JMRA Collections: Prelude to afternoons of ultramodern synaesthetes: reflecting on discourses of the Musical Association 1912–1922

This themed journal issue (special collection) presents approaches to early musical modernism in the period around the First World War.

Six articles are collected from the archives of the Journal of the Royal Musical Association, covering the period 1912–1922: a significant decade historically, encompassing both the height and the hinterlands of the First World War; and musically, being the genesis of highly influential works by Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and others. It also saw, and provides a context for, the early musical and critical publications of lesser-known figures Kaikhosru Sorabji and Philip Heseltine (Peter Warlock) – an article by the latter is included in the collection.

The introductory essay explores varied themes drawn from and around the articles, including gendered identity and authorship, modernist musical syntax, Freudian psychology, Montessori’s ideas around music education, synaesthesia and orientalism. The collection as a whole presents a newly nuanced, colourful and diverse picture of a period long considered familiar in history, music and the arts.