Capital of Great Britain. The ‘City of London’ is a small (about 3·2 km2) commercial area, north of the River Thames; but ‘London’ (or ‘Greater London’) is taken to apply to a much larger region, comprising (at the beginning of the 21st century) 33 boroughs, two of which are the Cities of London and Westminster (the seat of national government). It is by far the largest city of Europe.
London has ancient musical traditions, deriving from its many ecclesiastical institutions (including St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey), its importance as a court and centre of government, and its commercial prosperity. It has been a magnet for musicians from Europe (and more lately the rest of the world, especially the British Commonwealth and the USA) since the 17th century; from the 18th century onwards many leading composers settled in or visited London to compose for the rich and appreciative audiences – Handel, J.C. Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Spohr, Weber, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Verdi, Wagner and almost every composer of note since. Through its concert life, opera and musical theatre, as well as its espousal of popular and world music of all kinds (not least within the recording industry, it has maintained its reputation as a leading international centre of musical activity.
VIII. Educational institutions
NICHOLAS TEMPERLEY (I, with PHILLIP OLLESON, 6), ROGER BOWERS (II, 1 (i–ii), H. DIACK JOHNSTONE (II, 1(iii)), RICHARD RASTALL (II, 2(i)), PETER HOLMAN (II, 2(ii–iv), MARIE AXTON, RICHARD LUCKETT (III), ANDREW WATHEY (IV), ROBERT D. HUME (V, 1), SIMON McVEIGH (V, 2), EDWARD CROFT-MURRAY/SIMON McVEIGH (V, 3), ARTHUR JACOBS/GABRIELLA DIDERIKSEN (VI, 1(i)), JOHN SNELSON (VI, 1(ii); VII, 6), CYRIL EHRLICH, SIMON McVEIGH, MICHAEL MUSGRAVE (VI, 2), DAVID C.H. WRIGHT (VII, 1, 3–4), GABRIELLA DIDERIKSEN (VII, 2), ELIZABETH ROCHE (VII, 5), BERNARR RAINBOW/ANTHONY KEMP (VIII), KATHLEEN DALE/PETER WARD JONES (IX, 1), KATHLEEN DALE/WILLIAM J. CONNER/R (IX, 2)
5. Charities and proprietary chapels.
7. Nonconformist places of worship.
London, §I: Religious institutions
See §II, 1, below.
The Abbey of St Peter, Westminster, was founded by Edward the Confessor on the site of an older monastery in 1065 and rebuilt by Henry III in the 13th century. It was a Benedictine abbey but became a national church through its proximity to the royal palace of Westminster. William I was crowned there in 1066 out of veneration for the Confessor, and every subsequent coronation has been held there. Henry VII’s chapel, the largest of a number of side chapels and chantries, was built 1503–19. At the Dissolution in 1540 the Abbey became a cathedral with a bishop, but in 1550 the diocese was returned to the see of London. In 1560 it was refounded as a collegiate church, which it has remained.
The Westminster Customary (c1260) describes the use of three-part polyphony at the Abbey. The Lady Chapel had an organ as early as 1304; references to an organ in the choir are found in 1387–8, and a new one was built in 1441–2. The choir of the building was walled off from the nave and was used by the monks; the nave was used by the lay members of the community, servants, pilgrims etc, and had an altar below the rood screen, with a large organ nearby. Several of the chantries and side chapels may have had small organs of their own. The chantry priests assisted the monastic choir in the performance of polyphonic music. Towards the end of the 15th century a song school was organized to maintain services outside the monastic choir, in the nave or Lady Chapel. The first recorded Master of the Choristers was William Cornysh the elder, from 1479 to 1491. There were ten choristers at the Dissolution, and the same number in the new foundation, with 12 lay clerks and 12 vicars. At the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign there were three organs – in the choir, in Henry VII’s chapel, and a ‘great wooden organ’ on the screen, which was thenceforth used to accompany metrical psalms sung by the congregation in the nave. From 1599 there are references to the use of cornetts and sackbuts in the Abbey. After the Interregnum the nave organ was rapidly restored; it was heard by Pepys on 4 November 1660. A long series of famous musicians was associated with the Abbey. Edmund Hooper, Master of the Choristers from 1588, was made the first officially appointed organist in 1606. Parsons, Orlando and Christopher Gibbons, Blow, Purcell and Croft all served their turn. There followed a decline in the fame of the organists, perhaps reflecting a drop in ecclesiastical support for the music of the Abbey.
At various national occasions temporary organs were installed, usually at the west end, where they played with other instruments. This was the case at coronations from James II’s (1685) to Victoria’s (1838). The one for George II’s coronation (1727), specially built by Shrider, was afterwards erected permanently on the pulpitum and screen, and opened on 1 August 1730. It was replaced by a Gothic organ in 1831. In 1845 the organ was divided and placed in the north and south choir aisles, with the choir organ over the eastern arch of the pulpitum. A fourth manual was added in 1868, and a fifth in 1895.
The Abbey came into its own as a national church with the Handel Commemoration (see §V, 2) given in 1784 with 525 performers on a special grandstand at the west end, surmounted by an organ that had just been built for Canterbury Cathedral (see Iconography, fig.11). The unprecedented scale and splendour of this event can be recaptured in Burney (1785). It was repeated in the three following years and in 1791, each time with more performers. A similar ‘Royal Musical Festival’ took place in the Abbey in 1834, and another in 1838 after the coronation.
The regular choral services, however, remained ‘degenerate’ (in the words of John Jebb) for longer than most cathedral services in the 19th century. James Turle, organist for more than 50 years, was succeeded in 1882 by Frederick Bridge, who was by no means the equal of Stainer at St Paul’s in reforming zeal. It was not until well into the 20th century that the Abbey services were again worthy of the venerable building that housed them.
Built in 1185 by the Knights Templars, the church was taken over by the Society of Lawyers after the suppression of the Templars in 1312. It is a ‘royal peculiar’. Musically it has been notable in two ways: for its association with John Playford, who was clerk there from 1653 until his death in 1686–7 and may have developed his psalm tune harmonizations there; and for its high reputation in the 19th century, when under Edward Hopkins (organist 1843–98) it developed, for the first time, a choral tradition, which became a model for many cathedrals and parish churches.
London, §I: Religious institutions
The Norman and Gothic cathedral, replacing a Saxon building on the same site, was built between 1087 and about 1285. It was governed by a ‘great chapter’ consisting of the bishop, dean and 30 canons. Plainchant was performed according to a special use, the usus Sancti Pauli, until it was largely replaced by the Sarum Use in 1414. Polyphony was introduced about 1228–30, when a book of polyphony (first explicitly attested in an inventory of 1255) was donated by William de Fauconberg. The dean in 1289 forbade the innovation of singing polyphony (‘cantus organicos’) in the pulpitum and ordered that it should be sung in the presbytery (‘ubi Epistola de more legitur’). There was presumably an organ to accompany this music. St Paul’s was unusual among secular cathedrals in having 30 vicars-choral (who were deacons or sub-deacons) in addition to 12 minor canons (endowed and incorporated in 1394, but established long before). One of the minor canons was chosen as a sub-dean and was in charge of the choir; the second and third in precedence were called ‘cardinals’ (a term peculiar to St Paul’s in this context), and were responsible for discipline. Choristers were trained in a song school under the supervision of an almoner, mentioned in Colet’s statutes (1509). From the later 15th century the choir was supplemented by chantry priests. In 1507 Henry VII incorporated a new foundation at St Paul’s, the Guild of Jesus, which was to provide payments for the additional attendance of the 12 minor canons, eight chantry priests, six vicars-choral and ten choristers for certain special services, to be sung ‘solemnly by note’ in the crypt. The boys were frequently engaged by other churches in the City, and they also performed in mystery plays and pageants. By the 16th century the choir was second in importance only to that of the Chapel Royal. John Redford (d 1547) was choirmaster and Philip ap Rhys organist: much of their music, including that in the Mulliner Book, was probably composed for St Paul’s. The only surviving English alternatim organ mass (in GB-Lbl Add.29996) is by Rhys and was doubtless in use there. The organist was not on the foundation as such, deriving most of his income from being a vicar-choral. The first organist who was not a vicar-choral was George Martin, appointed in 1888.
Paul’s Cross, in the north-east angle of the cruciform church, was for many centuries London’s great pulpit (see fig.1.) After Elizabeth’s accession the reformers frequently celebrated their triumph by assembling at Paul’s Cross after cathedral service and singing a metrical psalm – ‘six thousand persons, old and young, of both sexes’ according to John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, in a letter of 1560. Metrical psalms were sung in the cathedral also, especially after the sermon; the new liturgy was sung by the choir, whose numbers remained constant (12 minor canons, six lay clerks and ten choristers). Throughout Elizabeth’s reign the choristers continued to perform in plays and pageants. The last engravings of Old St Paul’s, published in Dugdale’s History of 1658, show a large organ apparently still intact in the north aisle of the choir.
After the destruction of the cathedral in the Fire of London (1666), the new building was begun in 1675 and completed only in 1711. The Smith three-manual organ was built in 1694–7 at a cost of £2000, and (against Wren’s wishes) was placed centrally on the choir screen (see fig.2). The choir was reopened for service on 2 December 1697. The organ has been steadily enlarged since that date. Shrider added a Swell box and toe pedal pull-downs in 1720–21. For many years they were the only organ pedals in England, and Handel frequently took advantage of them, as Mendelssohn later availed himself of the ‘German’ pedals introduced in 1826. The organ was moved to the north side of the choir in 1859, and rebuilt as a divided organ on both sides of the choir in 1871–2 (with a fourth manual added). A fifth manual followed, with other enlargements, in 1897–1900. Among famous organists of the new cathedral were Jeremiah Clarke (1695–1707), Greene (1718–56), Attwood (1796–1838) and Stainer (1872–88).
The music at St Paul’s shared in the general decline in cathedral music of the 18th and early 19th centuries, and was in a disgraceful state by Attwood’s time. The first improvement was in the treatment and training of the choristers, thanks to the energies of Maria Hackett. They were soon much in demand for concerts of all descriptions, and took part in many musical events to the profit of the almoner, William Hawes, who was in sole charge of them. The standard of the services remained low, however; Goss, organist 1838–72, did little to improve it in spite of mounting criticism. Reform began in 1868 with the appointment of Robert Gregory to a minor canonry. Under his lead, and after 1872 with Stainer’s support, choir processions, rehearsals, weekly choral celebrations, and festival services were soon introduced. The numbers were increased to 20 boys and 18 men (1872), and the men’s salaries raised; discipline was enforced, and standards quickly improved. The musical emphasis drastically changed, replacing a predominantly Georgian repertory with one emphasizing 16th- and 19th-century music. The mid-Victorian style, under Martin, remained in favour at St Paul’s after it had declined elsewhere, according to Fellowes.
In modern times the tradition of choir singing at St Paul’s has been almost unbroken, the building having miraculously escaped heavy damage in World War II. It has tended to become increasingly a national rather than a merely diocesan church, and a great number of special services are held there, from the annual Festival of Carols to jazz and folk masses.
The annual service of the Festival of the Sons of the Clergy was held in St Paul’s in 1655, the year of its inauguration, and every year from 1697, to raise funds to help needy clergymen and their dependants. Music by Purcell, Handel or Boyce was repeated with little innovation from year to year; an orchestra was added to the choir and organ from 1689 to 1843, and from 1873 onwards. From 1801 to 1877 St Paul’s was also the site of the annual meeting of the charity children (see §4).
