ABSTRACT
England’s musical influence and achievements had been more extensive in the era of the enlightenment than most educated English musicians and music-lovers were aware. Open-mindedness towards the latest phenomena of musical art finds it relatively easy to co-exist with the denigration of the home-grown and the exaltation of the foreign. Britain has been shown, in the course of developments, to have misrepresented itself in a way that testified to its ignorance of its musical riches, rather than to false modesty. Official promotion of British music on the Continent has not always been blunted by tact. The decisive factor in whether Britain retains and improves its current status as one fully paid-up member of a community of musical nations is almost certainly education. If such a retrograde development is firmly banished from the musical agenda, British music is in a good condition to enjoy the artistic benefits that Britain’s deeper, less selective involvement in European affairs might bring.
