John France

My blogs

Industry	Arts
Location	United Kingdom
Introduction	I am over sixty years old: the end of the run of baby boomers! I was born in Glasgow, moving south to York in the late ‘seventies. My main interest is British Music from the nineteenth century onwards. I love the ‘arch-typical’ English countryside – and have always wanted to ‘Go West, Boy’. A. E. Housman and the ‘Georgian’ poets are a huge influence on my aesthetic. I have spent much of my life looking for the ‘Land of Lost Content’ and only occasionally glimpsed it…somewhere in…??? My recently published work includes essays on Ivor Gurney’s song ‘The Carol of Skiddaw Yowes.’ for the Gurney Society Journal, Alan Rawsthorne’s Cello Concerto for the Rawsthorne Society Journal and Delius song ‘I Brasil’. I have contributed to the journals of the British Music Society, the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society, the Finzi Society, the Bliss Society, the Glasgow Society of Organists, the Berkeley Society, and regular CD reviews for MusicWeb International. I regularly contribute programme notes to the English Music Festival.
Interests	British Music from about 1860 to 1960. Especially the so-called 'pastoral school.'
Favorite Music	Arnold Bax, Kenneth Leighton, Herbert Howells, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Elizabeth Maconchy, Frank Bridge, Edward Elgar, Charles Villiers Stanford, Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, Arthur Sullivan, Humphrey Searle