An Augustinian priory of St Mary Overie was founded at Southwark in 1106. The church (rebuilt 1207) contained within itself a second church of St Mary Magdalene for the use of the parishioners. Nothing is known of the music before the priory was surrendered to Henry VIII in 1540. It was then converted into a parish church and renamed St Saviour. As early as 1562 the rules of the local grammar school required the children ‘to go to church in the choir on Sundays, holy days and other festival days, with their psalm books, and books of prayers, and on Wednesdays, and Fridays in Lent, to be present at the Litany’. St Saviour thus early became dependent on ‘charity children’ for its psalmody. There is no record of any organ before 1705, when a relatively large two-manual instrument, probably by Jordan, was erected by subscription; in 1728 a third manual was introduced with Swells. The chancel had fallen into disuse, a new altar being erected in front of the screen in 1703; the children sang from the organ gallery, which was above the altar and between the transepts. Though the chancel was restored in 1821–2, the nave rebuilt in 1839, and the organ moved to the west end in 1841, the old-fashioned musical tradition continued; in 1884 there was still only a choir of children leading the singing of hymns, with no anthems or choral music. The nave was again rebuilt in 1897 in greater harmony with the Early English choir. In 1905 St Saviour became the cathedral of the new diocese of Southwark. A full cathedral foundation was constituted in 1937, with provision for choral services. The tower, which dates from about 1520, contains an outstandingly fine peal of 12 bells.
The Roman Catholic diocese and province of Westminster was established in 1850. In the later 19th century the only adequate Catholic music was performed at Brompton Oratory, Kensington. The present cathedral was built between 1895 and 1903, and its acoustics were soon discovered to be difficult. Nevertheless, on 6 June 1903 the first London performance of Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius was given there, conducted by the composer. R.R. Terry, organist 1901–24, trained the large choir of men and boys, and used it to revive for the first time much of the great Latin church music of English composers before and after the Reformation. Vaughan Williams’s Mass in G minor, for solo quartet and double choir a cappella, had its first performance in liturgical use at the cathedral in 1922. The choir has continued to perform traditional church music despite the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.
The present ‘grand organ’, with four manuals and pedals, was built in 1922–3 on classical lines; it is housed in a gallery against the west wall. It can also be played from the console of the apse organ, about 100 metres away at the extreme east end. The apse organ also has two independent manuals for accompanying the choir. The double control is well suited to alternatim singing by choir and congregation.
London, §I: Religious institutions
A Cluniac monastery, founded in 1082, it became an abbey in the 14th century, and probably sustained polyphonic music in the century before the Dissolution. The church survives as the parish church of St Mary Magdalen, rebuilt in 1680.
This was a collegiate church founded in 1299 and dedicated to Our Lady, St Mary Magdalen and All Saints. It contained a number of chantries and there was considerable musical activity before the Reformation. The building was demolished in 1822.
A choir school existed there before the Reformation; the choir sang in the parish church of St Benet Fink.
Founded as a hospital in 1148 by Queen Matilda, this body was refounded several times before the Reformation; chantries and endowments were added, and by 1535 it was an establishment with six choirmen, six choristers and a choirmaster performing daily services. It escaped the general dissolution and later Puritan attacks, surviving, though in a decayed state, until 1825. The church was then pulled down, and a new Gothic chapel of St Katharine erected in Regent’s Park. The collegiate foundation was revived and choral services resumed in Victorian times.
Founded in 1841 as the first training college for teachers in Church of England schools. The vice-principal, Thomas Helmore, assisted by Hullah, was charged with training the student body to perform a choral service in the college chapel, which became a model for the revival of choral music throughout the church. Services were sung a cappella until an organ was installed in 1861; choristers were trained in the attached Model School. Gregorian chants and a wide range of early polyphonic music were performed.
This was one of the more important medieval choral foundations, established by Edward III in 1348 with a dean and 12 secular canons, 13 vicars, four clerks and six choristers. There was considerable musical activity, encouraged no doubt by the proximity of the royal palace. Several masses by Nicholas Ludford, a member of St Stephen’s from about 1520 until its dissolution in 1547–8, were no doubt performed there: one is the five-part Lapidaverunt, based on an antiphon for the feast of St Stephen.
Richard Whittington, Lord Mayor, founded a hospital and college in 1424 in connection with the church of St Michael Paternoster Royal. It consisted of five secular priests, two clerks and four choristers, with choir school attached. Some polyphonic music was performed there, and the choir by custom sang an antiphon of the Virgin at nightfall, ‘when the poor artisans and neighbours living around the church came from their work and duties’. It was dissolved at the Reformation.
London, §I: Religious institutions
London, §I, 4: Religious institutions: Parish churches
In Norman times London had over 100 parish churches, of which not more than a dozen were outside the city walls. 96 returned inventories of their possessions in Edward VI’s reign. 35 were destroyed before or in the Great Fire of 1666 and not rebuilt; 25 were demolished between 1666 and 1939. 38 were still in use in the mid-1990s. The Guild Churches Act (1952) set aside 16 of them as weekday churches for the use of workers in the City and as centres for special branches of the church’s work.
The music of these churches in medieval times is unlikely to have consisted of anything more than plainchant, sung by the priest with responses by the parish clerk, with faburden where there were additional singers. In the 15th century parish churches began to acquire organs, for the support of which rood-lofts were built; the earliest recorded in a London parish church was at St Peter Cheap in 1433. At first the function of the organ was merely to accompany chant in unison. Towards the end of the 15th century, however, polyphonic music was introduced in a number of churches, by means of additional singers (‘conducts’) engaged at the great church festivals and the feast of the church’s patron saint. By about 1500 many of the wealthier churches were beginning to acquire a staff of full-time musicians who worked under the parish clerk. Many of these were chantry priests who were paid from the funds of an endowed chantry in the church to sing Mass at various times for the soul of the donor, but who were also expected to contribute to the general musical activity of the church. About 280 chantries were founded in London in the 14th century, 120 in the 15th, and 13 in the 16th; but it was only in the last century before the Reformation that the chantry priests played an important part in the music of the parish churches. Other musicians belonged to minor orders or were laymen. Some churches had choristers placed under the care of a conduct. Church musicians belonged to the Company of Parish Clerks, also known before the Reformation as the Fraternity of St Nicholas (see Parish clerk).
The early 16th century was a period of remarkable expansion in the music of City parish churches, paralleled only in the later 19th century. The growing popularity of the elaborate Lady Mass called for greatly increased resources, including a second, portative organ (usually housed in the Lady Chapel), an organist skilled in polyphonic playing, conducts, choristers, and books of music. Baillie has found documentary evidence of the use of polyphony at 26 churches in this period, and has estimated that nine out of ten churches heard polyphony on major feasts, while a few had it on most days of the week. St Mary-at-Hill had a particularly ambitious musical establishment: payments were made in the 1480s for a ‘prickid song Booke’ and for wine for singers ‘at Easter and at many other festes’; in 1521–2 Kyries, alleluias and sequences are mentioned; five-part polyphony was practised as well as the normal four-part, and there were collections of masses and motets. From 1523 the church had a choir school, probably the first of its kind attached to an ordinary parish church. Musicians from the Chapel Royal also sang there from 1509 to 1554, including Tallis, William Mundy and Philip ap Rhys. Other churches noted for their music were St Michael Convent, St Mary Woolnoth, and St Margaret Pattens. Towards the end of Henry VIII’s reign a new note was introduced in some churches in the form of regals. Plays were performed annually in many of the churches by the clerks and choristers, sometimes aided by waits and minstrels. Lavish music was used in processions.
The suppression of chantries in 1547 ended the careers of many professional musicians, but some churches retained enough singers to maintain polyphony. Though many organs were taken down with the rood-lofts in Edward VI’s reign, some were re-erected in side chapels or in the chancel; at least 12 London churches retained two organs, and therefore presumably continued to practise polyphony. Latin motets may have continued in use, alongside anthems in English and such adaptations of plainchant as Merbecke’s Book of Common Prayer Noted; there is no evidence that metrical psalms were sung at this date. After the restoration of Latin rites under Mary I and the accession of Elizabeth I in 1558, some London churches still retained something of the polyphonic tradition. St Botolph Aldersgate maintained a choir until 1570, St Michael Cornhill until 1579, St Dunstan-in-the-West until 1585. Many churches kept their organs in repair until about 1571, when the organ builder John Howe died; after that many organs were dismantled and sold or allowed to fall into disuse. No new organs are known to have been built in London churches during Elizabeth’s reign (1558–1603). Such choirs as there were probably sang anthems and chanted the psalms and responses in adapted forms of plainchant with faburden harmony. The new music, the metrical psalm, was first introduced at the little church of St Antholin in September 1559, and soon spread to other City churches. For the first time in memory, the whole congregation, men, women and children, could sing together. London was the centre of the Puritan movement, and for this reason the older traditions were rapidly obliterated in most of the City churches. Soon unaccompanied metrical psalms were the only music to be heard in all but a few. The parish clerk, by the end of the century, was the sole survivor of the large musical staff of former times.
This situation prevailed throughout most of the 17th century. During the late 1630s Archbishop Laud, through John Lambe, put pressure on some churches to restore their organs, but with little apparent success. The few remaining church organs were destroyed by order of parliament in 1644, and only two London churches are known to have had organs built between the Restoration (1660) and the Great Fire (1666). After the Fire many churches were not rebuilt, and it was long before others acquired organs. The shift of the wealthy classes to the West End was already far advanced, and City parishes were left with meagre financial resources. Of 76 City churches existing in 1700, only 18 had organs; 17 had still not acquired them by 1800. Where organs did exist they were used for accompanying metrical psalms and for playing voluntaries before, after, and in the middle of Morning and Evening Prayer. Normally the organist’s contract required playing only on Sundays and Christmas Day. Organs were rarely purchased out of parish expenses, as they were not considered necessary for worship; if a donor could not be found, a subscription was raised. At All Hallows, Barking-by-the-Tower, a Harris organ was bought in 1675 ‘for the improvement of the psalmody of this church’, subscribed to by about 80 persons for a total cost of £220. At St Bride’s 186 subscribers contributed to the organ erected in 1693. At St James’s, Garlickhithe, the organ in 1718 was paid for by the ‘publick Tax upon Coals’. The well-known organ at St Magnus’s, built by Jordan with the novelty of the Venetian Swell, was given by Charles Duncombe, alderman, in 1712. Between 1741 and 1814, 11 churches obtained an organ by agreeing to pay an annuity, out of parish funds, to a person who would provide one: such was the arrangement at St Katharine Coleman (1741), St Vedast-alias-Foster (1774), and at St Mary-le-Bow (1802).
The music in this period reached a certain uniformity not found in other periods. London churches did not adopt the voluntary choirs and bands that were popular in the country, but maintained congregational singing led by the organ (if there was one) and by the charity children who formed a small choir, usually in the organ gallery. The tradition of teaching the children in the local school to lead the singing in church can be traced back to the 16th century in some places; in the 18th century it became a normal feature of City churches. From 1704 the charity children of London came together for an annual festival service, at St Andrew’s Holborn (1704), St Sepulchre (1705–37), Christ Church, Newgate Street (1738–1800), and finally St Paul’s Cathedral (1801–77). Another festival service was held on St Cecilia’s Day, beginning in 1683 and continuing with decreasing frequency in the 18th century. It began with a service, usually at St Bride’s church, and continued in the Stationers’ Hall with a specially composed ode for the occasion (see Cecilia).
In other churches, however, the custom of singing was left entirely to the parish clerk, or was allowed to die out altogether, being replaced by long organ voluntaries. The organ, where there was one, became an increasingly prominent partner in the psalm tunes, adding turns, shakes, and interludes between every line of the tune, until in many churches the congregation fell silent.
Reform was initiated by the Evangelical party. A new, livelier, and more congregational style of singing was introduced, first at proprietary chapels, and then at parish churches. The first City church to be captured by the Evangelicals was St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe, where William Romaine was installed as rector in 1764. He presented an organ in 1774 and took a keen interest in the psalm singing – an extraordinary thing for a parson at that date. But he objected to the introduction of hymns. Other Evangelicals gradually introduced hymns to replace the metrical psalms; the words of Watts, Wesley, Newton and Cowper were more inspiring than those of Tate and Brady, and were sung with more spirit. The new style of singing was faster and less densely ornamented than the old; the newly earnest clergy would not allow the clerk, charity children or organist to usurp the place of the congregation. But the majority of City churches continued in the old way until well into the Victorian period. The vast programme of church building in the 19th century, and the opportunities it brought for musical innovation, naturally centred on areas of increasing population. The City, by contrast, was becoming rapidly depopulated. 18 churches were demolished in the last third of the 19th century. Others remained, but with their music in a debased state. The more prosperous churches, however, increasingly catered for a congregation outside their own boundaries. The charity children were gradually replaced by surpliced choirs of men and women, sometimes paid, sometimes voluntary; and in a number of churches chanted psalms, anthems, and finally a fully choral service along cathedral lines were successfully introduced. Three City churches had fully choral services in 1858; by 1882 the number had risen to 30. Specially noted for their music were St Mary Woolnoth, St Margaret Pattens, St Mary-le-Bow, St Michael Cornhill, and St Nicholas Cole-Abbey.
