Constant Lambert: Dionysian Modernist

Abstract

This thesis considers the music of the English composer Constant Lambert (1905–51) against the background of European modernism. It argues that Lambert absorbed influences and stylistic trends from various strands of the modernist movement, achieving a unique synthesis that may be termed Dionysian modernism. Dionysian modernism emphasizes such topics as excess, transgression, liminality, disruption, and fragmentation, and in so doing engages dialectically with what were then culturally dominant notions of race, class, gender, and sexuality. The study treats Lambert’s works as belonging to three stylistic periods: his student years (1922–6), during which he experimented with various modernist approaches, Neoclassicism being the most prominent; his ‘jazz period’ (1927–31), which produced a series of concert works combining jazz elements with an angular, sometimes harsh, Neoclassical language; and his mature period (1932–51), in which he integrated aspects of his earlier stylistic experimentation into a coherent, personal modernist language. The study focuses upon the three major works of the mature period: the choral masque Summer’s Last Will and Testament (1932–5) and the ballets Horoscope (1936–7) and Tiresias (1950–1), all dramatic works that include direct reference to the notion of the Dionysian. The analytical chapters of the thesis investigate Lambert’s treatment of form, rhythm, and melody in these works, with emphasis on the movements that contain overt titular or textual Dionysian references (e.g. ‘Bacchanale’ or ‘Bacchus’). From this analysis, the study concludes that these stylistic characteristics combine to provide a musical embodiment of the Dionysian that entails critical engagement with the aforementioned notions of race, class, gender, and sexuality.