Professional Composers: Study Abroad and the Macnaghten–Lemare Concerts

There were our English composers reiterating folksongish [sic] platitudes (or so it seemed to me), and there was Stravinsky, Bartók, Hindemith and a new world of sound … Stravinsky so Russian, Bartók so Hungarian and Hindemith so German. It all seemed … a glorious future whilst England seemed to be rustically resuscitating songs no one had heard of … [T]his confrontation of different styles [was bewildering] … There was no getting away from the fact that I wasn’t Russian, Hungarian or German. I was English. ¹