Music of Sussex

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.

Folk Music

Traditional music

Of all the counties in England, it is Sussex that appears to have drawn the greatest attention from folk song collectors over a period of some 130 years. This was due to a flourishing tradition of folk dance, mummers plays (known in Sussex as Tipteers' or Tipteerers' plays) and folk song, but also in part because of the rural nature of the county in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and yet its relatively close proximity to London.

Passed on through oral tradition, many of Sussex's traditional songs may not have changed significantly for centuries, with their origins perhaps dating as far back as the time of the South Saxons. Writing in 1752, John Burton commented on the "sharp pitch" and "goatish noise" of the Sussexians, which William Henry Hudson thought still held true when writing nearly 150 years later. Hudson also commented on the Sussex people's "love of high-pitched voices and, in the many of their ballads, their go-as-you-please tuneless tuneful manner, with the prolonging of some notes at random and 'bleating out of goatish noises'", comparing the singing of the Sussexians with that of the Basques and the Tehuelche people of Patagonia, both peoples with ancient cultures.

In the Sussex tradition there is a strong vein of lyrical songs reflecting the life of the countryside and romance. There are also ballads, drinking songs and songs that capture the 'Silly Sussex' humour of the county.

Folk song collecting

Perhaps the earliest of collections was made by the Rev John Broadwood in 1843, published as Old English Songs - as now sung by the Peasantry of the Weald of Surrey and Sussex. His niece, Lucy Broadwood, published the anthologies Sussex Songs, English County Songs and English Traditional Songs and Carols. Probably because of the presence of the Broadwoods in the area, most of the traditional Sussex music collected in the early days of the folk revival came from around Horsham. Classical musicians who also explored the Sussex repertoire include Percy Grainger and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Grainger was rather cavalier in his appropriation of the folk melodies he recorded from all over the world, including arrangements of old Sussex tunes such as The Merry King and the Sussex Mummers' Christmas Carol. (Mummers are known in Sussex dialect are known as Tipteers or Tipteerers.) Singer, Henry Burstow, was known to have over 400 songs in his repertoire. Ralph Vaughan Williams' use of the tune of Our Captain Calls All Hands as sung by Harriett Verrall of Monks Gate, near Horsham, as a setting for John Bunyan’s To be a Pilgrim and George Butterworth’s arrangement of Folk Songs from Sussex. The tune used by Harriett Verrall was also used by Vaughan Williams in what subsequently became known as the Sussex Carol. Using early sound-recording equipment, Vaughan Williams was able to make actual recordings of some songs, including a 1907 version of The Trees They Do Grow High as sung by David Penfold, the landlord of the Plough Inn at Rusper.

Kate Lee, one the founders of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, found James 'Brasser' Copper and his brother Thomas, the landlord of the Black Horse public house in Rottingdean. In the 1950s Brasser's son Jim, grandson, Bob and others were featured by the BBC and broadcast The Life of James Copper, honouring him with a front cover photo on the Radio Times and asked to sing in London's Royal Albert Hall.

Sometimes song lyrics were recorded with some censorship, such as the Sussex Whistling Song and the Horn Fair song. Sung to the tune of Lillibullero and edited for its coarseness, the Sussex Whistling Song describes the Devil's dislike of the wife of a Sussex farmer in which the refrain was whistled. As is usual in Sussex lore, the Devil is depicted in a foolish light, in this case 'the wife' gets the better of him. In 1861 Mark Antony Lower wrote that "The effect, when continued by strong whistles of a group of lusty countrymen, is very striking, and cannot be adequately conveyed by description."

The Horn Fair song was written about a fair known for its drinking and licentiousness. Sussex drinking songs include the Sussex Toast and Twankydillo. Writer Hilaire Belloc, who spent most of his life in the county, enjoyed traditional Sussex singing, writing two drinking songs, the Sussex Drinking Song, which was set to music by Martyn Wyndham-Read, and the West Sussex Drinking Song, which was put to music in 1921 by Ivor Gurney. Belloc wrote about singing as if it were the soul of Sussex and a key part of its identity. Sung at the annual dinner of the now-defunct Men of Sussex Society, The Song o' the Sussex Men, written in Sussex dialect by Arthur Beckett, contains verses about various characters associated with Sussex including St Wilfrid, St Cuthman, St Dunstan, John Dudeney, Tom Paine, Tom Tipper, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Richard Cobden and the Devil.

Songs were sometimes associated with ritual. Turn the Cup Over was a one-verse song which would be sung after completion of the summer's harvest and would be held in the open air or in a large hall. A 'chairman' would be appointed to pass the cup to each man in turn, who would drink while the other men sang. After his drink, the drinker would have to use the hat to throw the cup into the air and catch it as it fell. Failure to do so would compel the man to go through the ceremony again. Singing in the pub would also have ritualised elements. The 'chairman' would decide who should sing next. Some men, particularly older men, would have a song they would always sing, and it would have been considered impertinence for anyone else to attempt it.

