Cyril Meir Scott is one of a group of British composers to have benefitted from three cultural features of recent decades: increased curiosity from performers...

Cyril Meir Scott is one of a group of British composers to have benefitted from three cultural features of recent decades: increased curiosity from performers and listeners, a more inclusive outlook from musicologists and critics, and the music industry spotting a gap and a demand. A much more colourful picture of British music in the first half of the twentieth century has resulted. Scott was a prolific writer of fiction and non-fiction as well as a composer of several hundred pieces. His writings and music are deeply invested in mysticism and the occult. This element in Scott’s work, as Sarah Collins has noted, helps us to see beyond received notions of Scott as either a trivial exoticist or an unjustly-neglected pioneer, and to appreciate his music on its own terms. © Brian A. Inglis