Post-war inspirations

What other works emerged in 1919?

Over the course of World War I,

Elgar’s close contemporary Stanford, a professor at the Royal College of Music, learnt of the deaths of several former pupils, not least the composer George Butterworth. Badly affected, Stanford paid his respects to the fallen in two works: an orchestral tone poem called

A song of Agincourt and the large-scale Mass ‘Via Victrix’ – the latter of these, however, was doomed to gather dust for nearly a century, only enjoying its first complete performance in Cardiff in October 2018 (see Brief notes, p102). Formally commissioned to write a symphony to celebrate the Treaty of Versailles, meanwhile, was the Brazilian Villa-lobos. He subtitled the resulting Symphony No. 3 ‘A Guerra’ (War) and followed it later that same year with his Fourth Symphony, subtitled ‘A Vitória’ (Victory). A composer with whom Villa-lobos had recently come into contact was Milhaud, who had spent time during the War visiting Brazil and lapping up its culture. Composed on his return to Europe, Milhaud’s ballet Le boeuf sur le toit is a riot of Brazilian-influenced colour that gave its name to a Parisian bar as the good times returned to the city.

A number of important stage works enjoyed their first outing in 1919. In February, the audience at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen enjoyed Nielsen’s incidental music for a new production of Oehlenschläger’s Aladdin, and in July Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes proudly presented the premiere of Falla’s ballet The Three-cornered Hat at London’s Alhambra, complete with stage designs by Picasso. It went down well, unlike Richard Strauss’s opera Die Frau ohne Schatten which, in October, left its Vienna audience bemused. The year was also a strong one for the viola, with both Hindemith and Rebecca Clarke completing important sonatas for the instrument. Finally, Bax put the finishing touches to his tone-poem Tintagel, inspired by a romantic holiday spent in Cornwall with the pianist Harriet Cohen two years earlier.