposes.’ Letter from Ireland to Ronald Binge (3 November 1943), BBC WAC, RCONT-1-2b. See also Letter from Ireland to Boult (21 July 1943), BBC WAC, RCONT-1-2b.

119 Letter from Ireland to Boult (13 August 1945), BBC WAC, RCONT-1-2c.

120 Epic March was one of 15 pieces by British composers played before the service in Westminster Abbey. To my knowledge, in all the reviews and newspaper coverage it appeared only once, in ‘Music for the Coronation’, Musical Times, 95 (1953), 305–7. In addition to its première, Epic March was performed in three Prom seasons: 1943, 1945 and 1946; it has not been revived since.

121 Letter from Ireland to Bush (20 February 1945), The Correspondence of Alan Bush and John Ireland, ed. O'Higgins, 167–9.

122 Although none of the BBC's wartime commissions achieved much notoriety, there are examples of propaganda music that proved more successful. In particular, the popularity of a number of widely acclaimed contemporary film scores was enhanced when they were adapted for concert performance. For example, Walton produced the Spitfire Prelude and Fugue from his score for First of the Few (1942) and a suite from his music for Henry V (1944). Walton also had more luck in getting such music recorded: the Hallé recorded the Spitfire in 1943 (HMV C3359), while in 1946 EMI released Scenes from Henry V, which presented music from the film with Laurence Olivier speaking lines from the play over it (EMI 5 65007 2). In contrast, Epic March remained unrecorded until after the war, when Boosey & Hawkes eventually recorded it on their own label in an unsuccessful attempt to increase its distribution.

123 Ireland had previously assured Bush that Epic March would be a ‘sincere work’ and that he was not doing it for the ‘paltry fee’. Letter from Ireland to Bush (15 July 1941). These Things eventually fell out of Ireland's favour as well. Longmire reports that the last time he discussed this work with Ireland the latter said that ‘he had positively grown to hate it and that it no longer had any meaning for him’ (John Ireland, 92–3).

124 Herbert Farjeon, ‘The Theatre: Sadler's Wells Ballet (New Theatre)’, The Tatler and Bystander, 2083 (28 May 1941), 308.

125 Haskell, ‘War, Ballet and National Culture’, 45.

126 Letter from Ireland to Ronald Binge (3 November 1943).

127 Virginia Woolf, ‘Middlebrow’, The Death of the Moth and Other Essays (New York, 1942), 180–4 (p. 180).

128 Chowrimootoo, ‘The Timely Traditions of Albert Herring’, 409–11.