Music in Britain, 1600-2000 – serie

How have Handel's 'lives' in biographies and histories moulded our understanding of the musician, the man and the icon?To evaluate the familiar, even over-familiar, story of Handel's life could be seen as a quixotic endeavour. How can there be anything new to say? This book seeks to distinguish fact from fiction, not only to produce a new biography but also to explore the concepts of biography and dissemination by using Handel's life and lives as a case study. By examining the images of Handel to be found in biographies and music histories - the genius, the religious profound, the master of musical styles, the distiller into music of English sentiment, the glorifier of the Hanoverians, the hymner of the middle class, the independent, the prodigious, the generous, the sexless, the successful, the wealthy, the bankrupt, the pious, the crude, the heroic, the devious, the battler of ill-fortune, the moral exemplar - and by adding new factual information, David Hunter shows how events are manipulated into stories and tropes. One such trope has been employed to portray numerous persons as Handel's enemies regardless of whether Handel considered them as such. Picking apart the writing of Handel's biographers and other reporters, Hunter exposes the narrative underpinnings - the lies, confusions, presumptions, and conclusions, whether direct and inferred or assumed - to show how Handel's 'lives' in biographies and histories have moulded our understanding of the musician, the man and the icon.DAVID HUNTER is Music Librarian at the University of Texas at Austin.

The first full length study of Sir George Thomas Smart (1776-1867), musical animateur and early champion of the music of BeethovenSir George Thomas Smart (1776-1867) was a significant musical animateur of the early nineteenth century, who earned his living primarily as a conductor but was also significant as an organist, composer and recorder of events. Smart established successful and pioneering London concert series, was a prime mover in the setting up of the Philharmonic Society and the Royal Academy of Music, and taught many of the leading singers of the day, being well versed in the Handelian concert tradition. He also conducted the opera at the Covent Garden Theatre and introduced significant new works to the public - he was most notably an early champion of the music of Beethoven. His journeys to Europe, and his contacts with the leading European musical figures of the day (including Weber, Meyerbeer, Spohr, and Mendelssohn), were crucial to the direction music was to take in nineteenth-century Britain. This detailed account of Smart's life and career presents him within the context of the vibrant concert life of London and wider European musical culture. It is the first full length, critical study of this influential musical figure.JOHN CARNELLEY is Deputy Director of Music and Head of Academic Music, Dulwich College, London. He holds a PhD in Historical Musicology from the University of London (Goldsmiths College) and has previously published research on the eighteenth-century organ manuscripts of John Reading, held in the Dulwich College Archive.

This book takes advantage of new and often surprising biographical research on the Loder family as a whole and its four main figures, using them to illustrate aspects of music history in the 19th century.Musicians of Bath and Beyond: Edward Loder (1809-1865) and his Family illuminates three areas that have recently attracted much interest: the musical profession, music in the British provinces and colonies, and English Romantic opera. The Loder family was pre-eminent in Bath's musical world in the early nineteenth century. John David Loder (1788-1846) led the theatre orchestra there from 1807, and later the Philharmonic orchestra and Ancient Concerts in London; he also wrote the leading instruction manual on violin playing and taught violin at the Royal Academy of Music. His son Edward James (1809-65) was a brilliant but underrated composer of opera, songs, and piano music. George Loder (1816-68) was a well-known flautist and conductor who made a name in New York and eventually settled in Adelaide, where he conducted the Australian premieres of Les Huguenots, Faust, and other important operas. Kate Fanny Loder (1825-1904) became a successful pianist and teacher in early Victorian London, and she is only now getting her due as a composer.This book takes advantage of new and often surprising biographical research on the Loder family as a whole and its four main figures. It uses them to illustrate several aspects of music history: the position of professional musicians in Victorian society; music in the provinces, especiallyBath and Manchester; the Victorian opera libretto; orchestra direction; violin teaching; travelling musicians in the US and Australasia; opera singers and companies; and media responses to English opera. The concluding section isan intense analysis and reassessment of Edward Loder's music, with special emphasis on his greatest work, the opera Raymond and Agnes.NICHOLAS TEMPERLEY is Professor Emeritus of Musicology at the University ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign and is a leading authority on Victorian music.CONTRIBUTORS: Stephen Banfield, David Chandler, Andrew Clarke, Liz Cooper, Therese Ellsworth, David J. Golby, Andrew Lamb, Valerie Langfield, Alison Mero, Paul Rodmell, Matthew Spring, Julja Szuster, Nicholas Temperley