These tendencies have continued in the 20th century. City churches have increasingly served commuters rather than residents, and weekday lunch-hour services and organ recitals have become standard. The principle was recognized in 1952 with the creation of 16 guild churches. The continuing usefulness of the churches is indicated by the fact that most of those destroyed in World War II have been rebuilt and are now in use.
London, §I, 4: Religious institutions: Parish churches
The Abbey was used as a parish church until the building of St Margaret’s church in the 12th century; there were two ancient Middlesex parishes to the north, St Clement Danes and St Martin-in-the-Fields, which later became part of the City of Westminster (formed in 1900). St Margaret’s has a more continuous musical tradition than many City churches, through its proximity to the Abbey. In 1484–6 singers from the Abbey were paid to perform at the church; the same was true in 1642, when anthems were sung at Christmas, Easter and Whitsun. In 1596 the churchwardens paid £13 3s. 4d. for the re-erection of the old organ from the Abbey. After the Restoration, St Margaret’s was again one of the first parish churches to acquire an organ, in 1675; ‘Father’ Smith, who built it, was the first organist. For a short time after this the psalms were chanted, but this was stopped by order of the vestry on 7 August 1676. A new organ was built by Avery in 1804.
In the 17th century Westminster was the principal seat of wealth and fashion, and several new parishes were formed: St Paul’s, Covent Garden (1645), St James’s, Piccadilly (1684), and St Anne’s, Soho (1686); St George’s, Hanover Square, followed in 1724. The patrician congregations of these churches subscribed lavishly for organs, organists, charity children and privately printed books of metrical psalms and hymns; but they had no wish to take part in the singing themselves. At St James’s in Queen Anne’s time, the rector (Dr Tenison) was Archbishop of Canterbury, while the parish clerk (John Scattergood) was in priest’s orders; both were normally represented by deputies. The organ had been presented by Queen Mary in 1691. The psalm tunes in use, printed in a special collection in 1697, were all of the plain, traditional variety, including one (‘St James’) specially composed by the organist, Raphael Courteville. They were sung by the ‘psalm clerk’ (the parish clerk’s deputy) and charity children with ornate organ accompaniment. This tradition continued in the fashionable churches of Westminster for 200 years. It was said of St George’s, Hanover Square, in 1882:
although this church is regarded as the most fashionable in the Metropolis, especially for marriages, its services partake in no degree of the fashionable and ambiguous character of too many in that locality and elsewhere. The ceremonials at St. George differ but slightly from those of the last generation.
The ‘fashionable and ambiguous’ type of service had been prominent at two of the newer Westminster churches, St Paul’s, Knightsbridge (built 1843), and St Barnabas’s, Pimlico (1850). Both had Gregorian chanting with elaborate ceremonial, processions and a large surpliced choir; St Barnabas’s was the scene of disastrous riots in November 1850 which led to the resignation of the vicar, W.J.E. Bennett (see Ouseley, frederick arthur gore, and Helmore, Thomas). St Barnabas’s was remarkable in that its foundation included a small community of priests and a choir school, the first of its kind since the Reformation. A somewhat different tradition was established at St Anne’s, Soho, after 1871, when Barnby was appointed organist: a large and semi-professional choir sang a fully choral service, with sumptuous service settings and anthems often adapted from masses by Haydn, Mozart and Gounod.
London, §I, 4: Religious institutions: Parish churches
The steady growth of the metropolis brought within its boundaries a number of ancient country churches, whose conservative musical traditions were often maintained. Before the 19th century little was done to accommodate the greatly increased populations in suburban areas. From the time of the Church Building Act (1818) a vast programme of church building was undertaken; and the new churches, with no traditions to hamper them, were often the scenes of innovations in church music. Many were furnished with harmoniums until greater prosperity permitted the purchase of a pipe organ. It was at Margaret Chapel, St Marylebone (later to be replaced by the church of All Saints, Margaret Street), that Frederick Oakeley in 1839 inaugurated the tradition of Tractarian worship. In 1858, among 20 London churches listed as having ‘choral’ services, only four were in central London, and several were in newly developed suburbs: St Philip’s, Dalston; Holy Trinity, Brompton; St Paul’s, Walworth; St Matthias’s, Stoke Newington. In 1876 Mackeson remarked that St Alban’s, Holborn, was ‘almost the only church in the centre of London where ultra ceremonial is the rule’, but he was able to list 19 suburban churches in this category.
In recent times the trend has moved away from choral and back to congregational worship. The typical service in many suburban churches is now the Sunday morning parish Communion, with the altar in the nave, and many new churches express this emphasis in their architecture. Canon Dearmer’s church at St Mary’s, Primrose Hill, Hampstead, was the scene of pioneering work in the development of a new and more congregational type, drawing on the resources of folksong; Martin and Geoffrey Shaw were the musical leaders there.
London, §I: Religious institutions
In the 18th century many innovations in church music originated in private chapels, which were established for charitable or profit-making purposes, licensed for public worship, but not under the direct control of a bishop or other authority. They were thus free to try out liturgical and musical experiments that were impossible in consecrated churches, and some of them attracted the support of the wealthy and fashionable portion of London society. They occupied a position midway between the Church of England and the dissenting bodies, and often came under strong Methodist influence.
The Foundling Hospital, properly the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children, was founded by Thomas Coram in 1739. In 1745 a permanent site was obtained at Lamb’s Conduit Fields. The chapel was built in 1747, and from 1749 onwards Handel gave an annual performance of his music in aid of the foundation. He presented an organ in 1750. The chapel was long noted for its music, in which the children sang specially composed hymns (see fig.4). In 1760 the Hospital published a small book of tunes, of which a larger edition appeared in 1774. The Lock Hospital, for venereal patients, was founded in 1746. Martin Madan was appointed chaplain, and in 1762 a new chapel was built for him; his Collection of Psalms and Hymns appeared in 1760, with an accompanying tune book beginning in 1762. The Asylum or House of Refuge for Female Orphans (1758), on the Surrey side of Westminster Bridge, had as its organist and choirmaster William Riley, a notable reformer of psalmody, who also compiled collections. Most fashionable of all was the Magdalen Hospital for penitent prostitutes, opened in 1758: here the inmates sang from behind a canvas screen, following the precedent set by the ospedali in Venice. The first chaplain was William Dodd (hanged for forgery in 1777). A new building was opened at St George’s Fields, Southwark, in 1769. Thomas Call published the first ‘Magdalen Collection’ in 1762, and a later pirated edition achieved wide circulation.
The services in these four institutions, both in themselves and through the popularity of the printed collections based on them, led the way towards the Evangelical type of service that prevailed in the early 19th century. A new fervour was brought into the sermons and prayers and, naturally, into the singing also; congregations were encouraged to stand up and sing, hymns of Watts and Wesley were brought in to replace the metrical psalms. Following the example of the Methodists, tunes borrowed from secular and even operatic sources were used, to the scandal of some. A new type of anthem, for children’s or women’s voices and figured bass, became popular. Several hymns and tunes originating in these collections have entered the repertory (see Psalmody (ii), §I).
The proprietary chapel was a feature of London worship from the early 18th century to the later 19th; it was a commercial speculation, either by the clergyman himself or by his patron, and seats were sold to the public. These chapels, too, were often centres for advanced Evangelicalism. Musically the most important was Surrey Chapel, Blackfriars Road, where Rowland Hill was minister from 1783 to 1833. He is credited with the maxim that the Devil should not have all the best tunes. Benjamin Jacob, organist from 1794 to 1825, published in 1815 the usual Collection of Hymn Tunes for the chapel, and in it are found many adaptations of popular melodies, including Rule, Britannia set to a hymn of Hill’s. Set-pieces (anthem-like compositions with metrical texts) were a popular feature of the music, and were sung by the entire congregation of more than 2000. By the late 19th century, though the music at the chapel was still highly regarded, it had become largely choral, while the tenuous connection with the Established Church had been severed.
London, §I: Religious institutions
The significance of the Roman Catholic embassy chapels in London was that until the Catholic Relief Acts of 1778 and 1791 they were the only places in England where Catholic services could legally be conducted. After 1791 they declined in importance as Roman Catholic parish worship began to be established, although their tradition of elaborate music continued. The chapels with the most extensive musical establishments were those of the Bavarian, Sardinian and Portuguese embassies. Plainchant alone appears to have been used until the introduction of Charles Barbandt's Hymni sacri (London, 1766) at the Bavarian chapel. In the 1770s the repertory of the chapels came to include masses and other service music by Arne, Stephen Paxton, Francesco Pasquale Ricci and Samuel Webbe (i), the organist of the Sardinian and Portuguese chapels, and the most influential figure in London Catholic church music in London at the time; much of it was published in the 1780s and early 1790s in collections assembled by Webbe. In 1797 or 1798, at the age of 16, Vincent Novello was appointed organist of the Portuguese chapel. Under his direction it became one of the most fashionable chapels in London, where Catholics and Protestants alike came to hear the masses of Haydn and Mozart. Novello's Portuguese chapel appointment also led him into publishing: his first venture, in 1811, was A Collection of Sacred Music as Performed at the Royal Portuguese Chapel in London, soon followed by other collections of Catholic church music. From about 1811 Novello was assisted at the Portuguese chapel by his friend Samuel Wesley, whose conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1784 had been brought about largely by his admiration for the music at the embassy chapels. Plainchant continued to decline in the chapels in the early 19th century as the use of modern church music increased, until in 1823 a writer in the Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review could remark that it was ‘now almost wholly discontinued in England’.
London, §I: Religious institutions
John Wesley in 1739 bought an old government building in Moorgate Fields and used it as his first headquarters. Here it was that the Methodist style of hymn singing, which was eventually to sweep aside the old Puritan tradition of metrical psalmody, was first developed. The ‘Foundery Tune Book’ (A Collection of Tunes set to Music, 1742) was the first publication of tunes of the new style, and it broke tradition by including adaptations of operatic music. Wesley moved his headquarters to a new chapel in City Road in 1778.
This became perhaps the leading nonconformist chapel in London for music. Improvement was begun by Dr Allon, the great Congregationalist preacher, who went there in 1843. He instituted a psalmody class in 1847 or 1848, and appointed Henry John Gauntlett as organist and teacher of psalmody in 1852. In 1856 Allon and Gauntlett published The Congregational Psalmist and in the same year Anglican chanting, on a strictly congregational basis, was introduced in the chapel. A choir was first formed in 1859, with about 25 singers; the number reached 60 by 1880.
This chapel became the centre of an interesting movement for the improvement of Presbyterian psalmody in Queen Anne’s reign (1703–14) (see Psalms, metrical, §III, 2(i)). A second period of outstanding singing at this chapel was during the ministry of Thomas Binney. Taking advantage of Hullah’s sight-singing methods, Binney issued a ‘Weigh-house Tune-book’ in 1843 and had it taught to some 300 members of his congregation. It was superseded in 1852 by Congregational Church Music, prepared with the help of the visiting American musician Lowell Mason. Truly congregational singing was achieved of a kind that was imitated in many other nonconformist chapels.
