I wonder about this notion of "churchy provincialism". Would you label
Bach so for writing church music in German? Not a useful concept. The
arts of course need mentors and innovators and the like and somehow,
mysteriously I will bet, we don't know why they were not there. We could
wonder about the idiosyncratic state of French "art" music after WWI or
the failure of Canadian or Australian composers to reach the heights of
Sibelius. We might also ponder the dearth of great Italian opera in the
last 50 years when it is obviously so important in Italian culture.
Evangelical music probably valued the personally edifying nature of hymns
and the like over the development of more formal liturgical music. I
defy you to find great hymn writing of equal value in the 19th c. than in
the US perhaps. You won't find it in Europe. Brass bands of course
played music of great sophistication and were sponsored by industrial and
commercial as well as religious institutions. This discussion is too
narrow and my criticism of it is not just that of a social historian (as
I am an intellectual historian), it is to say that there is undoubtedly
an ebb and flow and the varieties of musical innovation don't fit
easily into a "high" paradigm. Now we would have to see Britain as a
cultural leader in popular and art music, in both modes as significant as
anyplace on earth. If you add Ireland, where popular and traditional
music is in a explosive phase totally disproportionate to the size of the
place then you have a question to ask as to why now and there?
sean