Shows how the work of orchestral conductors was shaped by and enriched cultural life in Britain from the late Victorian era to World War I.Drawing on many archival findings, this book considers the emerging function and status of orchestral conductors in Britain, and the nature of the opportunities available to them, from the late Victorian era until the outbreak ofWorld War I. It does so by examining and comparing the profiles and impact of eight men whose work supplied the needs of a variety of institutions across the period but whose significant contributions were overshadowed by the emergence of virtuoso interpreters. The conducting activities of Julius Benedict, William Cusins, Joseph Barnby, Arthur Sullivan, Frederic Cowen, Alexander Mackenzie, Dan Godfrey and Landon Ronald provide a lens through which the evolution of conducting as a profession is traced. At the British Empire's height their work was shaped by and enriched the cultural life of the nation. During a period of intense activity and development, their portfolios of engagements and working patterns shed light on the infrastructures within the music business. By focusing on the fortunes and agency of conductors resident within the marketplace, this book deepens our understanding of the internal networks, influences and priorities within musical life in Britain in the late nineteenth century.FIONA M. PALMER is Professor of Music at the National University of Ireland Maynooth.

Examines the genesis of Ernest Newman's major publications in the context of prevailing intellectual trends in history, criticism and biography.Ernest Newman (1868-1959) left an indelible mark on British musical criticism in a career spanning more than seventy years. His magisterial Life of Richard Wagner, published in four volumes between 1933 and 1946, is regarded as his crowning achievement, but Newman wrote many other influential books and essays on a variety of subjects ranging from early music to Schoenberg. In this book, the geneses of Newman's major publications are examined in thecontext of prevailing intellectual trends in history, criticism and biography. Newman's career as a writer is traced across a wide range of subjects including English and French literature, evolutionary theory and biographical method, and French, German and Russian music. Underpinning many of these works is Newman's preoccupation with rationalism and historical method. By examining particular sets of writings such as composer-biographies and essays from leading newspapers such as the Manchester Guardian and the Sunday Times, this book illustrates the ways in which Newman's work was grounded in late nineteenth-century intellectual paradigms that made him a unique and at times controversial figure.PAUL WATT is Senior Lecturer in Musicology in the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music at Monash University.

A study of the ways in which topics of English history were central to conceptions of English identity, musical and otherwise, during the Victorian and Edwardian periodsThis study explores the ways in which topics of English history were central to conceptions of English identity, musical and otherwise, during the Victorian and Edwardian periods. Its focus is on the masque, an early modern English musico-dramatic genre that was reinvented during the Victorian period as a vehicle for nationalistic, historically inflected popular entertainments. The masque operated as an "invented tradition", in the sense theorized by EricHobsbawm, and was used to connect the modern nation of Britain to its historical past. As conceptions of national identity became increasingly dependent on the image of "Merrie England" located in the English Renaissance and in the folk traditions of the countryside, genres such as the masque that were integrally connected to these ideological constructions became important ways in which national identity was represented. This in turn had profound ramifications for the ideologies of the English Musical Renaissance and its construction of a national musical idiom at the turn of the twentieth century. DEBORAH HECKERT is a Lecturer at Stony Brook University and has taughtat the University of Virginia, Utah State University, and Brooklyn College-CUNY.

John Sigismond Cousser, as performer and composer, was a pioneering figure in the musical history of the European Baroque era.John Sigismond Cousser - born Johann Sigismund Kusser in Pressburg, Hungary in 1660 - was a pioneering figure in the musical history of the Baroque era. Having worked professionally as a performer and composer across Europe over the span of a fifty-year career, this well-travelled and cosmopolitan musician was subsequently acknowledged by Johann Mattheson as having played a key role in the transmission of both the French and Italian musical styles throughout the German-speaking lands.Following study in Paris, Cousser was employed at a string of German courts, training musicians in the newly fashionable French style. At the court of Duke Anton Ulrich in Wolfenbüttel, he experienced at first hand performances of opera by Italian virtuosos and subsequently introduced countless German musicians and their audiences to the Italian musical style. Yet with the onset of war in 1701, Cousser was forced to seek his fortune elsewhere, moving to London in 1704 before settling permanently in Ireland.The Well-Travelled Musician expands current knowledge of Cousser's early life and professional career significantly, examining his particular role in the dissemination of music and musical styles throughout the German-speaking lands, as well as in early eighteenth-century London and Dublin. Drawing upon a rich body of primary sources, above all the unparalleled evidence contained in Cousser's so-called commonplace book, it reveals the practicalities of early modern musical exchange at a grass-roots level, from Pressburg (now Bratislava) to Paris, Hamburg to Dublin, and beyond.SAMANTHA OWENS is Associate Professor of Musicology at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

