Rule Brittania!

The British Isles has a long a proud history of music-making, and many of the greatest composers that our small island has produced are shown on my painted watercolour map.

I love music of all kinds, from classical from hard rock, Thomas Tallis to Black Sabbath. If it’s got a great tune it moves me, then it’s done its job. So when I was asked to paint this, my only problem was that I couldn’t begin immediately!

This painting was commissioned as a gift to a young man mad about music – specifically piano and choral – from his grandmother. The composers that appear on my musical map are her choice, from some of the earliest, producing hauntingly beautiful sacred music, to contemporary composers, writing for modern media such as radio and film.

Britain’s most celebrated composers and some of our best loved tunes

Ralph Vaughan Williams is perhaps the British composer that everybody has heard of. On my painting he’s represented by his ost famous tune ‘The Lark Ascending.’  I’ve heard it a million times and its beauty still has the power to reduce me to a snivelling wreck.

Edward Elgar’s contribution to modern classical music cannot be understated. Inspired by walks across the Malvern Hills, his ‘hits’ include ‘Nimrod’ from the Enigmas Variations, and the Pomp and Circumstance marches, which includes the tune ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ guaranteed to stir the hearts of British audiences everywhere. On my painting, I have represented Elgar with cellist Jacqueline De Pre whose rendition of his Cello Concerto in E minor is considered to be legendary.

Gustav Holst’s most well-known and best-loved work is The Planets. He wrote a ton of other marvellous stuff too, but ‘Jupiter, the bringer of jollity’, in my view, takes some beating!

It was Hubert Parry who took William Blake’s poem ‘Jerusalem’ wrote a tune for it and in doing so created an unofficial national anthem.

John Tavener and John Taverner

No, I haven’t made a mistake. Yes, there are two John Ts. An ancient one Taverner (c. 1490 –1545) and a modern one. The modern Tavener (1944 – 2013) came to public attention when his Song for Athene was played at the funeral of Princess Diana in 1997.  Taverner was the subject of an opera by Peter Maxwell Davies who also appears on my painting.