Music in Great Britain

Buckingham Palace, London

Among the most popular music at the height of the Victorian Era was the collaborative pair Gilbert & Sullivan (more properly, Sir W. S. Gilbert (1836 - 1911) and Sir Arthur Sullivan (1842 - 1900)), who wrote a number of popular comic operas. These lack the gravity characteristic of continental Romantic music, espousing a rollicking, lighthearted tone. Their most popular operas, H.M.S. Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance, parody the refined, aristocratic society of Great Britain. Many of the characters are incompetent, ignorant, or otherwise absurd charactures.

Patriotic songs, rousing pride in Britain's worldwide empire with the full majesty of the Romantic Period, were also very popular. The British anthem had been God Save the King (or Queen) since the seventeenth century. Also popular was Rule, Brittania!, the anthem of the British navy, composed by Thomas Arne in 1740.

At the height of the British Empire in the early twentieth century, composers continued drawing on British traditions in their compositions. One of English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams' most famous works is English Folk Song Suite, based on a number of traditional British folk songs and scored for military wind band. His Variations on a Theme of Thomas Tallis for string orchestra looks back to a hymntune by the Elizabethan-era composer.

Gustav Holst, most renowned for his orchestral suite "The Planets," set the poem I Vow to Thee, My Country and adapted it to one of the themes from "Jupiter" to create a patriotic hymn that was sung at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.