Review: English Pastoral Music: from Arcadia to Utopia, 1900-1955. By Eric Saylor. University of Illinois Press, 2017.

Abstract

English pastoral music has not been given the proper scholarly attention it deserves. It has been one of Eric Saylor’s academic objectives to draw scholarly attention to this repertoire. He has published articles on this topic before, but English Pastoral Music: from Arcadia to Utopia, 19001955 is the first recent major publication that takes musical pastoralism seriously and dives into its intricate subtleties. Music critics have often described pastoral music as sentimental, nostalgic, and escapist (Saylor 2017, 3). Moreover, they deemed it inappropriate and horribly out of fashion amid the tumultuous new developments of modernism, especially after the Second World War. Critics were, for instance, more interested in works written in serial and neoclassical idioms, which were perceived as being more progressive (ibid., 171-2). As a result, pastoralism is misunderstood; pastoral music evokes certain bucolic landscapes, whether in topic or musical style, but its manifestations and its composers’ motivations vary widely. Contrary to these misconceptions, pastoral music encompasses a variety of styles, idioms, timbres, forms, and signifiers, and has been subject to diverse influences. Moreover, its composers all had their own motives to write their pieces.