London, §I: Religious institutions
Grove5 (‘Sons of the Clergy’, W.H. Husk)
HarrisonMMB
LeHurayMR
W. Dugdale: History of St Paul’s Cathedral (London, 1658, 3/1818)
J. Paterson: Pietas londinensis (London, 1714)
C. Burney: An Account of the Musical Performances in Westminster Abbey 1784, in Commemoration of Handel (London, 1785/R)
‘National Music’, Musical World, i (1836), 3–5
H. Robinson, ed.: The Zurich Letters, i (Cambridge, 1842), 71
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M. Cowden Clarke: The Life and Labours of Vincent Novello (London, 1864)
C.H. Mackeson: ‘Notes on the London Churches’, The Church Congress Handbook and Churchman’s Guide to London and its Suburbs (London, 1877), 30–46
J.S. Curwen: Studies in Worship Music (London, 1880–85, 3/1901)
C. Box: Church Music in the Metropolis: its Past and Present Condition (London, 1884)
J.S. Bumpus: A History of English Cathedral Music 1549–1889 (London, 1908/R)
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K. Edwards: The English Secular Cathedrals in the Middle Ages (Manchester, 1949, 2/1967)
B. Rodgers: Cloak of Charity: Studies in Eighteenth-Century Philanthropy (London, 1949)
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E.W. Gallagher: ‘The Organs of Westminster Cathedral’, The Organ, xxxvi (1956), 72–8
H. Baillie: London Churches: their Music and Musicians (1485–1560) (diss., U. of Cambridge, 1958)
H. Baillie: ‘Nicholas Ludford (c1485–c1557)’, MQ, xliv (1958), 196–208
D. Lewer: A Spiritual Song: the Story of the Temple Choir and a History of Divine Service in the Temple Church (London, 1961)
A. Smith: The Practice of Music in English Cathedrals and Churches … during the Reign of Elizabeth I (diss., U. of Birmingham, 1967)
P. Chappell: Music and Worship in the Anglican Church, 597–1967 (London, 1968)
J.H. Richards: ‘English Catholic Church Music, from Arne to Novello’, The Diapason, lix (1968), 18–20
B. Rainbow: The Choral Revival in the Anglican Church, 1839–1872 (London, 1970)
N. Temperley: The Music of the English Parish Church (Cambridge, 1979/R)
N. Temperley: ‘Organs in English Parish Churches 1660–1830’, Organ Yearbook, x (1979), 83–100
D. Dawe: Organists of the City of London 1666–1850: a Record of One Thousand Organists with an Annotated Index (Padstow, 1983)
N. Thistlethwaite: The Making of the Victorian Organ (Cambridge, 1990)
W. Shaw: The Succession of Organists of the Chapel Royal and the Cathedrals of England and Wales from c.1538 (Oxford, 1991)
M. Argent, ed.: Recollections of R.J.S. Stevens, an Organist in Georgian London (London, 1992)
N. Temperley: ‘The Lock Hospital Chapel and its Music’, JRMA, cxviii (1993), 44–72
N. Temperley: ‘The Hymn Books of the Founding and Magdalen Hospitals’, Music Publishing & Collecting: Essays in Honor of Donald W. Krummel, ed. D. Hunter (Urbana, IL, 1994), 3–37
I. Spink: Restoration Cathedral Music 1660–1714 (London, 1995)
In standard usage the term ‘Chapel Royal’ denotes a special group of personnel maintained by successive sovereigns of England within the royal household, to whom is deputed the duty of ordering and performing divine service in the sovereign’s presence in an appropriate manner. The term may also occur in its original sense, in which it denotes the service books, vestments, relics, plate, vessels and utensils used by this organization at divine service.
Until comparatively recently the Chapel Royal observed constant attendance on the sovereign. It had no permanent base, therefore, but travelled with the royal household and discharged its duties in the chapel of whatever palace, manor house or castle in which the king then happened to be resident. Its personnel is separate from the choral staffs of certain permanent collegiate institutions that happen to enjoy royal associations – for example St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle – but which in every other respect are organizations entirely distinct from the Chapel Royal.
As a specialized body of liturgical musicians, the Chapel Royal took shape during the reigns of Edward I (1272–1307) and Edward II (1307–27). For centuries before this period, a group of selected chaplains had always formed part of the royal household, but since they constituted probably its only genuinely literate element, they were employed principally as top administrators and advisers, and their importance was primarily political rather than musical. Nevertheless, as priests they also ministered to the king’s spiritual needs as necessary, and by the 13th century they were assisted at the ceremonial occasions known as ‘crown-wearings’ by some three or four clerici. These appear to have been men in royal service who possessed good singing voices and were drafted into the chapel on such occasions to sing the acclamatory litany Christus vincit. One clericus in 1261 was Henry Blacksmith, later commended by Anonymus 4 as one of the few singers in England worthy of comparison with the singers of Notre Dame, Paris.
Between 1272 and 1318 these rather impermanent and ad hoc arrangements for observing divine service in the royal presence ceased to satisfy the needs of successive monarchs and were replaced by the provision of a self-contained department of the household called the capella regis. Its personnel included chaplains, clerks of the second form and choristers, who thus were able to perform the daily celebration of Mass and the Canonical Hours (or as much of them as was practicable for an institution that was largely peripatetic) according to some secular liturgical rite – Sarum Use by the 15th century. The composition of its staff was plainly derived from that observed at certain collegiate churches. By 1318 its working personnel consisted of a chief chaplain (later given the title of dean), five chaplains, six clerks and three or four choristers, besides the necessary ancillary staff. Among its repertory were two volumes of polyphonic music, possibly drawn from the Magnus liber of Leoninus and Perotinus.
From these modest beginnings, the chapel eventually developed into one of the foremost secular liturgical choirs in Europe. As a demonstration of their wealth and piety, the ostentatious promotion and cultivation of the Chapel Royal became for successive kings an eloquent medium for projecting the public and diplomatic image that seemed appropriate. By 1360 Edward III (1327–77) had stabilized the personnel of the chapel at 16 ‘Gentlemen’ (chaplains and clerks) and four ‘Children’ (boy choristers). Between 1394 and 1396, probably as a royal counterblast to Lollard criticism of elaborate household choirs, Richard II (1377–99) increased the number of Gentlemen to 24. Henry IV (1399–1413) maintained the chapel at these numbers while streamlining its duties, and Henry V (1413–22), mindful of his eminence as both King of England and King-designate of France, enlarged it to the exceptional size of 32 Gentlemen and 16 Children.
Henry VI (1422–61) and Edward IV (1461–83) maintained a chapel that sporadically approached similar dimensions – 36 Gentlemen and ten Children. Two valuable accounts of the composition and duties of the chapel, written in 1449 and 1471 respectively, are extant. The latter occurs in a comprehensive volume of household regulations known as the ‘Black Book of the Household of Edward IV’; the former occurs as the Liber regie capelle, an account of the constitution of the chapel and of certain ceremonies peculiar to it, compiled by the dean, William Say, and sent to King Alfonso V of Portugal at his request. Henry VII (1485–1509) was satisfied with a chapel consisting of 26 Gentlemen and ten Children; Henry VIII (1509–47), Edward VI (1547–53) and Mary (1553–8) maintained 32 Gentlemen and 12 Children.
This extensive provision of some 40–50 voices was designed to satisfy the king’s need for a conspicuous display of the wealth, resources and creative talent at his disposal in the ordering of his daily and festal religious devotions. The chapel was a privileged and well-paid body of musicians, and at least from the late 14th century onwards it (and the aristocratic household chapels modelled on it) led the way in innovations both in performing practice and compositional technique. The Chapel Royal helped to pioneer the creation of the new class of professional lay clerks around the turn of the 15th century, and during the first half of that century it may well have utilized its large number of skilled executants to inaugurate both the practice of regular daily performance of composed polyphonic music at divine service and the practice of choral polyphony. It also played a leading part in introducing treble and bass voices in the performance of composed polyphony in the second half of the 15th century and in composition for the new vernacular liturgy in the mid-16th.
Although the composers of pre-Reformation church music in England were geographically too widely dispersed for any identifiable school of composition to be detectable at the Chapel Royal or any other single institution, there were nevertheless periods when the chapel nurtured numerous active composers. John Aleyn (1362–73), John Excetre (1372–97), Roger Gerveys (1376–7) and Robert Chirbury (1420–22, 1437–49) are possibly identifiable with composers who contributed to the first layer of the Old Hall Manuscript (compiled c1418–19). Although not compiled for the Chapel Royal, it seems that this important manuscript was used by the chapel in the period c1421–30, when some 23 compositions by four of its members, present and past (Thomas Damett, Nicholas Sturgeon, John Burell and John Cooke) were added to it. Other chapel composers active at about this period were John Pyamour (1419–21) and John Plummer (1438–67). Between 1418 and 1421 the chapel accompanied Henry V to the wars in France, and continental observers admired its excellence. The chapel’s further visits to France in the royal retinue during the first half of the 15th century may also have done much to transmit to the Continent an acquaintance with the English style, widely admired and emulated there.
Composers known to have been members of the chapel up to the death of Queen Mary include Robert Fayrfax (1496–1521), William Cornysh (1496–1523), Thomas Tallis (1542–85) and John Sheppard (1552–9), and there is little doubt that the bulk of their larger-scale compositions for the Latin rite were written for performance by the Chapel Royal. Under the patronage of sovereigns as knowledgeable about music and as concerned for ceremony as Henry VIII and Mary, the chapel enjoyed a particularly fruitful and distinguished existence.
Under Elizabeth I the Chapel Royal flourished as never before. Not only was the choir the largest and by far the finest of its kind in the country but conditions of service were also outstandingly good, with salaries more than three times the national average. The queen’s love of music, shared to some extent by her immediate successors, James I and Charles I, was reflected both in the excellence of the chapel’s performance and in the compositional attainments of its members, who included almost every important English church musician of the period. Elsewhere, in provincial cathedrals and collegiate choirs especially, things were very different: rapid inflation and growing Puritanism, coupled with a waning of interest in church music generally during the second half of the century, had an adverse effect on both standards and resources, and it was in the Chapel Royal alone that the so-called golden age of Elizabethan church music occurred.
As a ‘royal peculiar’, the chapel is exempt from episcopal jurisdiction. Since the Reformation, however, its chief officer, the dean (appointed by the sovereign), has nearly always been a bishop (since 1748 the Bishop of London). Under him, the sub-dean (also a clergyman and in effect a precentor) is responsible for the daily routine and administration of the choir, whose members, like most royal servants, are also subject to the general authority of the Lord Chamberlain. Under Elizabeth, as under Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary, the choir comprised 32 Gentlemen (of whom roughly a third were priests, the rest lay clerks) and 12 Children. While the latter were permanently on duty, the full body of men appeared only on special occasions. At other times a rota system of alternate months of waiting applied; for ordinary ferial services, therefore, there were probably never more than about 16 men in the choir. Over the years the size of the establishment has gradually decreased, and now stands at six Gentlemen and ten Children.
Next in importance after the sub-dean was the Master of the Children, who until 1923 (when the choir school was closed) was responsible not only for the boys’ musical training but also for their general education, maintenance and welfare. He also had power – regularly exercised, at any rate in the early days – to impress promising choristers for service in the Chapel Royal, and apparently even as late as 1684 occasional visitations were still made for this purpose. A warrant of 1626 seems to have put a stop to the longstanding tradition whereby Chapel Royal children were also involved as actors in dramatic productions at court and, from 1597, in plays at the Blackfriars theatre. In the 18th century, however, they were once again frequently employed outside the chapel, most notably perhaps in Handel’s oratorio performances. Originally, as in all cathedrals of the Old Foundation, there was no established post of organist as such, and organ playing was normally shared by those members of the choir with a particular gift for it. It was only towards the end of the 16th century that the organist’s special function came to be acknowledged officially. From then on there were three positions of organist; by the beginning of the 18th century these had been reduced to two, and since 1867 there has been only one. The organists, like the Master of the Children and the sub-dean, came from the ranks of the Gentlemen, and other special officers drawn from among them included the Confessor of the Household and the Clerk of the Cheque (who kept the books and acted as secretary). Salaries were £30 a year under Elizabeth and were raised to £40 in 1604 and to £70 in 1662; during the 18th century they stood at £73 but by 1860 had fallen again, to only £58.