The first regional history of music in England.Music in the West Country is the first regional history of music in England. Ranging over seven hundred years, from the minstrels, waits, and cathedral choristers of the fourteenth century to the Bristol Sound of the late twentieth, the book explores the region's soundscape, from its gateway cities of Bristol and Salisbury in the east to the Isles of Scilly in the west, and examines music-making in tiny villages as well as conditions in important centres such as Bath, Exeter, Plymouth, and Bournemouth. What emerges is both a study of the typical - musical practices which would apply to any English region - and a portrait of the unique - features born of the region's physicalisolation and charm, among them the growth of festival culture, the mythologising of folk music, the late survival of parish psalmody and nonconformist carolling, and the unique continuance, today, of a professional resort orchestra, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.Banfield's vividly written and extremely readable history of music in the west country considers an array of subjects, firmly centred on people's stories: musical inventions and theidea of tradition, music as cultural capital, the economics of musical employment and the demographics of musicianship, musical networks, the relationship of the hinterlands to the metropolis, the influence of topography, the importance of institutions and events, and the question of how to measure value. A study in prosopography, it shows how people went about their lives with music and explores how things changed for them - or did not.STEPHENBANFIELD is Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Bristol.

This collection provides an in-depth look at musical criticism between the mid-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth century.British music between the mid-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth century reflected changes and developments in society, education, philosophy, aesthetics, politics and the upheaval of wars, often signifying a distinctively British national history. All of these changes informed the published work of contemporary music critics. This collection provides an in-depth look at musical criticism during this period. It focusses on major figures such as Grove,Parry, Shaw, Dent, Newman, Heseltine, Vaughan Williams, Dyson, Lambert and Keller, yet does not neglect less influential but nevertheless significant critics. Sometimes a seminal work forms the subject of investigation; in otherchapters, a writer's particular stance is highlighted. Further contributions closely analyse the now famous polemics by Shaw, Heseltine and Lambert. The book covers a range of themes from the historical, scientific and philosophical to matters of repertoire, taste, interdisciplinary influence, musical democratisation and analysis. It will be of interest to scholars and students of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British music and music in Britain as well as to music enthusiasts attracted to standard works of popular music criticism.JEREMY DIBBLE is Professor of Music at Durham University.JULIAN HORTON is Professor of Music at Durham University.Contributors: KAREN ARRANDALE, SEAMAS DE BARRA, PHILIP ROSS BULLOCK, JONATHAN CLINCH, SARAH COLLINS, JEREMY DIBBLE, JULIAN HORTON, PETER HORTON, CHRISTOPHER MARK, AIDAN J. THOMSON, PAUL WATT, HARRY WHITE, BENNETT ZON, PATRICKZUK

In 1683 English court musicians and the Musical Society of London joined forces to celebrate St Cecilia's Day (22 November) with a feast and the performance of specially composed music. The most prominent composers and poets of the age wrote for these occasions, including Henry Purcell, John Blow, John Dryden and William Congreve.In 1683 English court musicians and the Musical Society of London joined forces to initiate annual observations of St Cecilia's Day (22 November), celebrating the occasion with a feast and the performance of specially composed musical odes. The most prominent composers and poets of the age wrote for these occasions, including Henry Purcell, John Blow, John Dryden and William Congreve, and the best musicians of the city, primarily drawn from the court music, undertook the performances. After a decade of celebrations, a church service was added before the feast, and elaborate vocal and instrumental music was performed. At the same time, celebrations of St Cecilia's Day began to spread widely throughout the British Isles, where they were held by local music clubs, often with the support of cathedral musicians. Though the annual London celebrations came to an end after 1700 in the face of increasing competition from the city's busy musical and theatrical offerings, Cecilian poetry continued to inspire new musical settings in the eighteenth century, including works by Pepusch, Greene, Boyce and, most notably, Handel.This book examines the social, cultural and religious significance of celebrations of St Cecilia's Day in the British Isles and explores the music and poetry that originated from them. The annual feasts of the Musical Society are analysed in detail, as is the role they played in the development of the ode. The book also considers how advances in musical culture in London were imitated in the provinces and provides a detailed discussion of the variety of Cecilian celebrations held at provincial centres throughout the British Isles.

