Though musical modernism was a topic of frequent debate in the British press in the 1920s and 30s, until the 1990s, few scholars attempted to challenge underlying assumptions that modernism in British music was somehow less modern than the musical developments of its continental peers. This growing body of scholarship, however, has focused almost exclusively on male composers, ignoring the contributions of composers such as Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994), who was widely considered to be at the forefront of the younger generation of composers emerging during the interwar period.

This dissertation examines Maconchy’s early career and its reception in conjunction with the political landscape of music in Britain during the interwar period. While the contemporary neglect of Maconchy’s music has often been attributed to gender discrimination, in the late 1920s and early 30s, Maconchy achieved renown despite the discouragement meted out by prejudice and incomprehension. By the late 1930s, however, the overall reception of Maconchy’s music began to shift. Her music, which had been welcome in the early part of decade and praised for its radically modern—yet at the same time distinctively “British”—idiom, came to be castigated by critics as the exact opposite by the end of the decade.

This research contributes to a greater understanding of the intricate web of gender politics and shifting attitudes towards modern music in Britain by illuminating not only aspects of Maconchy’s early career that have been ignored and overlooked, but also the vital role played by nationalist ideologies in the decade leading up to the Second World War.

Despite being hailed as one of the finest composers of her day, Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994) and her music are unaccountably neglected today. While Maconchy remains best-known for her orchestral works and cycle of thirteen string quartets, in the late 1950s her compositional career moved in another direction, and she composed three one-act operas between 1956 and 1961: The Sofa (1956-1957), The Three Strangers (1957-1958), and The Departure (1960-1961). Her first opera, The Sofa, stands out as an anomaly. Based on the libertine novel Le Sopha, conte moral (1742) by Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon (1707-1777), the opera's racy subject matter, with a libretto by Ursula Vaughan Williams represents a stark departure from the more serious themes of her other works. The Sofa's critical reception is enlightening not only for reactions to the opera's risque subject matter, but also for the general reactions to Maconchy's music. Why did the prewar years prove to be more favorable for Maconchy, as contrasted with the comparatively indifferent reception accorded to her music during the war and after? While gender discrimination is often cited as the primary reason for this neglect, this supposition does not satisfactorily account for her marked early success. There is no doubt that Maconchy was discriminated against on the basis of her gender, as were many of her peers. However, the nature of her reception both during and after the war requires that one look beyond the strict binaries of gender in order to understand not only the complexities of gender politics in the British musical establishment of the last century, but also how the changing political climate came to greatly affect the marketability of her music.