On the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, services were quickly re-established, and under Henry Cooke it was not long before the Chapel Royal had regained much of its former glory. Charles II, though he was chronically short of money and salaries were thus frequently in arrears, nevertheless took a keen interest in the music of his chapel, and by bringing its members into regular association with a small nucleus of the royal band of 24 violins he greatly encouraged the development of the large-scale verse anthem with strings, to which such leading chapel members as Purcell, Blow and Humfrey made notable contributions. Although under subsequent monarchs the practice of mounting such performances whenever the king was in attendance lapsed, choir and orchestra were still combined from time to time, chiefly in the twice-yearly court odes and on a variety of other ceremonial occasions, sacred as well as secular.
Under William and Mary, Anne, and the Hanoverians especially, the Chapel Royal, like all other royal musical institutions, went into decline. Even so, there were a few interesting additions to the establishment during this period, particularly the creation in 1700 of an official post of composer, held first by Blow and later by Handel. A second such appointment was subsequently added, and the expectation was that each composer would produce a new anthem on the first Sunday of every month of waiting. At the same time – the date usually given is 1715, but that is at least two years too late – two further appointments, of a lutenist and a viol player, were also made. The twin offices of composer survived until 1872, when they were reduced to one and combined with the post of organist. From 1777 to 1846, when the place of lutenist finally became defunct, the emoluments of the post were added to those of the Master of the Children; the post of viol player, by then also a sinecure, was not abolished until 1860.
Since 1702 the home of the Chapel Royal has been the smaller of the two royal chapels in St James’s Palace (see fig.5). During most of the 17th century services were sung mainly in the Chapel Royal at Whitehall (destroyed by fire in 1698); earlier still, they often took place at Greenwich, where Elizabeth I seems most frequently to have held court. The choir went to Scotland with James I and Charles I (in 1617 and 1633 respectively), but its occasional later perambulations have seldom taken it further afield than Windsor, Hampton Court and Richmond, where for at least two centuries the English court usually spent the summer months. Various other chapels, serving the needs of individual members of the royal family, have from time to time employed a separate body of musicians. The Dean of the Chapels Royal has in his charge the chapels of St James’s Palace, Hampton Court and (since 1966) St Peter ad Vincula in the Tower of London; in all of them choral services are performed on Sundays only. The Queen’s Free Chapel of St George in Windsor Castle, often cited in this context, is, like Westminster Abbey, a wholly independent collegiate body.
Source materials for the history of the Chapel Royal after 1558 are extensive. Most important is the Old Cheque Book, published by Rimbault in 1872 (supplemented by GB-Ob Rawl.D.318; see Hillebrand); a second (the ‘New’) Cheque Book, seemingly little known, covers the years 1721–1910. Much valuable information is to be found in the Lord Chamberlain’s and Treasury records in the Public Record Office (for the period up to 1714 see AshbeeR). While the modern period is adequately covered by the Royal Kalendar and the British Imperial Calendar, the earlier publications of E. and J. Chamberlayne (Angliae notitia and Magnae Britanniae notitia, 1669 et seq.) and Miege (New State of England, 1691 et seq.) must be used with caution. A painting of about 1603 (GB-Lbl Add.35324) shows members of the Chapel Royal forming part of the funeral procession of Queen Elizabeth (see fig.6). Nearly 100 partbooks in use between about 1677 and 1810 survive, and are kept in the Royal Music Library (GB-Lbl; see Laurie). From 1712 onwards a series of official Chapel Royal wordbooks of anthems was also issued.
(ii) Secular music under the Tudors.
London, §II, 2: Music at court: Secular music
Minstrel entertainers existed in England in Saxon times, but only after the Norman Conquest are they recorded as being in the king’s permanent employment. Taillefer, William the Conqueror’s minstrel, died at the battle of Hastings juggling with a sword and singing a song of Roland at Roncesvalles; the Domesday Book names his successor as Berdic, ioculator regis. The number of royal minstrels must have increased in the 12th and 13th centuries: by the reign of Edward I (1272–1307) the king’s large household included many minstrels playing various instruments, as did the households of the queen, the Prince of Wales and the king’s younger sons.
Most minstrels were probably soloists, but there are indications of group performance. The royal trumpeters played in pairs by the 14th century, and as a group of six by the end of the 15th: numbers increased further during the 16th century. There is evidence of fiddlers and other ‘still’ instrumentalists playing in pairs. In the late 13th century the royal vigiles (household watchmen) formed a consort of shawms, and a century later the royal minstrels included the standard alta capella band of shawms and a trumpet. Throughout the 15th century ‘the shawms’ formed a mixed group, originally of three shawms and a trumpet but increasingly of two of each type. The brass instrument involved was the sackbut by the late 15th century. In 1492 Henry VII bought a set of flutes in a case, which suggests that a consort of matched flutes of different sizes was used from that date.
London, §II, 2: Music at court: Secular music
The secular part of the Royal Music changed in two fundamental ways in the reigns of Henry VII (1485–1509) and Henry VIII (1509–47). First, the medieval distinction between haut and bas instruments was intensified by the establishment in the 1490s of a distinction between the Presence Chamber, the public areas of the court, and the Privy Chamber, the private living and working areas of the monarch; it was eventually embodied in the Eltham Ordinances of 1526, the model for the organization of the Royal Household up to the Civil War and beyond. Loud wind instruments, such as the royal trumpeters and the shawm and sackbut players, were assigned to the former, while the players of soft instruments belonged to the latter.
Second, the solo or duet minstrelsy of the Middle Ages rapidly gave way to fixed groups playing sets of polyphonic consort instruments, creating further subsections in the structure of the Royal Music. Henry VII employed a group of shawms and sackbuts at least from 1495, and a group of ‘styll shawms’ (apparently a type of soft shawm with a cylindrical bore) is recorded at the beginning of Henry VIII's reign; to judge by their names, most of them came from Flanders and Germany, the areas that had led the way in the development of polyphonic consorts and consort instruments. Viols seem to have been introduced to Henry VIII's court about 1515 by three members of the Van Wilder family from the Netherlands, and a group of rebecs developed in the 1520s, presumably to play dance music. The rebec players apparently changed to flutes when Henry VIII recruited two new groups from Italy in 1539–40 as part of the preparations for his marriage to Anne of Cleves. The newcomers, five recorder-playing members of the Venetian Bassano family and six string players from Milan, Cremona and Venice, seem to have been Jews seeking refuge from the Inquisition. The string group played sets of violins as well as viols, and henceforth provided the court with dance music.
The structure of the Royal Music established in the 1540s remained largely unchanged until the Civil War and even beyond. The four instrumental consorts, shawms and sackbuts, recorders, flutes and violins or viols, served in the Presence Chamber alongside those who were functionaries rather than literate musicians, such as the trumpeters, the drummers and the fife players. It needs to be emphasized that they did not make up a single ‘orchestra’ but were separate groups, each with their own personnel, duties and sphere of operation in the palaces. However, they did cooperate on special occasions, such as the productions of masques, and their autonomy began to be eroded after Charles I established the post of Master of the Music at his accession in 1625. The Privy Chamber employed a more loosely organized pool of musicians, including lutenists, viol players, keyboard players, harpers and singers, who taught the royal family music and provided them with a range of domestic vocal and instrumental music. They often received the courtesy title ‘Groom of the Privy Chamber’, and some of them, such as the keyboard players Mark Smeaton and Ferdinand Richardson, were more courtier than musician, heirs to a tradition that required such personal attendants to provide the monarch with informal entertainment.
The Tudor court was by far the largest musical institution in England, and employed most of its important composers, especially after the dissolution of the monasteries disrupted collegiate foundations around the country. Yet few surviving musical sources can be associated directly with it; it is likely that any collections of court music housed at Whitehall were destroyed in the fire that consumed the old palace in 1698. However, two early Tudor songbooks, the Fayrfax Manuscript (GB-Lbl Add.5465, c1500, ed. in MB, xxxvi) and the Henry VIII Manuscript (GB-Lbl Add.31392, c1518, ed. in MB, xviii) have close connections with the court, and the Henry VIII Manuscript contains songs and instrumental pieces, some attributed to the king, that are likely to have been sung in the Privy Chamber. Similarly, the French chansons of Philip Van Wilder (ed. in Collected Works, ed. J. Bernstein, New York, 1991) are widely distributed in Elizabethan manuscripts in textless versions or arrangements for lute or keyboard. They may have been performed by singers and instrumentalists working in the Privy Chamber under his direction in the 1540s and early 1550s.
Few connections can be established between surviving manuscripts and the Royal Music in the reigns of Edward VI (1547–53), Mary (1553–8) and Elizabeth (1558–1603), although the Lumley or Arundel Partbooks (GB-Lbl Roy.App.74–6) contain a group of four- and five-part dances (ed. in MB, xliv) of about 1560 that seem to derive in part from the repertory of the court violin consort. Much of the Elizabethan contrapuntal consort repertory (mostly ed. in MB, xliv, xlv) was composed by Chapel Royal composers such as Robert Parsons, Christopher Tye, Thomas Tallis and William Mundy, perhaps for court wind or viol consorts or for the instruction of Chapel Royal choirboys. Similarly, the Elizabethan consort song (selection ed. in MB, xxii) was usually written for a boy accompanied by four viols, and seems to have originated as a genre in the laments performed in choirboy plays produced at court. A more specific connection is between the group of lutenists established in the Privy Chamber in the 1570s and 80s and the developing Elizabethan lute duet repertory. Significantly, a popular treble and ground duet by John Johnson (served 1579–94) is entitled ‘The Queen's Treble’ in two sources.
London, §II, 2: Music at court: Secular music
The main changes to the Royal Music in the reign of James I (1603–25) concerned the violin consort and the developing musical establishments in the households of Prince Henry (1610–12) and Prince Charles (1616–25). The violin consort, often under strength in the later years of Elizabeth's reign, was enlarged from seven to 12 between 1603 and 1612, effectively creating an orchestral violin band, possibly the first in Europe. Its members may have worked in small ensembles in their daily work at Whitehall, though the whole group regularly provided the dances for court masques, probably augmented by the court dancing-masters; a description of Ben Jonson's Pleasure Reconcil'd to Virtue (6 January 1618) mentions ‘violins, to the number of twenty-five or thirty’. We know from John Adson's Courtly Masquing Ayres (London, 1621, ed. P. Walls, London, 1975–6) and a document of 1631 that the group played five-part music using a single violin part, three violas and bass; its establishment grew to 15 by 1629, remaining at that level until the Civil War.
Prince Henry was the first adult male heir to the throne resident at the English court for a century, and the group of musicians he established in his household was something new. Instead of the separate consorts of single types of instrument in the main Royal Music there was a single group mixing violinists, viol players and an organist with a number of singer-lutenists. The group should be seen as part of Prince Henry's italianate cultural programme, for its mixture of voices, violins and continuo instruments was clearly designed for the performance of music in the early Baroque style, such as Prime musiche nuove (London, 1613) by the Paduan Angelo Notari, who joined the group in, probably, 1611. Significantly, a number of early composers of English continuo song, such as Robert Johnson, Alfonso Balls or Bales, Robert Taylor and Nicholas Lanier, were also employed by Prince Henry or Prince Charles.
Prince Henry's household was dispersed after his untimely death in 1612, though it was reconstituted after his brother Charles became Prince of Wales in 1616. Charles also employed many singer-lutenists, though he was a viol player himself and was most interested in consort music. Under his patronage four eminent composers of consort music, Alfonso Ferrabosco (ii), Thomas Lupo, Orlando Gibbons and John Coprario, developed new types of contrapuntal music for new combinations of instruments, including two and three lyra viols, two bass viols and chamber organ, and mixed consorts of violins, viols and organ. In particular, Coprario wrote two influential sets of fantasia-suites in the early 1620s specifically for one and two violins, bass viol and organ (ed. in MB, xlvi), the model for similar sets by William Lawes (ed. in MB, lx), John Jenkins and others.
