In this second volume of selections from his journalism, written over four decades between 1907 and 1946, the maverick English composer Havergal Brian (1876-1972) directs his enquiring mind at the music being composed in France, Germany, Italy and elsewhere, while he and his British contemporaries were fighting to establish new music at home. Richard Strauss figures prominently among the composers discussed, beginning with reviews of Halle and Queen's Hall concerts in 1907 and 1910. But even Strauss was not treated as lavishly as another whose music clearly fascinated Brian deeply: Arnold...

This first volume of selections of his writings brings together many of Brian's principal writings on the composers and events of the British Musical Renaissance from polemical articles written when actively campaigning for his fellow-composers in the Midlands before World War I to more considered appraisals of the inter-War period. As well as discussing a wide range of composers, from Elgar and Delius to Britten and Billy Mayerl, he can be found here reviewing festivals, adjudicating at brass-band championships at the Crystal Palace (and watching the Palace burn down in 1936), proposing...