which was characterised by the remarkable capacity for "accommodating difference" that has been an enduring theme of the city's history. The historian William Hutton, noting the diversity of Birmingham's culture as early as 1782, remarked that "the wonder consists in finding such agreement in such variety". Over two centuries later in 2008 the philosopher Sadie Plant could still describe "the city's unique, almost declassé mixture of individualism and co-operation". This inherently non-conformist culture has tended to set Birmingham apart from the London-dominated English cultural mainstream. The Independent wrote in 2012 of Birmingham's "intangible sense of the other, of being different despite being the bullseye of Britain". The poet Roy Fisher called it an "off-shore island in the middle of England". Writing in 1945, while the poet W. H. Auden was arguably the dominant figure of English literature worldwide, the American critic Edmund Wilson could still note how his "Birmingham background" meant that "in fundamental ways ... he doesn't belong in that London literary world – he's more vigorous and more advanced". However the same characteristic that sets Birmingham apart can also make it difficult to characterise and understand from outside. Disjunction and incongruity lie at the heart of the city's identity, and Birmingham often lacks the superficial unifying aesthetic of more homogeneous cities. Writers, artists or musicians cooperating in socially close-knit groups but producing work with little stylistic unity have been a characteristic of Birmingham's culture from the Lunar Society of the 1750s, through the Birmingham Group of the 1890s and the Highfield writers of the 1930s to the B-Town music scene of 2013. The city's "tradition of the untraditional", of moving forward through "waves of creative destruction", has also led to what the novelist Catherine O'Flynn has called the city's "complicated relationship with its past, where it's always trying to burn photos of itself". The result is that Birmingham has never been an easy city to define, its lack of a clear, simple image, coupled with its own characteristically ironic and self-deprecating sense of humour, often leading to its being stereotyped as "a non-place surrounded by motorways". Music Classical music The Birmingham Triennial Music Festival took place from 1784 to 1912 and was considered the grandest of its kind throughout Britain. Music was written for the festival by Mendelssohn, Gounod, Sullivan, Dvořák, Bantock and most notably Elgar, who wrote four of his most well known choral pieces for Birmingham.