When Prince Charles came to the throne in 1625 his musical establishment was combined with James I's Privy Chamber musicians to make a new group, the Lutes and Voices. William Lawes, Coprario's pupil, drew on its resources for his pieces for harp consort (violin, bass viol, theorbo and harp, selection ed. in MB, xxi) and his Royal Consort suites (two violins, two bass viols and two theorbos, ed. D. Pinto, For ye Violls: the Consort and Dance Music of William Lawes, London, 1995), and the group was deployed en masse to provide the vocal music for the lavish court masques of the 1630s. The other main innovation of Charles I's reign was the appointment of Nicholas Lanier in 1625 as Master of the King's Music, with authority for the first time over all the groups in the Royal Music. The reorganization in 1630 of the three existing wind consorts into a single group, apparently using the more modern and flexible combination of cornetts and sackbuts, can be seen as part of an attempt by Lanier to exercise authority beyond his own group, the Lutes and Voices.
The Royal Music dispersed at the beginning of the Civil War in 1642, and its members were forced to fend for themselves: some went into exile, a few joined in the fighting, but most resorted to teaching or just disappeared from view. However, between about 1654 and 1658 a small group of musicians served Oliver Cromwell at Whitehall under the Master of the Music, the organist John Hingeston. The group included string and wind players, and their repertory probably included Hingeston's fantasia-suites as well as a large fragmentary collection of his wind music in two autograph bass partbooks bound with Cromwell's arms in GB-Lv. According to Anthony Wood, Hingeston also trained two boys to sing Richard Dering's Latin motets, ‘which Oliver was most taken with though he did not allow singing, or Organ in Churche’.
London, §II, 2: Music at court: Secular music
At the Restoration in 1660 the Royal Music was reconstituted exactly as it had stood in 1642, though changes soon began to be made to accommodate Charles II's personal preoccupations. He decided to license and patronize two commercial theatres instead of paying for extravagant court masques, which reduced the importance of the Lutes and Voices (now renamed the Private Music). Furthermore, in Roger North's words, the king had an ‘utter detestation of fancys’, which meant that he soon dispensed with the services of the ‘Broken Consort’, the group in the Private Music that played fantasia-suites and other contrapuntal consort music. Locke apparently wrote his ‘Broken Consort’ suites (two violins, bass viol, continuo, ed. in MB, xxxii) for the group in 1661, and suites for three violins, bass viol and continuo by John Jenkins and the virtuoso German violinist Thomas Baltzar can also be associated with it, though it seems to have ceased its activities after Baltzar's untimely death in 1663.
Instead, the pre-Civil War violin band was enlarged to 24 places in imitation of the French court ‘Vingt-quatre Violons du Roi’, and was given a much more prominent role in court musical life (see fig.11). A section of it, the ‘Select Band’ under John Banister, was granted access to the Privy Chamber; groups from it were soon accompanying anthems in the Chapel Royal, eventually ousting the established wind musicians (it took part in the performance of court odes); and in 1664, divided into two for the purpose, it began to provide orchestral music for the two London theatres. The dominant position of the Twenty-Four Violins at court was formalized in 1666 when the Catalan Luis Grabu, a violinist, succeeded Nicholas Lanier, a singer-lutenist, as Master of the Music. Grabu was dismissed in 1673, apparently because the Test Act of that year banned Catholics from the court. But he was replaced by Nicholas Staggins, another member of the Twenty-Four Violins, and by the end of Charles II's reign the Wind Music and the Private Music had virtually been reduced to sources of places for yet more violinists.
John Banister and Matthew Locke seem to have provided the Twenty-Four Violins with most of its early repertory. Their orchestral dance music, collected particularly in GB-Och Mus.1183 and US-NYp Drexel 3976 (‘The Rare Theatrical’, facs. in MLE, A4, 1989), shows that the group was by then playing in four parts, with a single violin part, two violas and bass, although it seems to have gone over to the more modern italianate ‘string quartet’ scoring in the middle of the 1670s. Not much court orchestral music survives from succeeding decades, though we have many court odes by Pelham Humfrey, John Blow, Henry Purcell and others. They are scored for solo voices, choir (presumably the Chapel Royal), strings and continuo; recorders, oboes and trumpets were increasingly added in the 1680s and 90s. Blow and Purcell also seem to have composed a good deal of vocal chamber music for the court in the 1680s, particularly using the genre of the ‘symphony song’, usually scored for several voices, two violins or recorders, and continuo. Some of them celebrate the spring, and may relate to informal court ceremonies on 1 May.
James II embarked on a thorough reform of the royal household after his accession in 1685, the first since the reign of Henry VIII. The existing groups were replaced by a single Private Music of 35, based on the places available to the Twenty-Four Violins at the end of Charles II's reign. It consisted of an up-to-date orchestra of strings and wind instruments, five solo singers (probably retained to sing the solo parts of court odes), a continuo group of bass viol and harpsichord (Charles Coleman and Henry Purcell), a composer (John Blow) and a Keeper of the Instruments.
London, §II, 2: Music at court: Secular music
In 1689 William and Mary initially retained James II's Household, although on 2 May 1690 the king ordered that the ‘musicians be presently reduced to 24 and an instrument keeper’. It soon became apparent that they would only have to serve on an occasional basis, and the court's central place in England's musical life was soon overtaken by the burgeoning activity in London's commercial theatres and concert rooms. Purcell's career illustrates the change. Before 1690 he was essentially a court composer, writing anthems for the Chapel Royal, court odes and other secular music for the Private Music. After 1690 he continued to provide odes for Queen Mary's birthday, but was mainly a theatre composer, writing music for nearly 50 plays in little more than five years. By 1700 the duties of the royal band were probably already not far removed from those summarized in an article in The Daily Graphic for 20 July 1903:
Throughout the eighteenth century, besides their ordinary duties [? court balls], the band was employed, together with the gentlemen and children of the Chapel Royal, in the performance of odes, annually composed for their Majesties birthdays, for New Year's Day, and to celebrate victories, but since the discontinuance of the production of such odes [in 1820] their duties have been reduced to attendance on Royal Weddings, baptisms, State banquets, and State concerts.
Towards the end of the 18th century the 24 places in the royal band gradually became sinecures, often given to non-musicians, and in the 19th century its function was supplanted by other groups, including the Prince Regent's private wind band (called the King's Household Band after his accession in 1820), and Queen Victoria's private band, later developed by Prince Albert into a small orchestra that played at concerts at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. The ‘Private Band’ and the official ‘State Band’ were amalgamated in 1893, although the group effectively went out of existence during World War I, despite being listed in The British Imperial Calendar until 1924.
The court was essentially a musical backwater after the 17th century, and its continuing decline is reflected by the appointment of several obscure Masters of the Music in the 19th century, although the prestige of the post revived in the 20th century. Walter Parratt was the last Master to have any practical duties, and since then the post has honoured a distinguished composer. The successors of Nicholas Staggins (d 1700) were John Eccles (1700–35), Maurice Greene (1735–55), William Boyce (1755–79, but sworn in only in 1757), John Stanley (1779–86), William Parsons (1786–1817), William Shield (1817–29), Christian Cramer (1829–34), Franz Cramer (1834–48), George Frederick Anderson (1848–70), William George Cusins (1870–93), Walter Parratt (1893–1924), Edward Elgar (1924–34), Walford Davies (1934–41), Arnold Bax (1942–52), Arthur Bliss (1953–75) and Malcolm Williamson (1975–).
Nevertheless, many famous musicians were welcomed at court in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Handel wrote a number of works for royal occasions and was appointed music master to the princesses in 1723; J.C. Bach was music master to Queen Charlotte, and was a member of her Chamber Band; the eight-year-old Mozart played at court with his sister in 1764; Haydn was frequently patronized by members of the royal family during his two visits to London; Rossini was summoned to Brighton by George IV within hours of his arrival in London in 1823; and in 1842 Mendelssohn was invited by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to play to them and make music with them at Buckingham Palace. Queen Victoria continued to patronize music after Albert's death in 1861, but she lacked the prince's breadth of interest and enthusiasm, and gradually royal interest and encouragement of music declined. The members of the present royal family are not overtly interested in musical matters, except as patrons, and music at court is restricted to ceremonial functions.
AshbeeR, i–viii
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F. Chrysander: ‘Der Bestand der königlichen Privatmusik und Kirchenkapelle in London von 1710 bis 1755’, VMw, viii (1892), 514–31
W. Nagel: ‘Annalen der englischen Hofmusik von der Zeit Heinrichs VIII. bis zum Tode Karls I (1509–1649)’, MMg, xxvi (1894), suppl.