This book looks at the musical culture of death in early modern England.This book looks at the musical culture of death in early modern England. In particular, it examines musical funeral elegies and the people related to commemorative tribute - the departed, the composer, potential patrons, and friends and family of the deceased - to determine the place these musical-poetic texts held in a society in which issues of death were discussed regularly, producing a constant, pervasive shadow over everyday life. The composition of these songs reached a peak at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries. Thomas Weelkes and Thomas Morley both composed musical elegies, as did William Byrd, Thomas Campion, John Coprario, and many others. Like the literary genre from which these musical gems emerged, there was wide variety in form, style, length, and vocabulary used. Embedded within them are clear messages regarding the social expectations, patronage traditions, and class hierarchy of late Elizabethan and early Jacobean England. En masse, they offer a glimpse into the complex relationship that existed between those who died, those who grieved, and attitudes toward both death and life.K. DAWN GRAPES is Assistant Professor of Music History at Colorado State University.

How was large-scale music directed or conducted in Britain before baton conducting took hold in the 1830s?This book investigates the ways large-scale music was directed or conducted in Britain before baton conducting took hold in the 1830s. After surveying practice in Italy, Germany and France from Antiquity to the eighteenth century,the focus is on direction in two strands of music making in Stuart and Georgian Britain: choral music from Restoration cathedrals to the oratorio tradition deriving from Handel, and music in the theatre from the Jacobean masque to nineteenth-century opera, ending with an account of how modern baton conducting spread in the 1830s from the pit of the Haymarket Theatre to the Philharmonic Society and to large-scale choral music. Part social and musical history based on new research into surviving performing material, documentary sources and visual evidence, and part polemic intended to question the use of modern baton conducting in pre-nineteenth-century music, Before the Baton throws new light on many hitherto dark areas, though the heart of the book is an extended discussion of the evidence relating to Handel's operas, oratorios and choral music. Contrary to near-universal modern practice, he mostly preferred to play rather than beat time.

The London firm of Gray (later Gray & Davison) was one of Britain's leading organ-makers between the 1790s and the 1880s.Established for the building of keyboard instruments, by the mid-1790s the workshop of brothers Robert and William Gray had become one of the leading organ-makers in London, with instruments in St Paul's, Covent Garden and St Martin-in-the-Fields. Under William's son John Gray, the firm built some of the largest English organs of the 1820s and 1830s, as well as exporting major instruments to Boston and Charleston in the United States.In the early 1840s, with the marriage of John Gray's daughter to Frederick Davison - a member of the circle of Bach-enthusiasts around the composer Samuel Wesley - the firm became 'Gray & Davison'. Davison was a progressive figure who reformed workshop practices, commissioned a purpose-built organ factory in Euston Road and opened a branch workshop in Liverpool to exploit the booming market for church organs in Lancashire and the north-west. Under Davison's management,the firm was responsible for significant mechanical and musical innovations, especially in the design of concert organs. Instruments such as those built in the 1850s for Glasgow City Hall, the Crystal Palace and Leeds Town Hall were heavily influenced by contemporary French practice; they were designed to perform a repertoire dominated by orchestral transcriptions. Many of the instruments made by the firm have been lost or altered; but the surviving organs in St Anne, Limehouse (1851), Usk Parish Church (1861) and Clumber Chapel (1889) testify to the quality and importance of Gray & Davison's work.This book charts the firm's history from its foundation in 1772 to Frederick Davison's death in 1889. At the same time, it describes changes in musical taste and liturgical use and explores such topics as provincial music festivals, the town hall organ, domestic music-making and popular entertainment, the building of churches and the impact on church music of the Evangelical and Tractarian movements. It will appeal to organ aficionados interested in the evolution of the English organ in the later Georgian and Victorian eras, as well as other music scholars and cultural historians.

This book explores the exchange of music, musicians and musical practice between Britain and the Continent in the period c.1500-1800.This book explores the exchange of music, musicians and musical practice between Britain and the Continent in the period c.1500-1800. Inspired by Peter Holman's research and performing activities, the essays in the volume developthe theme of exchange and dialogue through the lenses of people, practices and repertory and consider the myriad ways in which musical culture participated in the dynamic relationship between Europe and Britain. Key areas addressed are music and travel; music publishing; émigré musicians; performing practice; dissemination of music and musical practice; and instruments. Holman's work has revealed the mechanisms by which continental practices were adapted to local circumstances and has helped to show that Britain enjoyed a vigorous musical culture in the long eighteenth century, in which native proponents produced original works of quality and interest and did not simply copy continental models. Following avenues opened up by Holman' scholarship, contributors to this volume explore a variety of ways in which the cross-fertilization of music and musicians has enriched European, and especially British, cultureof the early modern period.

