Editing Havergal Brian (section)

==Music==
{{Original research section|date=May 2016}}
Stylistically, Brian's music could broadly be described as being in a late romantic idiom, exhibiting the influence of [[Gustav Mahler]] in his ambitious orchestration and [[progressive tonality]]. A [[Germanophile]] – the text of the [[Psalms]] in his fourth symphony is sung in [[German language|German]] – Brian's main musical influences are primarily Germanic composers like [[Richard Wagner|Wagner]], [[Anton Bruckner|Bruckner]], [[Richard Strauss|Strauss]], [[Gustav Mahler|Mahler]] and [[Johann Sebastian Bach|Bach]], as well as [[Edward Elgar|Elgar]]. Brian's music is fundamentally tonal rather than [[atonality|atonal]] and shows little or no influence of [[Twelve-tone technique|dodecaphony]]; however, it is often punctuated with violent and occasionally dissonant passages.

Brian's music has several recognisable hallmarks: the liking of extreme dotted rhythms, deep brass notes, and various uncharacteristic harp, piano and percussion timbres, and other unusual orchestral sounds and textures. Also typical are moments of stillness, such as the slow harp arpeggio that is heard near the beginning and ending of the Eighth Symphony. Arguably, his music's most notable characteristic however is its restlessness: rarely does one mood persist for long before it is contrasted, often abruptly, with another. Even in Brian's slow movements, lyrical meditation does not often structure the music for long before restless thoughts intrude. Although the fragmentary nature of his music militates against classical thematic unity, he often employs structural blocks of sound, where similar rhythms and thematic material allude to previous passages (as opposed to classical statement and recapitulation). However fragmentary Brian's music is, he maintains symphonic cohesion by long-term tonal processes (similar to [[Carl Nielsen]]'s "progressive tonality"), where the music is aiming towards a key, rather than being in a home key and returning to it.

Like Bach and Bruckner, Brian was an organist, and the organ repertoire influenced his musical habits (and the organ appears in several of his symphonies). Other sources of influence are late Victorian street music, and particularly brass and military bands: although he composed little dedicated music for brass band, [[brass instruments]] are often prominent in Brian's orchestral music, as are [[March (music)|marches]].

Although he wrote music in a range of forms, Brian is best known for his 32 symphonies. His first canonical symphony – an earlier ''Fantastic Symphony'' was withdrawn – is the colossal ''[[Symphony No. 1 "The Gothic" (Brian)|Gothic Symphony]]'', a performance of which last almost two hours and requires enormous orchestral and choral forces. It was completed in 1927. Although the ''Gothic'' is by far Brian's best-known work, and perhaps the work by which he has come to be defined, it is not representative of his symphonies as a whole. Few of Brian's symphonies call for larger forces than a typical 20th-century [[symphony orchestra]] – although No. 4 (''Das Siegeslied'') calls for a large choir and soprano soloist – and a typical Brian symphony lasts approximately  20 minutes in performance. Brian usually alludes to the classical four-movement structure of the symphony, even in single-movement works. His sixth symphony was composed at the age of 72, and the majority of Brian's symphonies were composed in rapid succession in the last two decades of his life, in his 80s and even into his 90s. Most were unperformed during Brian's own life, although all 32 have since been recorded.

In addition to symphonies, Brian also composed several large [[opera]]s in the 1950s. In 1997, Brian's 1951 opera in eight scenes ''The Cenci'', based on [[The Cenci|the 1819 play]] by [[Percy Bysshe Shelley]], was premiered in a concert performance by the Millennium Sinfonia, conducted by James Kelleher, at the [[Queen Elizabeth Hall]], London.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/classical-the-new-life-of-brians-cenci-1289602.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220509/https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/classical-the-new-life-of-brians-cenci-1289602.html |archive-date=9 May 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |title=Classical: The new life of Brian's 'Cenci' |author=Martin Anderson |work=The Independent|location=London, UK |access-date=23 July 2011 |date=19 December 1997}}</ref><ref>[https://musicwebinternational.com/2024/07/brian-the-cenci-toccata-classics/ ''The Cenci'', Toccata Classics TOCC0094 (2024)]</ref>