E. Sheppard: Memorials of St James's Palace (London, 1894)
C.W. Wallace: ‘The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars, 1597–1603’, University Studies of the University of Nebraska, viii (Lincoln, NE, 1908), 103–321; pubd separately (New York, 1970)
[G.E.P. Arkwright]: ‘The Chapel Royal Anthem Book of 1635’, MA, ii (1910–11), 108–13, enlarged in GB-Lbl Harl.6346
J.M. Manly: ‘The Children of the Chapel Royal and their Masters’, The Cambridge History of English Literature, ed. A.W. Ward and A.R. Waller, vi (Cambridge, 1910), 279–92
C.C. Stopes: ‘William Hunnis and the Revels of the Chapel Royal’, Materialen zur Kunde des älteren englischen Dramas, ed. W. Bang, xxix (Leuven, 1910)
W.M. Sinclair: The Chapels Royal (London, 1912)
H.N. Hillebrand: ‘The Early History of the Chapel Royal’, Modern Philology, xviii (1920), 65–100
W.H.G. Flood: ‘The Beginnings of the Chapel Royal’, ML, v (1924), 85–90
E.S. Roper: ‘Music at the English Chapels Royal c.1135–Present Day’, PMA, liv (1927–8), 19–33
G. Hayes: King's Music (Oxford, 1937)
J.A. Westrup: ‘The Chapel Royal under James II’, MMR, lxx (1940), 219–22
A.R. Myers: The Household of Edward IV (Manchester, 1959)
J. Noble: ‘Purcell and the Chapel Royal’, Henry Purcell 1659–1695: Essays on his Music, ed. I. Holst (London, 1959), 52–66
W. Shaw: ‘A Contemporary Source of English Music of the Purcellian Period’, AcM, xxxi (1959), 38–44
W.K. Ford: ‘The Chapel Royal at the Restoration’, MMR, xc (1960), 99–106
B. Trowell: Music under the Later Plantagenets (diss., U. of Cambridge, 1960)
W. Shaw: ‘A Cambridge Manuscript from the English Chapel Royal’, ML, xlii (1961), 263–7
W. Ullmann: Liber regie capelle (London, 1961)
J. Stevens, ed.: Music at the Court of Henry VIII, MB, xviii (1962, rev. 2/1969)
A. Smith: ‘The Gentlemen and Children of the Chapel Royal of Elizabeth I: an Annotated Register’, RMARC, v (1965), 13–46
H.D. Johnstone: The Life and Work of Maurice Greene (1696–1755) (diss., U. of Oxford, 1967), chap.5
A. Smith: The Practice of Music in English Cathedrals and Churches, and at the Court, during the Reign of Elizabeth I (diss., U. of Birmingham, 1967)
J. Harley: Music in Purcell's London: the Social Background (London, 1968), chap.4
I. Bent: The Early History of the Chapel Royal (to 1327) (diss., U. of Cambridge, 1969)
M. Bent: The Old Hall Manuscript (diss., U. of Cambridge, 1969)
J. Harley: ‘Music at the English Court in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, ML, 1 (1969), 332–51
R. McGuinness: ‘A Fine Song on Occasion of the Day was Sung’, ML, 1 (1969), 290–95
C. Dearnley: English Church Music 1650–1750 (London, 1970), chaps.2–3, appx A
D. Burrows: ‘Handel and the 1727 Coronation’, MT, cxviii (1977), 469–73
C. Hogwood: Music at Court (London, 1977)
G.A. Philipps: ‘Crown Musical Patronage from Elizabeth I to Charles I’, ML, lviii (1977), 29–42
M. Shapiro: Children of the Revels: the Boy Companies of Shakespeare's Time and their Plays (New York, 1977)
M. Laurie: ‘The Chapel Royal Part–Books’, Essays in Honour of Alec Hyatt King, ed. O. Neighbour (London, 1980), 28–50
D. Burrows: Handel and the English Chapel Royal during the Reigns of Queen Anne and King George I (diss., Open U., 1981)
D. Burrows: Handel and the English Chapel Royal, (London, 1984)
A. Wathey: Music in the Royal and Noble Households in late Medieval England (New York and London, 1989)
D. Baldwin: The Chapel Royal, Ancient and Modern (London, 1990)
L.P. Austern: Music in English Children's Drama of the Later Renaissance (Philadelphia, 1992), chap.1
D. Burrows: ‘Theology, Politics and Instruments in Church: Musicians and Monarchs in London, 1660–1760’, Göttinger Händel-Beiträge, v (1993), 145–60
P. Holman: Henry Purcell (Oxford, 1995)
I. Spink: Restoration Cathedral Music: 1660–1714 (Oxford, 1995), 101–90
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P. Scholes: The Puritans and Music in England and New England (London, 1934/R)
J. Westrup: ‘Foreign Musicians in Stuart England’, MQ, xxvii (1941), 70–89
P. Scholes: ‘George III as Music Lover’, MQ, xxviii (1942), 78–92
A. Carse: ‘The Prince Regent's Band’, ML, xxvii (1946), 147–55
E. Halfpenny: ‘Musicians at James II's Coronation’, ML, xxxii (1951), 104–14
W.L. Woodfill: Musicians in English Society from Elizabeth to Charles I (Princeton, NJ, 1953/R)
E. Halfpenny: ‘The “Entertainment” of Charles II’, ML, xxxviii (1957), 32–44
T. Dart: ‘The Repertory of the Royal Wind Music’, GSJ, xi (1958), 70–77
J. Wilson, ed.: Roger North on Music (London, 1959)
J. Stevens: Music & Poetry in the Early Tudor Court (London, 1961; 2/1979)
P. Brett: ‘The English Consort Song, 1570–1625’, PRMA, lxxxviii (1961–2), 73–88
R. Keith: ‘The Guitar Cult in the Courts of Louis XIV and Charles II’, Guitar Review, xxvi (1962), 3–9
R. Rastall: ‘The Minstrels of the English Royal Households, 25 Edward I – 1 Henry VIII, an Inventory’, RMARC, iv (1964), 1–41
I. Spink: ‘The Musicians of Queen Henrietta Maria: some Notes and References in the English State Papers’, AM, xxxvi (1964), 177–82
C.L. Cudworth: ‘Masters of the Musick’, MT, cvii (1966), 676–7
P. le Huray: ‘The Office of Master of the King's Musick’, Music in Education, xxx (1966), 232–3
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C.D.S. Field: The English Consort Suite of the Seventeenth Century (diss., U. of Oxford, 1970)
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At the Inns of Court, England’s ‘Third University’, students continue to study common law; during the 16th and 17th centuries the Inns fostered a broader humanist education, encouraging and commissioning literary and musical entertainment. The earliest surviving records, the ‘Black Books’ of Lincoln’s Inn, begin in 1422; however, a school of law with moot exercises flourished in or before the time of Edward I, although legal training was not based in London until the 1340s when the king’s law courts ceased to travel about with their peripatetic monarch. A recently discovered contract of 1323 assures a young man four years' support among the apprentices at the king's court of Common Bench, ‘wherever the said Bench should be in England’ (Baker and Thorne, 1990, p.xxvi). The ‘ancient’ Christmas customs of Lincoln's Inn, Gray's Inn and the Middle and Inner Temples for which 15th-century records survive may in fact be coeval with the earliest moots, held annually and adapted to whatever hall was available en route. The right of the revellers to share their Christmas sports with the monarch may date from this time. Sir John Spelman, writing in the reign of Henry VII, describes the election, carols and dancing of the King of Christmas and his court at Gray's Inn as ‘the rules used in old time’. In the words and music of a polyphonic carol ‘Nowell, nowell, out of your slepe’ from Lincoln's Inn moot book (c1485–1508) we find fresh evidence of the carolling tradition at the Inns and vestiges of medieval court life from which a picture of life in the school of law may be reconstructed. One of the butlers of Lincoln's Inn transcribes in the same manuscript book ‘The howe of the howse’; perhaps the only authentic directions for the courtly hove dance, mentioned by Gower (Baker, 1986, p.28).
In the 15th and 16th centuries the law students were housed in semi-collegiate institutions. By the mid-16th century, if not earlier, the law students were supplemented by gentlemen who used the Inns as schools of manners. Christopher Hatton and Henry Helmes danced their way from the Inns to offices at the court of Elizabeth. Extra-legal education came to a seasonal climax in the Christmas revels. Sir George Buc claimed these revels required knowledge of grammar, rhetoric, logic, philosophy, history, music and mathematics. By this time students were expected to take private instruction in music and dance and to perform in plays, revels and masques presented at the Inns and occasionally at court. The annual festivities could (depending upon the Inn) last from Halloween until the feast of the Purification. Records of music and payment to musicians belong chiefly to the custom of revels and post revels: there were ‘solemn revels’ performed by the ‘whole House’ and then by the utter and inner barristers, followed by ‘post revels’ danced by the gentlemen of the inner Bar (Dugdale, 1666, p.161). Some of the music of these dances from the 16th and 17th centuries has been identified by Cunningham. Dances appropriate to the solemn revels in the early records are ‘the measures’; in the 18th century they became ‘minuets’. The Middle Temple Brerewood Manuscript (c1635–8) suggests that the lawyers concluded solemn revels processing round the hall singing psalms. Typical dances of the post revels were galliards, branles and country dances; the latter continued to the 18th century. Most of the pieces are anonymous.
Choreographies and music survive for an important suite of dances known as The Old Measures (a late 16th-century derivation of the French basse danse), comprising the Quadran Pavan, Turkelony, the Earl of Essex’ Measure, Tinternell, the Old Almain, the Queen's Almain and Cecilia Almain/the Black Almain. These were performed at the inns into the late 17th century by couples ranged in a file; the musical accompaniment was probably strings. The characteristic beauty of these dances lies in the many patterns or ‘changes’ made by dancers from a small repertory of steps. Robert Mullally concludes that choreographically the almains and pavans in this suite are barely distinguishable; the distinction between them must be sought in the music.
In addition to amateurs, composers at the Inns included professionals such as Richard Edwards (1525–66), Master of the Chapel and an honorary member of Lincoln's Inn. Thomas Campion (1567–1620) lived at Gray's Inn during the period 1586–95. Payments to musicians first appear in records of Lincoln's Inn for 1446 and occur regularly thereafter. Feasting and music are closely linked in the Elizabethan Inns. Lincoln's retained ‘musicians of the house’ on a yearly stipend: at least one musician performing throughout the year, supplemented by other regulars who earned most of their annual fee playing during the Christmas season. The two Temples, whose lavish revels began at All Saints and ended at Candlemas, habitually paid more for musicians than did the larger Grays's Inn. It is possible to trace named musicians in the 16th and 17th centuries: Lincoln's Inn's Anthony Tyndall was a London wait from 1557 to 1597, as was Henry Field at the Inner Temple; John Dowland was King's lutenist when he performed for the Middle Temple in 1612. Jeffrey Collins, who signed for an annual payment at the Middle Temple in 1640, was also a member of the Globe and Blackfriars band.
The Inns took masques to court for Henry VIII at Christmas in 1526 and 1527; fuller records, texts and songs survive for the late Elizabethan, Jacobean and Caroline entertainments. The principal surviving source of masque dances (GB-Lbl Add.10444) contains a number of dances that can reasonably be attributed to particular Inns of Court masques, and others whose names indicate that they were used at the Inns, though the precise context is uncertain. Sir Nicholas L'Estrange, the compiler, was at Gray's Inn in 1617, and admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1624. It was usual for the lawyers to write their own entertainments until the end of Elizabeth's reign. Under the Stuarts the Inns often commissioned their scripts and engaged court musicians to compose and perform the musical accompaniment to the masques. The lawyers themselves continued to perform as dancers; they usually offered a costumed danced entry, a main dance, then invited members of the audience to dance with them, and performed a final patterned dance. Songs often separated these danced sections.
Throughout the 17th century revels flourished; the Inns presented Charles II with the masque Universal Motion in 1662. The last record of dancing as regular custom at the Inns occurs in 1733. Little music from the early revels and later masques has been identified. Most of the music in the Brerewood manuscript cited above was composed from 1612 to 1618 and several dances are by John Coprario. Masque music from 1633 to 1636 is included in Lefkowitz, and a good selection of extant music is in Sabol.
AshbeeR, i–viii
G. Buc: The Third University (London, 1615)
W. Dugdale: Origines juridiciales (London, 1666)
W.W. Greg, ed.: Gesta Grayorum (London, 1914)
W.J. Lawrence: ‘Notes on a Collection of Masque Music’, ML, iii (1922), 49–58
J.P. Cutts: ‘Jacobean Masque and Stage Music’, ML, xxxv (1954), 185–200
A.J. Sabol: Songs and Dances for the Stuart Masque (Providence, RI, 1959)
D.S. Bland: A Bibliography of the Inns of Court and Chancery (London, 1965)
J.P. Cunningham: Dancing in the Inns of Court (London, 1965)
D.S. Bland: ‘A Checklist of Drama at the Inns of Court: Supplementary Entries’, Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama, xii (1969)
M. Lefkowitz: Trois masques à la cour de Charles Ier d’Angleterre (Paris, 1970)
J.H. Baker, ed.: The Reports of Sir John Spelman (London, 1977–8)
R.W. Weinpahl: Music at the Inns of Court during the Reigns of Elizabeth, James and Charles (Ann Arbor, 1979)
T. Orbison, ed.: ‘The Middle Temple Documents relating to James Shirley's The Triumph of Peace’, Collections [Malone Society], xii (1983), 31–84
M. Knapp and M. Kobialka: ‘Shakespeare and the Prince of Purpoole’, Theatre History Studies, iv (1984) 70–81
J.H. Baker: The Legal Profession and the Common Law: Historical Essays (London, 1986)
J.M. Ward: ‘The English Measure’, EMc, xiv (1986), 15–21
R.E. Burkhart: ‘The Dimensions of the Middle Temple Hall’, Shakespeare Quarterly, xxxvii (1986), 370–71
D.R. Wilson: ‘Dancing in the Inns of Court’, Historical Dance, ii/5 (1986–7), 3–16
J.M. Ward: ‘Newly Devis'd Measures for Jacobean Masques’, AcM, lx (1988), 111–42
J.H. Baker and S.E. Thorne: Readings and Moots at the Inns of Court in the Fifteenth Century (London, 1990)
R. Mullally: ‘More about the Measures’, EMc, xxii (1994), 417–38
J.R. Elliott, ed.: ‘Musical and Dramatic Documents from the Middle Temple’, Collections [Malone Society], xv (1993)
Throughout the Middle Ages London was a major European musical centre but the scale of the activity that it embraced rose markedly in the late 15th century as the royal court made the capital its permanent geographic base and as London's booming economy brought real wealth to a population concerned to endow its churches. Court and capital worked in close symbiosis; new prosperity, directly or indirectly, supported an increasingly elaborate celebration at both civic and parish level. During the 15th century a large musical workforce emerged in the capital, and parish clerks in particular developed a strong professional linkage with the book trade.
A central factor was the concept of community which, coupled with a belief in purgatory, helped to enrich the city's churches and their music, while cementing relationships on the ground between groups of musicians who settled in particular locations. Endowments for post-mortem services expanded the numbers of singers, creating a sizable workforce available for a wide range of elaborate celebration; they also provided income with which the general round of services could be enriched, and books and organs purchased. Parish communities endowed their churches, and by the late 15th century even small churches were paying regularly for the performance of polyphony as well as for its copying. Parish churches owned choirbooks containing polyphony; so did parish clerks, chantry priests and conducts, some of whose personal collections, as in other towns, were considerable.