The Symphonic Poem in Britain 1850-1950aims to raise the status of the genre generally, and in Britain specifically, by reaffirming British composers' confidence in dealing with literary texts.The Symphonic Poem in Britain 1850-1950 aims to raise the status of the genre generally and in Britain specifically. The volume reaffirms British composers' confidence in dealing with literary texts and takes advantage of the contributors' interdisciplinary expertise by situating discussions of the tone poem in Britain in a variety of historical, analytical and cultural contexts. This book highlights some of the continental models that influenced British composers, and identifies a range of issues related to perceptions of the genre. Richard Strauss became an important figure in Britain during this time, not only in terms of the clear impact of his tone poems, but the debates over their value and even their ethics. A focus on French orchestral music in Britain represents a welcome addition to scholarly debate, and links to issues in several other chapters.The historical development of the genre, the impact of compositional models, issues highlighted in critical reception as well as programming strategies all contribute to a richer understanding of the symphonic poem in Britain. Works by British composers discussed in more detail include William Wallace's Villon (1909), Gustav Holst's Beni Mora(1909-10), Hubert Parry's From Death to Life (1914), John Ireland's Mai-Dun (1921), and Frank Bridge's orchestral 'poems' (1903-15).

This collection situates the North-East within a developing nationwide account of British musical culture.Music in North-East England provides a wide-ranging exploration of musical life in the North-East of England during the early modern period. It contributes to a growing number of studies concerned with developing a nationwide account of British musical culture. By defining the North-East in its widest sense, the collection illuminates localised differences, distinct musical cultures in urban centres and rural locations, as well as region-wide networks, and situates regional musical life in broader national and international contexts. Music in North-East England affords new insights into aspects of musical life that have been the focus of previous studies of British musical life - such as public concerts - but also draws attention to aspects that have attracted less scholarly attention in histories of early modern British musical culture: the musical activities and tastes of non-elite consumers; interactions between art music and cheap print and popular song; music education beyond London and its satellite environs; the recovery of northern urban soundscapes; and the careers of professional musicians who have not previously been the focus of major published musicological studies.

Examines the life and work of Scottish cellist and antiquarian John Gunn (1766-1824) through newly discovered sources.The Scottish cellist and antiquarian John Gunn (1766-1824) is unique among British writers on music in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Learned and practical, at home in classical and modern languages, knowledgeable in a wide range of musical topics and with even wider-ranging interests, and committed to the ideal of progress through rational thought, he typified the Enlightenment. His published output was large and diverse: a cello treatise in two quite different editions; two books on the flute and one on the piano; a treatise on figured bass; a history of the harp in the Highlands; and a translation of a French work of music theory. The list of his unrealised publications is even longer, including a proof of the oriental origins of the Scots. He married Anne Young, a well-known Edinburgh piano teacher, and his letters cast new light on the circumstances and date of her death. Taking account of Gunn's diverse experiences as a musician-scholar in Cambridge, London and Edinburgh, studying his sundry occupations, and exploring his social connections through a recently unearthed cache of his letters, this study moves away from 'treatise archaeology' and offers a broader view than is usually possible with such figures. The book will be of interest to those studying historical performance practice, music education in Enlightenment Britain, and the dissemination of Enlightenment thought.

Building upon the developing picture of the importance of British music, musicians and institutions during the eighteenth century, this book investigates the themes of composition, performance (amateur and professional) and music-printing, within the wider context of social, religious and secular institutions.British music in the era from the death of Henry Purcell to the so-called 'Musical Renaissance' of the late nineteenth century was once considered barren. This view has been overturned in recent years through a better-informed historical perspective, able to recognise that all kinds of British musical institutions continued to flourish, and not only in London. The publication, performance and recording of music by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British composers, supplemented by critical source-studies and scholarly editions, shows forms of music that developed in parallel with those of Britain's near neighbours. Indigenous musicians mingled with migrant musicians from elsewhere, yet there remained strands of British musical culture that had no continental equivalent. Music, vocal and instrumental, sacred and secular, flourished continuously throughout the Stuart and Hanoverian monarchies. Composers such as Eccles, Boyce, Greene, Croft, Arne and Hayes were not wholly overshadowed by European imports such as Handel and J. C. Bach. The present volume builds on this developing picture of the importance of British music, musicians and institutions during the period. Leading musicologists investigate themes such as composition, performance (amateur and professional), and music-printing, within the wider context of social, religious and secular institutions.

