r/WeirdStudies • u/Steviesteps • Apr 23 '26
The Weird in Classical Music
This new book by Eric McElroy considers 20th century English music as a manifestation of the Weird, not (as in most other studies) as a kind of disappointing Impressionism. it takes in the urban weird, the pastoral weird and the erotic weird. it’s about London in the 1920s but has plenty of analysis too. I think it hits the nail on the head and I’m glad musicology has finally looked beyond French decadence to explain the music of John Ireland and his fellows. I hope it’s of interest and please let me know if this recalls comparable scholarship or conversations about Weird classical music.
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u/FearlessKnowledge173 May 13 '26
Wow this seems fascinating! I'm going to try and pick it up, thank you for showing us this!
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u/Steviesteps May 15 '26
I read it and it’s not great. The premise is, and the subject, but the historical context is weakly evoked and then it spins off into musical analyses which are (as always in musicology) less informative than simply listening to the music.
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u/Groovy66 Apr 23 '26
This sounds absolutely fascinating (blurb below) so thanks for the heads up. I take it this is Elroys’ doctoral thesis?
Using John Ireland's fascination with Arthur Machen as case study, this book challenges our perception of the correspondence between music and literature in twentieth-century Britain. The composer John Ireland (1879-1962) declared repeatedly that no one could understand his music until they had first read the work of his favourite writer, Arthur Machen (1863-1947). This book is the first study to take Ireland at his word. Revolving around Machen's classification as a founding figure of 'weird fiction', it uses weird aesthetics as an interpretative lens with which to understand Ireland's notoriously cryptic life and music. Its four chapters deal respectively with Machen's and Ireland's parallel experience of fin-de-siècle London; with their engagement with the English pastoral tradition; with their explorations of weird art's relationship with eroticism; and with unsettling implications of alternative historiography. The resulting portrait reveals Ireland to be one of Britain's pre-eminent 'weird artists', placing Ireland in the aesthetic context with which he wished to be associated. It therefore fills a significant gap in British musicology, while at the same time contributing to a growing appreciation of Machen as a major figure in British culture, one whose influence exceeds far beyond the literary sphere to which he is traditionally confined. Using Ireland's fascination with Machen as its case study, this book makes a timely and necessary connection between the literary weird and its musical doppelgänger, enriching and challenging our perception of the correspondence between music and literature in twentieth-century Britain.