‘BUGLES CALL’ attempts to provide a snapshot of the English music scene and its principal exponents during the period of the First World War and immediately afterwards, together with the military context. It includes the work of those who actually fought in the conflict, such as Butterworth, Moeran, Gurney, Bliss and Farrar; those who donned uniforms but were non-combatant through age or disposition, like Elgar and Vaughan Williams; and those like Bridge for whom pacifism alone was consistent with his moral and artistic principle. Although their wartime output was necessarily scarce, nevertheless it contains works of great beauty or popular fervour which only too readily remind us of the suffering and horror of war, yet are seldom purely tub-thumping or brutalist. Equally important are the post-war works that were influenced by their authors’ earlier experiences.

PHILIP REWSE MITCHELL is a solicitor and author. He has served on the Management Committee of The Elgar Birthplace Trust and is Vice-Chairman of the Friends of The English Music Festival.

EM MARSHALL-LUCK is the Founder-Director of The English Music Festival, and Managing Director of its subsidiary, EM Records. She is author of ‘Music in the Landscape’, published by Hale Publishing in 2011.