Combining approaches from reception studies and historical musicology, this book demonstrates how the representation of music at exhibitions drew the press and public into debates about music's role in society.International exhibitions were among the most significant cultural phenomena of the late nineteenth century. These vast events aimed to illustrate, through displays of physical objects, the full spectrum of the world's achievements, from industry and manufacturing, to art and design. But exhibitions were not just visual spaces. Music was ever present, as a fundamental part of these events' sonic landscape, and integral to the visitor experience. This book explores music at international exhibitions held in Australia, India, and the United Kingdom during the 1880s. At these exhibitions, music was codified, ordered, and all-round 'exhibited' in manifold ways. Displays of physical instruments from the past and present were accompanied by performances intended to educate or to entertain, while music was heard at exhibitors' stands, in concert halls, and in the pleasure gardens that surrounded the exhibition buildings. Music was depicted as a symbol of human artistic achievement, or employed for commercial ends. At times it was presented in nationalist terms, at others as a marker of universalism. This book argues, by interrogating the multiple ways that music was used, experienced, and represented, that exhibitions can demonstrate in microcosm many of the broader musical traditions, purposes, arguments, and anxieties of the day. Its nine chapters focus on sociocultural themes, covering issues of race, class, public education, economics, and entertainment in the context of music, tracing these through the networks of communication that existed within the British Empire at the time.

Explores the political meanings that Italian opera - its composers, agents and institutions - had for audiences in eighteenth-century Britain.The reign of Queen Anne (1702-1714) was pivotal for both politics and opera in Britain. In this study, Thomas McGeary brings together a wide range of sources to show how the worlds of politics and opera were entwined. The associations that Italian singing and singers acquired by the 1690s were used in partisan Whig-Tory writings. Rather than a foreign invasion, McGeary shows how the introduction of Italian-style opera was a native product that grew out of plans for a new theatre in the Haymarket. A crucial event for opera was Handel's arrival in London in 1710. While the criticism of opera by Whig writers such as Richard Steele and Joseph Addison is well known, McGeary uncovers how the early promotion and sponsorship of opera was, in fact, largely a Whig enterprise and cultural program. Indeed, major political figures (mostly Whigs) participated in the support and patronage of opera.Opera and Politics in Queen Anne's Britain will be required reading for opera scholars and cultural and political historians of eighteenth-century Britain, as well those interested in the vibrant literature culture of the period.

Explores the breadth, diversity and significance of the commercial music trade and its communities across Britain during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.Adding to the existing scholarship on music publishers and instrument makers, mostly based in London and the university cities, the collection challenges this historiography by offering the first collective narrative for the commercial trade in musical goods and services - including the printing, publishing and sale of printed music, the sale of manuscript music, musical instruments and related wares, and the tuning and general maintenance of musical instruments such as organs and pianos.Contributions draw on evidence from across the country of the trade's activities, networks and communities, and recognize the significance of small cities, market towns and regional hubs in cultural dissemination. The Music Trade in Regional Britain therefore contributes to a growing body of work offering a nationwide account of musical culture. It foregrounds a trade that was far more geographically dispersed, economically significant and culturally broad than has previously been acknowledged.CONTRIBUTORS: Stephanie Carter, Simon D.I. Fleming, David Griffiths, Nancy A. Mace, Martin Perkins, Christopher Roberts, Roz Southey, Matthew Spring, Robert Thompson

Charting the history of the Royal Musical Association over 150 years: from scientific roots and the long resistance of British universities to music study, to bringing UK musicology to worldwide recognition.This book is the first comprehensive history of the Royal Musical Association. Drawing on extensive archival material and exploring a host of colourful people, it paints an absorbing picture of scholarly achievement in Britain across 150 years.Founded in London in 1874 as a learned society for musical research, the Association emulated the venerable Royal Society in welcoming diverse backgrounds, but went further by including women. Charting its scientific roots and the long resistance of British universities to music study, the narrative shows how the Association published a strong body of research independently, blossoming from 170 members in the 1870s to more than 1400 today.Early joiners included the scientists William Pole and John Tyndall (a founder of climate science), the art historian Elizabeth Eastlake, and musicians from John Stainer to Agnes Zimmermann. Their goal was to 'investigate' and 'discuss' music rather than perform it or give concerts. Because no member was yet trained in what would later be called musicology, the papers covered an eclectic range of scientific, ethnographic and historical questions, broad in scope and responsive to heard music. Whether measuring acoustic phenomena, studying popular music or deciphering manuscripts of early polyphony, the Association promoted wide engagement as well as the establishment of academic musicology.Meanwhile, members including W.B. Squire, Edward J. Dent, Thurston Dart and Stanley Sadie transformed public understanding. Their work in music library development, opera, Musica Britannica, early music, criticism and music lexicography helped gain global recognition for British scholarship. With arts study under pressure in the current uncertain climate, the Association's recent concern for real-world issues in diversity, practice-based research and the vital role of music in schools remains true to its founding spirit.

