ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Rubbra’s deeply spiritual response to nature, placing it within the context of English nature mysticism. The influences preceding and following Rubbra’s 1930 s move to the Chiltern countryside are discussed: the idealism of William Morris’ Arts and Crafts movement, his friendships with composer Gerald Finzi and artist Cecil Collins and his proximity to Eric Gill’s artistic community at Pigotts, which introduced him to distributism and Jacques Maritain’s Catholic aesthetics. The ‘Canto’ from Rubbra’s Sixth Symphony is analysed against this rustic backdrop. Rubbra uses pastoral and military musical topics to paint an intimate picture of his relationship with his second wife, Antoinette, their cottage home and the vicissitudes of the war years. The first movement of the Piano Concerto in G bears the descriptive title ‘Corymbus’. The pattern of organic growth defining this botanical formation is reflected in the movement’s structure, in which the main sections of a sonata form grow successively longer throughout the movement. Golden Section proportions, a common feature of botanical growth patterns, are also identified within the movement. Such intricacies return in Rubbra’s choral suite Inscape, where they represent the pattern and design of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poetry as well as divine immanence in nature.
