Weird Music

Reading John Ireland and Arthur Machen
Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-1-83765-290-7
Verlag: Boydell Press

Buch, Englisch, Band 37, 232 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 520 g

Reihe: Music in Britain, 1600-2000

Using John Ireland's fascination with Arthur Machen as case study, this book challenges our perception of the correspondence between music and literature in twentieth-century Britain.
The composer John Ireland (1879-1962) declared repeatedly that no one could understand his music until they had first read the work of his favourite writer, Arthur Machen (1863-1947). This book is the first study to take Ireland at his word. Revolving around Machen's classification as a founding figure of 'weird fiction', it uses weird aesthetics as an interpretative lens with which to understand Ireland's notoriously cryptic life and music. Its four chapters deal respectively with Machen's and Ireland's parallel experience of fin-de-siècle London; with their engagement with the English pastoral tradition; with their explorations of weird art's relationship with eroticism; and with unsettling implications of alternative historiography.

The resulting portrait reveals Ireland to be one of Britain's pre-eminent 'weird artists', placing Ireland in the aesthetic context with which he wished to be associated. It therefore fills a significant gap in British musicology, while at the same time contributing to a growing appreciation of Machen as a major figure in British culture, one whose influence exceeds far beyond the literary sphere to which he is traditionally confined. Using Ireland's fascination with Machen as its case study, this book makes a timely and necessary connection between the literary weird and its musical doppelgänger, enriching and challenging our perception of the correspondence between music and literature in twentieth-century Britain.

Autoren/Hrsg.

McElroy, Eric

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Gattungen
• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikgattungen Sinfonische Musik & Ensembles
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Ästhetik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Musical Examples
Acknowledgements

Introduction

PART 1: TRANSMUTATIONS OF PLACE
1. The Urban Weird: London Pieces and Ballade of London Nights
2. The Pastoral Weird: Legend

PART 2: TRANSMUTATIONS OF SELF
3. The Erotic Weird: Decorations
4. Becoming Weird: A Circular Discourse

Afterword: Solving the Cryptogram

Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

McElroy, Eric
ERIC MCELROY is an American composer, pianist, and musicologist. He holds degrees from Washington State University, Musik und Kunst Privatuniversität der Stadt Wien, the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, and a doctorate from the University of Oxford. His recordings may be heard on the Somm and Naxos labels (www.ericmcelroy.co.uk).