page_title: Music of Sussex
section_title: Classical music
hierarchical_section_title: Music of Sussex / Classical music
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams
context_page_description: The historic county of Sussex in southern England has a rich musical heritage that encompasses the genres of folk, classical and rock and popular music amongst others. With the unbroken survival of its indigenous music, Sussex was at the forefront of the English folk music revivals of the 19th and 20th centuries. Many classical composers have found inspiration in Sussex, and the county continues to have a thriving musical scene across the musical genres. In Sussex by the Sea, the county has its own unofficial anthem.
  Perhaps the first known musical instrument from Sussex is the so-called 'Sussex horn', a variant of the Bronze Age Irish horn. Dating from around 900BC this instrument was found in the late 18th century at the bottom of a well in Battle.
context_section_description: Sussex has also been home to many composers of classical music.  It is highly likely that two of the three English choirbooks that survive from the early Tudor period originated in Sussex. The Caius Choirbook was presented from the Master of Arundel College to St Stephen's Chapel in Westminster; the Lambeth Choirbook (or Arundel Choirbook) remained at Arundel as a working choirbook. The Arundel choirbook contains works by several composers including Walter Lambe, a former lay clerk at Arundel. The Caius choirbook includes work by Edmund Turges. A tradition of performing polyphonic music was probably firmly entrenched by the end of the fifteenth century.
  In 1588 Lewes-born singer Nicholas Yonge published the Musica transalpina, a collection of Italian madrigals with their words translated into English.  These works were played by another Sussexian, Thomas Weelkes.  Sometimes considered one of England's finest composers, Weelkes was better known as a drunkard than for his music.
  Composer Ralph Vaughan Williams went to school in Rottingdean and married Adeline Fisher, daughter of historian Herbert William Fisher and cousin of writer Virginia Woolf and painter Vanessa Bell, in Hove in 1897.  After collecting folk songs in Sussex, Vaughan Williams wrote Sussex Carol, which was the last of three carols he used in his Fantasia on Christmas Carols.  Vaughan Williams used five folk songs he found in Sussex for the basis of his Fantasia on Sussex Folk Tunes. During the 1890s Gustav Holst played the trombone in the White Viennese Band on Brighton Pier under Stanislaus Wurm. Holst's ashes rest in the North transept of Chichester Cathedral.
  At the start of the Second World War Arnold Bax moved to Storrington, where he lived at the White Horse Inn.
  Perhaps more than any other composer, John Ireland found inspiration for his music in the Sussex countryside, particularly the downland around Chanctonbury Ring. On his first visit he stayed in Ashington and over the next 30 years stayed frequently in Amberley, Ashington, Shipley and Steyning.  Ireland's works inspired by the Sussex countryside include A Downland Suite, Amberley Wild Brooks, Legend for Piano and Orchestra (referring to a legend of ghostly children from a leper colony to be seen on Harrow Hill); Piano Sonata and Cello Sonatas inspired by the Devil's Jumps barrows.
  Sir Hubert Parry, composed the music for anthem Jerusalem at his Rustington home. The words to And did those feet in ancient time had also been written in Sussex over a hundred years earlier by William Blake whilst living in Felpham. At Knights Croft House in Rustington, Parry wrote the Symphonic Fantasia '1912' (also called Symphony No. 5), the Ode on the Nativity and the Songs of Farewell.  Parry also wrote Shulbrede Tunes after his daughter, Dorothea, and son-in-law, Arthur Ponsonby, moved to medieval Shulbrede Priory in Linchmere.
  Sir Edward Elgar lived near Fittleworth from 1917 and while there wrote some of his finest chamber music including the A minor Piano Quintet and Cello Concerto before moving to Kempsey in Worcestershire. Debussy completed La mer in Eastbourne and wrote Reflets dans l'eau about an ornamental pond in Eastbourne's Devonshire Park. Sussex contralto Clara Butt was the first person to perform Elgar's Land of Hope and Glory.
  Born of a working-class family in Brighton in 1879, Frank Bridge attended the Brighton School of Music, then joined the Royal College of Music in London, where he received the highest praise from Sir Hubert Parry.  Bridge bought land on the South Downs at Friston where he had a cottage built.
  It was here that he wrote the orchestral suite The Sea, the Piano Sonata dedicated to composer Ernest Farrar, who was killed in action in France in World War One, Enter Spring (originally entitled On Friston Down), Oration for Cello and Orchestra, Phantasm for Piano and Orchestra, the Piano Trio No. 2, the Rebus Overture, the Violin Sonata No. 2, and the third and fourth String Quartets.
  Probably Sussex's best-known native female composer, Ruth Gipps produced several orchestral work
caption: Ralph Vaughan Williams made several classical compositions based on the Sussex folk songs he recorded
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