The first full-length biographical study of Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994). The British-born Irish composer (Dame) Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994) is best known today for her cycle of thirteen string quartets, composed over five decades. And yet, her oeuvre ranges from large scale choral works, to ballets, operas, and symphonic scores. Having studied with Charles Wood and Ralph Vaughan Williams at the Royal College of Music, many of her compositions also garnered accolades from peers and established musical figures such as Gustav Holst, Donald Francis Tovey, and Henry Wood, among others. With access to a wealth of documentation previously unavailable, this book explores Maconchy's life and music within a greater consideration of the social and political context of the world in which she lived. While the influence of Bartók has been well documented, this book reveals the equally potent influence of Vaughan Williams on Maconchy's musical idiom. This book also discusses Maconchy's foray into administration and her advocacy of young composers through her work as the first woman to be elected Chairman of the Composers' Guild of Great Britain in 1959 and President of the Society for the Promotion of New Music following the death of Benjamin Britten in 1976. It will be required reading for those interested in the lives of women composers, twentieth-century British music, and musical modernism.

Traversing London's musical culture, this book boldly illuminates the emergence of Edwardian London as a beacon of musical innovation.The dawning of a new century saw London emerge as a hub in a fast-developing global music industry, mirroring Britain's pivotal position between the continent, the Americas and the British Empire. It was a period of expansion, experiment and entrepreneurial energy. Rather than conservative and inward-looking, London was invigorated by new ideas, from pioneering musical comedy and revue to the modernist departures of Debussy and Stravinsky. Meanwhile, Elgar, Holst, Vaughan Williams, and a host of ambitious younger composers sought to reposition British music in a rapidly evolving soundscape.Music was central to society at every level. Just as opulent theatres proliferated in the West End, concert life was revitalised by new symphony orchestras, by the Queen's Hall promenade concerts, and by Sunday concerts at the vast Albert Hall. Through innumerable band and gramophone concerts in the parks, music from Wagner to Irving Berlin became available as never before. The book envisions a burgeoning urban culture through a series of snapshots - daily musical life in all its messy diversity. While tackling themes of cosmopolitanism and nationalism, high and low brows, centres and peripheries, it evokes contemporary voices and characterful individuals to illuminate the period. Challenging issues include the barriers faced by women and people of colour, and attitudes inhibiting the new generation of British composers - not to mention embedded imperialist ideologies reflecting London's precarious position at the centre of Empire. Engagingly written, Simon McVeigh's groundbreaking book reveals the exhilarating transformation of music in Edwardian London, which laid the foundations for the century to come.

Traversing London's musical culture, this book boldly illuminates the emergence of Edwardian London as a beacon of musical innovation.The dawning of a new century saw London emerge as a hub in a fast-developing global music industry, mirroring Britain's pivotal position between the continent, the Americas and the British Empire. It was a period of expansion, experiment and entrepreneurial energy. Rather than conservative and inward-looking, London was invigorated by new ideas, from pioneering musical comedy and revue to the modernist departures of Debussy and Stravinsky. Meanwhile, Elgar, Holst, Vaughan Williams, and a host of ambitious younger composers sought to reposition British music in a rapidly evolving soundscape.Music was central to society at every level. Just as opulent theatres proliferated in the West End, concert life was revitalised by new symphony orchestras, by the Queen's Hall promenade concerts, and by Sunday concerts at the vast Albert Hall. Through innumerable band and gramophone concerts in the parks, music from Wagner to Irving Berlin became available as never before. The book envisions a burgeoning urban culture through a series of snapshots - daily musical life in all its messy diversity. While tackling themes of cosmopolitanism and nationalism, high and low brows, centres and peripheries, it evokes contemporary voices and characterful individuals to illuminate the period. Challenging issues include the barriers faced by women and people of colour, and attitudes inhibiting the new generation of British composers - not to mention embedded imperialist ideologies reflecting London's precarious position at the centre of Empire. Engagingly written, Simon McVeigh's groundbreaking book reveals the exhilarating transformation of music in Edwardian London, which laid the foundations for the century to come.

