8. British music.

The earliest surviving piece of composed music in the UK is the setting of the folk song “Summer is a-coming in” the manuscript comes from Reading Abbey. 1260 is created day. Church music and religious music was profoundly affected by the Protestant Reformation which affected Britain from the 16th century, which curtailed events associated with British music and forced the development of distinctive national music, worship and belief. 15^th century John Dunstaple was England’s most celebrated composer. Manuscript music in England was lost during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, some of his works have been reconstructed liturgical music with an instrumental accompaniment. Early 17^th century Henry VIII of England played various instruments. He had a collection 78 recorders. Music was used in the theatre of the time including within the plays of William Shakespeare. In addition there were masques. The Civil War and Commonwealth period (1642-1660) Church music was prohibited. Music moved into domestic settings. The first opera performed in Britain, promoted by Sir William Damerat. 18^th century George Frederic Handle. Orchestral music (such as the music for the Royal Fireworks) 19^th century. Classical music. 1813 the London Philharmonic society was established. Royal Academy of music 1822. The emergence of a “national” style in late 19^th century classical music in the UK. 20^th century 1920s- young people listened to ragtime and jazz. 1930s –Swing became popular. Benny Goodman and his orchestra “King of the Swing”1940s – World War II brought fast frantic dance music – boogie-woogie. Dances were held in church halls, village halls, clubs. Romantic songs were also popular. 1950s – Rock and Roll 1960s – “the Beatles”. Favorites of the “Flower Power” generation. The Rolling Stones – London rock and roll. 1970s – “gleam rock” David Bowie, Elton John, Gary Glitter. Pink Floyed, Queen, Led Zeppelin.

9. British art

The oldest art in England can be dated to the Neolithic period, including the large ritual landscapes such as Stonehenge from c. 2600 BC. In the 4th century, a new element was introduced as the first Christian art was made in Britain. Several mosaics with Christian symbols and pictures have been preserved. The style of Romano-British art follows that of the continent. From the period when the great Renaissance masters are at work in Italy, the Netherlands or Germany, there is no English artist whose name survives. When English kings and nobles want their portrait painted, they look to continental Europe for someone with the necessary skills. By far the most distinguished painter to fulfil this function is Hans Holbein, who spends thirteen years in England between 1526 and 1543. Beginning in the early eighteenth century, English artists began to develop their own styles in marine and allegorical painting. The late eighteenth century saw a growing interest in landscape painting. Sir Joshua Reynolds was an influential 18th-century English painter, specialising in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect. He was one of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy. King George III appreciated his merits and knighted him in 1769. Reynolds was born in Plympton, Devon, on 16 July 1723. As one of ten (maybe eleven) children and the son of the village school-master, Reynolds was restricted to a formal education provided by his father. Showing an early interest in art, Reynolds was apprenticed in 1740 to the fashionable portrait painter Thomas Hudson. From 1749 to 1752, he spent over two years in Italy (Rome), where he studied the Old Masters and acquired a taste for the "Grand Style". Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter. At the age of thirteen he impressed his father with his penciling skills so that he let him go to London to study art in 1740. He idealized people. John Constable was an English Romantic painter and artist (the beginning 19^th) He was the member of the Royal Academy. He is known principally for his landscape paintings of Dedham Vale. Constable quietly rebelled against the artistic culture that taught artists to use their imagination to compose their pictures rather than nature itself. Joseph Mallord William Turner was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting. He is commonly known as "the painter of light" and his work regarded as a Romantic preface to Impressionism.