Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The English composer Rutland Boughton (1878-1960) is remembered as the composer of The Immortal Hour, the opera which enjoyed the greatest number of consecutive performances the world has ever known. But his contribution to modern music goes beyond this famous piece. In 1914 he established his own Beyreuth at Glastonbury where, against all odds, he ran a series of increasingly ambitious festivals until, in 1927, he allowed his socialist principles to undermine everything he had achieved. His unconventional views on life and marriage earned him notoriety in his lifetime and made him one of England's most colorful and courageous composers. Michael Hurd has radically revised and significantly expanded his 1962 biography of Boughton. With the help of his friends and colleagues, including a hilarious series from George Bernard Shaw, he charts the career of the most significant and innovative British opera composer of his day. Catalogues of Boughton's compositions and literary works, together with complete cast lists of the Glastonbury Festivals, 62 music examples, and numerous photographs, complete this definitive account of an extraordinary man and his music.

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CHOICE Review

Hurd, who has written on Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Britten, and Tippett, admits to an obsessive interest in Boughton, yet says his "finest works have a genuine originality and inhabit a world that is uniquely their own"; moreover, those works once moved many, including George Bernard Shaw and Vaughan Williams, to expressions of sincere congratulations. This richly detailed biography-cum-musical appreciation reveals an extraordinary man who strove to establish a national theater devoted to British "music-drama," a form of opera carrying on Wagnerian theories while giving a "natural" musical voice to the English (Celtic-influenced) language and to British mythology. The project included the Glastonbury Festivals (intermittent, 1914-27), the Glastonbury Summer Music Schools, classes in "Hellenic Dancing," two arguably successful dramas (The Immortal Hour, recently recorded, and the "choral drama" Bethlehem), and a cycle of five "Arthurian" music-dramas. Unfortunately, despite the testimonials alluded to, Hurd's many musical examples do not inspire a more favorable judgment; surely the CDs of Boughton's 3rd Symphony and first Oboe Concerto are more persuasive? Boughton was, for a short while, a British musician/entrepreneur to be reckoned with. He was also a sometime socialist/communist and a man with a highly active, not entirely admirable, sexual life. Fascinating, but mainly for those who relish the byways of British music. W. Metcalfe; University of Vermont