The Culture of Great Britain

Global changes in the culture of Great Britain emerged after 1945. At this time the government started to give more attention to developing and supporting arts in the country. The Special Council for Arts, formed in 1946, supports a different side of art

The Culture of Great Britain residents is mainly determined by the culture of England, with the addition of local cultural values in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well, though in the slightest degree, cultures of dozens of countries, former colonies

of the British Empire.

The British have not been regarded as a particularly musical people and, from the end of the 17th century until the 20th century, there were relatively few British composers of international renown.

Before the 16th century, musical life was centred on the church, especially the cathedrals and the royal chapels. The choral works of John Taverner, William Byrd and Thomas Tallis are still performed today, most notably by the choirs of King's College, Cambridge and Christ Church in Oxford.

Henry Purcell, famous for his opera Dido and Aeneaf (1689), has been described as the last great English composer before the 20th century. John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1728), is still occasionally performed, and the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan are among the few 19th century British works that are still part of the repertoire.

Today the musical life in Britain is prospering, and more than ever before, many people go to the concerts. almost all schools and colleges have an orchestra, and many towns have a choral society. Music in the home is more likely to be listened to than played, but many homes have a piano.

Modern music is also of great popularity. The most talented and famous composers of contemporary life are John Lennon and Paul McCartney — the founders of the legendary group “The Beatles”, whose music still influences new generations.

Music in Great Britain

Buildings of the Middle Ages

White Tower, at the heart of the Tower of London, was begun by Bishop Gundulf in 1078 on the orders of William the Conqueror. The structure was completed in 1097, providing a colonial stronghold and a powerful symbol of Norman domination.

Architecture

St Paul's Cathedral, London, (1675-1710) is not only one of the most perfect expressions of the English Baroque, but also one of the greatest buildings anywhere in England. It was designed by Wren to replace the old cathedral which had been devastated during the Fire of London in 1666.

Buildings of the 17th century

Civic Centre is a vast complex including a City Hall and Law Courts by Lanchester & Richards, and the University College by W D Caroë. It was hailed as one of the most magnificent examples of civic planning in Britain but, in retrospect, its deeply conservative architecture also seems both arrogant and strangely out of touch with contemporary building in the rest of Europe.

Buildings of the 20th century

William Shakespeare is often called the world's greatest playwright. He wrote comedies, tragedies and historical plays in England in the last part of the 16th and the early 17th century.

William Shakespeare was born in 1564 in the English town of Stratford-upon-Avon. His father was a businessman and the town's mayor. His mother came from a family that owned land near Stratford. William had three younger brothers and two younger sisters.

Literature

Charlotte Bronte was born in a small town in England in 1816. Charlotte and her sisters, Emily and Ann had a very hard life, from early childhood they knew poverty and very hard work.

Charlotte received her education at an orphanage (which she described in her novel Jane Eyre). After that she worked as a governess and a teacher.

The United Kingdom has had a major influence on modern cinema. The first moving pictures developed on celluloid film were made in Hyde Park, London in 1889 by William Friese Greene, a British inventor, who patented the process in 1890. It is generally regarded that the British film industry enjoyed a 'golden age' in the 1940s, led by the studios of J. Arthur Rank and Alexander Korda.

Cinema

Joseph Mallord William Turner was an English painter and artist. He was one of the greatest artists of landscape painting, with a great mastery of light and colour.[2]

His father was a maker of wigs. His mother was ill with mental problems, and the young Turner was sent to live with his uncle in Brentford, where he first started to paint.

Turner became a student at the Royal Academy of Art school in London when he was 14 years old. He was accepted into the Academy a year later. He had a watercolour painting in 1790 in the Academy's important art show. He had only been studying for a year. In 1802, at the age of only 28, he was elected a member of the Royal Academy, and later became its Professor of Perspective.

Art

1.Joshua Reynolds 2.Alfred Sisley 3.Thomas Gainsborough 4.Derren Brown

The most popular artists