Explores the intersection of the world of opera, literature, and partisan politics to show how Italian opera was put to use in the 'culture wars' of the day.This last of a trilogy of books on opera and politics in Britain examines the cultural politics of opera during the ministerial reign of Sir Robert Walpole from 1720 to 1742. The book explores the intersection of the world of opera, literature, and partisan politics to show how Italian opera - with its associations with the court, ministry and Britain's social-political elite - was put to use in the 'culture wars' of the day: how Italian opera was used for partisan political advantage; how political work could be accomplished by means of opera. It shows that attacks on opera had ulterior targets.The book surveys a range of often overlooked verse and prints to show how critique or satire of opera were a means for oppositional writers to delegitimize the Walpole ministry. Polemicists framed opera as a consequence of the corruption, luxury and False Taste generated by Walpole's ministry. It closes in the watershed year 1742: Handel had produced the last of his Italian operas the previous year, Walpole fell from power, and Alexander Pope published the last book of his Dunciad project.

Charting the history of the Royal Musical Association over 150 years: from scientific roots and the long resistance of British universities to music study, to bringing UK musicology to worldwide recognition.This book is the first comprehensive history of the Royal Musical Association. Drawing on extensive archival material and exploring a host of colourful people, it paints an absorbing picture of scholarly achievement in Britain across 150 years.Founded in London in 1874 as a learned society for musical research, the Association emulated the venerable Royal Society in welcoming diverse backgrounds, but went further by including women. Charting its scientific roots and the long resistance of British universities to music study, the narrative shows how the Association published a strong body of research independently, blossoming from 170 members in the 1870s to more than 1400 today.Early joiners included the scientists William Pole and John Tyndall (a founder of climate science), the art historian Elizabeth Eastlake, and musicians from John Stainer to Agnes Zimmermann. Their goal was to 'investigate' and 'discuss' music rather than perform it or give concerts. Because no member was yet trained in what would later be called musicology, the papers covered an eclectic range of scientific, ethnographic and historical questions, broad in scope and responsive to heard music. Whether measuring acoustic phenomena, studying popular music or deciphering manuscripts of early polyphony, the Association promoted wide engagement as well as the establishment of academic musicology.Meanwhile, members including W.B. Squire, Edward J. Dent, Thurston Dart and Stanley Sadie transformed public understanding. Their work in music library development, opera, Musica Britannica, early music, criticism and music lexicography helped gain global recognition for British scholarship. With arts study under pressure in the current uncertain climate, the Association's recent concern for real-world issues in diversity, practice-based research and the vital role of music in schools remains true to its founding spirit.

Using John Ireland's fascination with Arthur Machen as case study, this book challenges our perception of the correspondence between music and literature in twentieth-century Britain.The composer John Ireland (1879-1962) declared repeatedly that no one could understand his music until they had first read the work of his favourite writer, Arthur Machen (1863-1947). This book is the first study to take Ireland at his word. Revolving around Machen's classification as a founding figure of 'weird fiction', it uses weird aesthetics as an interpretative lens with which to understand Ireland's notoriously cryptic life and music. Its four chapters deal respectively with Machen's and Ireland's parallel experience of fin-de-siècle London; with their engagement with the English pastoral tradition; with their explorations of weird art's relationship with eroticism; and with unsettling implications of alternative historiography. The resulting portrait reveals Ireland to be one of Britain's pre-eminent 'weird artists', placing Ireland in the aesthetic context with which he wished to be associated. It therefore fills a significant gap in British musicology, while at the same time contributing to a growing appreciation of Machen as a major figure in British culture, one whose influence exceeds far beyond the literary sphere to which he is traditionally confined. Using Ireland's fascination with Machen as its case study, this book makes a timely and necessary connection between the literary weird and its musical doppelgänger, enriching and challenging our perception of the correspondence between music and literature in twentieth-century Britain.

How was large-scale music directed or conducted in Britain before baton conducting took hold in the 1830s?This book investigates the ways large-scale music was directed or conducted in Britain before baton conducting took hold in the 1830s. After surveying practice in Italy, Germany and France from Antiquity to the eighteenth century,the focus is on direction in two strands of music making in Stuart and Georgian Britain: choral music from Restoration cathedrals to the oratorio tradition deriving from Handel, and music in the theatre from the Jacobean masque to nineteenth-century opera, ending with an account of how modern baton conducting spread in the 1830s from the pit of the Haymarket Theatre to the Philharmonic Society and to large-scale choral music. Part social and musical history based on new research into surviving performing material, documentary sources and visual evidence, and part polemic intended to question the use of modern baton conducting in pre-nineteenth-century music, Before the Baton throws new light on many hitherto dark areas, though the heart of the book is an extended discussion of the evidence relating to Handel's operas, oratorios and choral music. Contrary to near-universal modern practice, he mostly preferred to play rather than beat time.