ABSTRACT
The song cycle requires unusual versatility from the contralto, who must sing across the passagio of the voice, excessively crossing the break between the lower and upper registers identified as "masculine" and "feminine," in order to perform the rise and fall of Sapphic song. The Sappho "composed" by Wharton as a musical figure for lyric was thus "recomposed" by the Bantocks as lyrical figure for music. Designed to help readers translate Greek letters into a lyrical image of Sappho, Wharton's book inspired the Bantocks to re-imagine the lyrics of Sappho in song. In 1904 the Bantocks moved to Birmingham, where Granville was appointed Principal of the School of Music, and in 1908 he took over Edward Elgar's chair as Peyton Professor of Music at Birmingham University. Rowbotham narrates the history of music as a chronological progression through different instruments: the drum stage, the pipe stage, and the lyre stage, evolving from primitive music to higher forms of musical expression.
