This major new book provides a sparkling and detailed account of
classical, modern, and popular music throughout Queen Victoria's
long reign.It completes the acclaimed series of classic studies by
Professor Briggs, published as Victorian Cities, Victorian People,
and Victorian Things. Lord Briggs has written the work with the
music specialist Janet Lovegrove.The approach is deliberately
chronological. It observes the music scene - both metropolitan and
provincial - at twenty-year intervals. It particularly shows how
contemporaries themselves perceived music in 1837, 1857, 1877 and
1897. These twenty-year intervals bring out the scale of change and
the balance between continuities and contrasts at each point in the
story. The intervening decades are more briefly explored. An
Epilogue (1901) completes the picture.The authors trace the
repertory of opera, of orchestral, choral, chamber and popular
music. They show the performers, theatres, halls and rooms. They
provide many illuminating stories of the lives and work of the
composers, writers and critics, publishers, teachers and lecturers,
who were keen to bring music to the many rather the few.London was
linked to the provinces by cathedral, church or festival, and
education. Key factors were the dissemination of printed music, the
musical evangelism of the sight-singing movement, the national
distribution achieved by the railways, and the implementation of a
national educational system from 1870 onwards. An important element
in this was the contribution made to 'progress' by provincial
cities, most often through the proliferation of Festivals.No less
important were the efforts of English musicians, composers,
performers and teachers alike, to achieve status in a country where
there was a strong amateur presence.There was also pressure from
below, and a difference - often an indifference - in the role and
interests of government, local and national. However, the dynamic
steps taken to found modern music institutions are traced.
Comparisons are made (as did the Victorians) between English and
foreign performers and composers, the 'giants' of the past and
present. The last chapters show the breaking away, never complete,
from 'foreign domination' and the identification of an English
musical 'renaissance.'The book is well illustrated. These pictures
complete the overwhelming impression of an era teeming with energy
and ambition, in music as in all else. The era laid the foundations
of the musical heritage and standards we enjoy today.
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