Some British Musical Responses to the Spanish Civil War

When writing on the Spanish Civil War for the Guardian in 2007, Eric Hobsbawm remembered it was the artists, writers and poets who documented it by means of ‘the pen, the brush and the camera’. Absent in Hobsbawm’s recollections is any mention of music or musical performance. Taking Alan Bush’s 1939 Popular Front spectacle, Festival of Music for the People as a point of departure, this article explores some of the myriad musical responses to the Spanish Civil War, including a commission for the young Benjamin Britten, Frida Stewart’s work with the Basque refugee children’s choirs and the activism of the celebrity singer Paul Robeson. These responses involved music in fundamentally different ways, from the creation of new art music for a political cause to the use of music in social action. Taken together they provide a glimpse of Britain’s diverse and multifaceted musical response to the question of Spain.