Historical revivalism has proved to be an ever-constant thread in the reception of Vaughan Williams and his contemporaries. Question of cultural heritage and national history were pressing ones during Vaughan Williams’s lifetime, both as topics of academic study and subjects of popular appeal. England in this period drew enormous pride from its literary and artistic history, and this history in turn fuelled a national image that helped create a sense of a unique national destiny. For the period’s perceived musical ‘renaissance’, similarly, the important influence of English heritage and the nation’s historical musical canon on new English works was a persistent trope.

It is important, however, to create more nuanced accounts of how historical revivalism figured in English musical modernism. In this chapter, I focus on three main elements in English musical revivalism during Vaughan Williams’s lifetime. First, I explore contemporary attitudes towards history, English musicological writing during the period, and new attitudes towards manuscripts and archival research. I then outline how the products of music historians and archival researchers created actual performances of early music via editions and concerts. Finally, I note the expansion of this ‘sounding’ early music into spaces where historical music could be marketed as an element of mass culture.

The reception of Brahms’s music beyond his home city of Hamburg began in 1853, when the young composer made his first extended journey and presented his compositions to some of the leading figures of German contemporary music: Robert Schumann, Robert Franz and Franz Liszt. Each reacted to these unpublished works in distinctive ways.

Robert Schumann, with whom Brahms spent the whole month of October in Düsseldorf,was instantly enthralled.

Brahms holds a special place among the major instrumental composers in that not only does his life straddle major changes in instrumental design and performance practices, but that recollections and sound recordings exist by younger contemporaries to illustrate these. Indeed, there is sufficient evidence to encourage many different perspectives, and the field has become one of lively debate. In this, there are two extremes of interpretation: first the historically driven view that stresses fundamental differences of instruments and performing styles; second, a traditional view of continuity from the past that accepts modern adaptation and expression of these factors. Although the latter is not essentially concerned with historical issues, it cannot be ignored because it represents a permanent counterweight to the historical approach, which remains problematic for many in its implications for modern performance style and social function [see Ch. 23 ‘Instruments’].