Other singers included Michael Blann, a shepherd from Upper Beeding, George Attrill from Stopham, Hastings fisherman Noah Gillette. Often singing unaccompanied, Sussex's folk music also had musicians, including renowned fiddler, Michael Turner of Warnham. Some singers like George 'Pop' Maynard in Copthorne and George 'Spike' Spicer in Selsfield in the Ashdown Forest gained a following from beyond their native Sussex.

Folk revival

In the 1960s, English folk music went through a revival of interest, which was also true of folk music in Sussex. Scan Tester's recordings were published posthumously in the 1990 album I Never Played to Many Posh Dances (sometimes misquoted as "I Never Played Too Many Posh Dances"). Tester wa an accomplished musician, playing the concertina, melodeon, bandoneon and fiddle. Sisters Dolly and Shirley Collins from Hastings gained some popularity in the 1960s, producing the 1967 album of mainly Sussex tunes, The Sweet Primeroses as well as the 1969 album Anthems in Eden. Founding Sussex's first folk club in 1958, Tony Wales also recorded the first LP of Sussex Folk Songs and Ballads in 1957 on the Folkways Records label in New York, and in 1961 organised the first Horsham Folk Festival.

21st century

Singing under the name Young Coppers, the young generation of the Copper Family of Rottingdean continue the family tradition of singing, in what is at least the seventh generation to do so. Brighton-based folk-punk band The Levellers who formed in 1988 continue to play, winning the Roots Award at the 2011 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.

The county has over twenty folk clubs and other venues hosting folk music by organisations such as Acoustic Sussex. There are also annual folk music festivals at Eastbourne, Crawley and Lewes. In 2012, Sussex's traditional folk songs were being taught to new generations as part of a project by the South Downs Society, with money from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Classical music

Sussex has also been home to many composers of classical music. Perhaps the first was Edmund Turges whose choral works from the Renaissance era were included in the Caius Choirbook, which seems to have originated in Arundel, and the Eton Choirbook.

Sometimes considered one of England's finest composers, Elizabethan madrigalist, Thomas 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. Arnold Bax retired to Storrington, although wrote little of importance there.

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 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.

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 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.

The Chichester Psalms is a choral work by Leonard Bernstein for boy treble or countertenor, solo quartet, choir and orchestra. Commissioned for the 1965 Southern Cathedrals' Festival at Chichester Cathedral by the cathedral's organist, John Birch, and the Dean, Walter Hussey, the world premiere took place in the Philharmonic Hall, New York.

While Glyndebourne is one of the world's best known opera houses, the county is home to professional orchestras the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra and the Worthing Symphony Orchestra.

Music for radio, television and cinema

Inspired by the view across the English Channel from Selsey towards Bognor Regis, By the Sleepy Lagoon by Eric Coates has been used by BBC Radio 4 as the opening theme music for Desert Island Discs since 1942.

Coates lived on the Manhood peninsula, initially at Selsey and later at Sidlesham.

Jazz

Nat Gonella was part of the Brighton jazz scene and also a resident of Saltdean. In 2005, jazz pianist and vocalist Liane Carroll won two BBC Jazz Awards, while jazz composer and pianist Zoe Rahman received a Mercury Prize nomination for her 2006 album Melting Pot. Brighton-based singer Claire Martin has one the Best Vocalist award in the British Jazz Awards five times.

Rock and popular music

The 1970s were significant in Sussex as a field outside Worthing hosted Phun City, the UK's first large-scale free music festival and the Brighton Dome hosted the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest that propelled ABBA to worldwide fame.

The Kooks at the Hurricane Festival, Germany 2006

Disco singer Leo Sayer achieved some fame, while The Cure began their long career in gothic indie rock. Sussex bands achieved only limited success in the 1980s, with The Popguns being one of the best-known and These Animal Men achieving minor fame as part of the so-called New wave of new wave. Brett Anderson from Haywards Heath formed Suede in 1989, winning the 1993 Mercury Prize for their debut album Suede. Guitarist Richard Durrant also began his career in the 1980s. The 1990s saw an increase in bands from Sussex including Keane, whose debut album Hopes and Fears won a Brit Award and a Mercury Prize nomination, The Feeling, Toploader and Clearlake. Phats & Small achieved some success in dance music.

The 21st century saw an increase in popular bands from Sussex, and Brighton in particular, as well as seeing the formation of the Brighton Institute of Modern Music, in collaboration with the University of Sussex. Popular bands include British Sea Power (nominated for a Mercury Prize for Do You Like Rock Music?), The Go! Team (nominated for a Mercury Prize for Thunder, Lightning, Strike), The Kooks, The Electric Soft Parade (nominated for a Mercury Prize for Holes in the Wall), The Ordinary Boys, The Pipettes, Brakes, Architects, Blood Red Shoes and Dead Swans. In 2002, Brighton-based Norman Cook (aka Fatboy Slim) held a concert on Brighton beach, attended by 250,000.

External links

• Sussex Music by Marcus Weeks (2008), first 20 pages available as a PDF file