Editing Arthur Bliss (section)

===Early works===
The musicologist Christopher Palmer was censorious of those who sought to characterise Bliss's music as "an early tendency to ''enfant terribilisme'' yielding very quickly to a compromise with the Establishment and a perpetuating of the Elgar tradition".<ref name=palmer/> Nonetheless, as a young man Bliss was certainly regarded as ''avant garde''.  ''Madam Noy'', a "witchery" song, was first performed in June 1920. The lyric is by an anonymous author, and the setting is for soprano with flute, clarinet, bassoon, harp, viola, and bass.  In a 1923 study of Bliss, Edwin Evans wrote that the piquant instrumental background to the gruesome story established the direction that Bliss was to take.  The second Chamber Rhapsody (1919) is "an idyllic work for soprano, tenor, flute, cor anglais, and bass, the two voices vocalising on 'Ah' throughout, and being placed as instruments in the ensemble."<ref name=mt1/> Bliss contrasted the pastoral tone of that work with ''Rout'' (1920) an uproarious piece for soprano and instrumental ensemble; " the music conveys an impression such as one might gather at an open window at carnival time … the singer is given a series of meaningless syllables chosen for their phonetic effect".<ref name=mt1/> In his next work, ''Conversations''  for violin, viola, cello, flute and oboe (1921), Bliss chose a deliberately prosaic subject. It consists of five sections, entitled "Committee Meeting," "In the Wood," "In the Ball-room," "Soliloquy," and "In the Tube at Oxford Circus." Evans wrote of this work that although the instrumentation is ingenious, "much of [the] interest is [[polyphony|polyphonic]], especially in the first and last numbers."<ref name=mt1/>

Bliss followed these works with three compositions for larger forces, a Concerto (1920) and Two Orchestral Studies (1920). The Concerto, for piano, voice and orchestra, was experimental, and Bliss later revised it, removing the vocal part. The ''Melée Fantasque'' (1921) showed Bliss's skill in writing glittering orchestration.<ref name=mt2/>