The most striking feature of late medieval and early modern London was the close proximity of its ecclesiastical institutions. An area no larger than 1·6 km2 accommodated 106 parish churches, the Cathedral of St Paul, numerous monasteries and hospitals. Small and rich parishes clustered around the main trading thoroughfares of Cheapside and Cornhill; near the walls parishes were larger and more sparsely populated. An inner ring of monasteries and hospitals lay near the walls; larger monastic foundations lay immediately beyond. Also important musically is the interaction between institutions that this proximity fostered. At St Paul's chantry priests (numbering 47 by the Reformation) were expected not only to perform post-obit services but also to sing in the cathedral choir and attend other services outside the cathedral. The cathedral, parish churches and hospitals borrowed singers from one another. On occasion parishes used singers from the royal household chapel and from neighbouring parishes. They also drew on the services of parish clerks, whose own guild statutes (from the mid-15th century) explicitly defended a trade monopoly in cross-parish activity. The activities of secular musicians also display a high degree of integration within the urban fabric, again stimulated by the presence of the court and other national institutions. Ethnic and professional factors conditioned residence, as generations of minstrels settled in the parishes in the east of the city and outside its eastern wall, preferring these areas to Westminster. Their musical contribution to the life of the capital was also driven to some extent by changes at court, whose changing spatial organization in the 16th century gave rise to new groups of performers and facilitated the importation of new generations of internationally renowned musicians.
HarrisonMMB
J. Stevens, ed: Medieval Carols, MB, iv (1952, rev. 2/1958)
G.R. Rastall: Secular Musicians in late Medieval England (diss., U. of Manchester, 1968)
R.D. Bowers: Choral Institutions within the English Church 1340–1500 (diss., U. of East Anglia, 1975)
D. Lasocki: ‘Professional Recorder Playing in England 1500–1740, i: 1500–1640’, EMc, x (1982), 23–9
London, §V: Musical life: 1660–1800
(ii) The masque tradition and Davenant.
(iii) 1671–1704: semi-operas and masques.
(iv) 1705–19: Vanbrugh’s theatre and Italian opera.
(v) 1719–38: the Royal Academies and their competitors.
(vi) 1739–78: Italian versus English.
(vii) 1778–92: the end of the first King’s Theatre and the Pantheon.
(viii) 1792–1800: opera at the end of the 18th century.
London, §V, 1: Musical life: 1660–1800: The stage
The early history of opera in London encompasses a double tradition. In ‘English’ form, opera finds its origins in the Stuart court masque and its first flowering in the half-sung, half-spoken ‘semi-opera’ that reached its zenith in the work of Henry Purcell in the early 1690s. By 1708 the transition to all-sung opera in English was well under way, but a government order temporarily separating operas from plays, along with the importation of high-priced Italian castratos, led rapidly to a tradition of performance in Italian. Unlike inhabitants of most other major opera centres in Europe, Londoners after 1710 saw their main form of opera in a language they could not understand.
A second major peculiarity of opera in London is its commercial basis. The Civil War and the execution of Charles I in 1649 terminated large-scale royal patronage. George I countenanced the establishment of the Royal Academy of Music in 1719 and provided a small subsidy, but his £1000 a year never supplied even as much as 10% of the company’s costs. Opera therefore remained the province of commercial theatres and individual impresarios – aided by shaky season subscriptions and occasionally by individual patrons (notably Lord Middlesex in the early 1740s, Bedford and Salisbury in the early 1790s).
For more than a century from 1708 the regular season consisted of twice-weekly performances, starting in December or January and totalling about 50 in all. The venue was almost always the King’s (or Queen’s) Theatre in the Haymarket. Against the grand and very expensive Italian opera, the straight theatres – Lincoln’s Inn Fields (Covent Garden after 1732) and Drury Lane – offered more popular fare in English. The ballad opera boom inaugurated by Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1728) was followed by a craze for burletta afterpieces, and eventually by a tradition of native light opera that virtually dominated the English theatre in the late 18th century and early 19th.
London, §V, 1: Musical life: 1660–1800: The stage
Most authorities treat William Davenant’s The Siege of Rhodes (1656) as the first real opera in London, but it clearly derives both from continental influences and native English developments, particularly the court masque in which Davenant was heavily involved before the Civil War. The court masque itself apparently evolved out of an ancient mumming tradition that merged with elaborate continental entertainments, presenting dance, spectacle and allegorical-poetical compliments to a king or noble patron. The masque rose to dizzying heights of spectacle and expense under James I and Charles I (1603–42). The most famous examples are those devised by Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones, notably The Masque of Queens (1609), in which the antimasque was first introduced, and The Gypsies Metamorphosed (1621). When Jones broke with Jonson in 1631, others filled the place of poet, including Davenant.
Masques are mixed entertainments stressing elaborate scenery, costumes and machines but generally lacking much in the way of plot coherence and characterization. Had the Civil War not intervened, such entertainments would probably have been transplanted into the public theatre. In 1639 Davenant received a royal patent permitting him to build a playhouse and to perform not only plays but also ‘musical Presentments, Scenes, Dancing or other the like’. Obviously he hoped to present music and spectacle in a fully equipped theatre, but the Civil War delayed his experiment.
During his Civil War exile, Davenant evidently saw some Italian court operas and tragédies à machines at the Théâtre du Marais in Paris. In May 1656, evading the Puritan ban on plays, he offered ‘The First Dayes Entertainment at Rutland-House, by Declamations and Musick; after the manner of the Ancients’ on an improvised stage at his home in Charterhouse Yard, Aldersgate Street. The following September he mounted The Siege of Rhodes in the same venue, with music by Charles Coleman, Henry Cook, Henry Lawes and George Hudson (see fig.12). Following the Restoration he obtained authority from Charles II and converted Lisle’s tennis court in Portugal Street into a public theatre capable of scene changes, the first Lincoln’s Inn Fields theatre, called the Duke’s Theatre. It was small, with exterior dimensions approximately 23 metres by 9 (recent estimates of capacity vary from 350 to 500), and admission ranged from 1s. (gallery) to 4s. (boxes). The building opened in June 1661 with an expanded version (possibly without music) of The Siege of Rhodes, a triumph that forced the rival King’s Company to abandon their non-scenic Vere Street theatre and build a theatre in Bridges Street (May 1663), on whose site Drury Lane was constructed in 1674 after a fire.
London, §V, 1: Musical life: 1660–1800: The stage
In November 1671 the Duke’s Company opened their lavish new Dorset Garden Theatre, a multi-purpose building designed to accommodate scenic spectacle and operatic extravaganzas (see fig.13). The theatre was on the river’s edge, bordering Salisbury Court off Fleet Street; its exterior dimensions were about 17 metres by 45 (recent estimates of capacity hover around 820), and the construction cost amounted to £9000. Interior details have been hotly disputed from minimal evidence, but patterns of use by the United Duke’s and King’s companies in the 1680s and 90s show that Dorset Garden was a machine house very different from the £4000 Drury Lane of 1674 (about whose interior virtually nothing is known).
At least 90% of the repertory at Dorset Garden consisted of ordinary plays; semi-operas were a special effort and an occasional treat. The fancy ones required many months to prepare and investment totally beyond ordinary budgets (up to £3000–4000 against a total annual income of some £8000–10,000). The famous 1670s productions are The Tempest (1674), the Shadwell-Locke Psyche (1675) and Circe (1677).
Theatrical hard times during the period 1678–83 delayed further extravaganzas until the Dryden-Grabu Albion and Albanius (1685), which was interrupted by Monmouth’s invasion. Though it failed, Albion and Albanius is in fact the first full-length opera in English that survives. In 1690 the United Company mounted the triumphant Betterton-Purcell Prophetess, in 1691 the Dryden-Purcell King Arthur and in 1692 Purcell’s Fairy Queen. The last two were successful but not sufficiently so to justify their enormous costs.
The semi-opera tradition received a dire setback with the early death of Henry Purcell in 1695. In the same year, the actors’ rebellion removed Thomas Betterton (the great champion of operatic spectacle) to the cramped old Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, reconverted from a tennis court. These two events contributed substantially to the decline of semi-opera. The idea that new operas disappeared from the London stage until the advent of Italian opera and Handel is, however, entirely false. More than 20 new ‘operatic’ works were staged in this decade.
Between 1695 and 1701 the Patent Company under Christopher Rich mounted a series of semi-operas at Dorset Garden and Drury Lane – The Indian Queen (1695; Purcell’s last opera), Brutes of Alba (1696), the long-popular Island Princess (1699), and a pair of original extravaganzas concocted by Elkanah Settle, The World in the Moon (1697) and The Virgin Prophetess (1701). Betterton fought back as best he could at Lincoln’s Inn Fields with a series of musical masques by Peter Motteux and John Eccles, notably The Loves of Mars and Venus (1696), on which he collaborated with Godfrey Finger, and Europe’s Revels for the Peace (1697). More theatrical hard times precluded new opera offerings between 1701 and 1704, but a rising tide of entr’acte songs and instrumental entertainments, and the growing popularity of concerts of all sorts in London, gave promise of renewed interest in opera as soon as an innovatory entrepreneur seized the opportunity. All-sung opera had flourished on the Continent; its importation into London could only be a matter of time.
London, §V, 1: Musical life: 1660–1800: The stage
In spring 1703 John Vanbrugh started plans for a new theatre of his own design, the Queen’s (from 1714 the King’s) Theatre in the Haymarket. His plan was to reunite the two theatre companies at his own theatre. As previously in London, opera would be mounted as an occasional treat by a company devoted primarily to plays.
The theatre had outside dimensions of about 18 metres by 40, with a normal capacity of about 760; packed full, it may have held as many as 940 (attendance estimates of up to 2000 in the 1730s were for oratorios, with stage and backstage space used for seating). Vanbrugh’s architectural grandiosity and eccentricity were severely modified by alterations made in 1709 for acoustical reasons. With relatively minor changes, the 1709 building (fig.14) was to be London’s principal opera house until it burnt down in June 1789.
Vanbrugh intended to open in early 1705 with Clayton’s all-sung opera Arsinoe (in English), but Rich stole this novelty and mounted it successfully at Drury Lane. Vanbrugh countered with Jakob Greber’s Gli amori d’Ergasto (in Italian), which struggled through five performances in April 1705. During 1705–6 Rich enjoyed a major triumph with Giovanni Bononcini’s Camilla (in English); Vanbrugh riposted with two semi-operas (George Granville’s British Enchanters was a moderate success) and one all-sung pastoral. Convinced that all-sung opera would prove a goldmine, and unable to arrange the ‘union’ he desired, Vanbrugh wangled an order from the Lord Chamberlain, restricting plays to Drury Lane under Rich and opera to the Haymarket (31 December 1707). Thus in spring 1708 a company tried for the first time in London to offer nothing but opera. The results were a fiasco: Vanbrugh was bankrupt within four months. He was offering translated pasticcios of no distinction, had a wholly inadequate repertory and owed large salaries to imported castratos who could not perform in English.
The operatic history of the next decade was stormy and complex, as managements transmogrified themselves in bewildering ways. Owen Swiney took over for 1708–9, gambling on a star system by bringing in expensive Italian singers. This led, inevitably, to performances given entirely in Italian, starting with Almahide (1710) – a practice attacked by Addison in the Spectator but impossible to discard if star singers were a sine qua non. The major event of the 1710–11 season was the arrival of Handel in London and the première of his Rinaldo (24 February 1711). Handel’s first London opera was a considerable success, but management was acutely unstable and arguments over responsibility for debts to tradesmen wound up in Chancery.
The opera company limped along from season to season until 1717, but extant records show woefully short-paid salaries. The first few performances of a new production were usually offered as a ‘subscription’, but even if fully taken up such subscriptions could not pay for an elaborate new production. Managers were caught in a double-bind: to attract a fashionable audience, fabulous salaries had to be paid to foreign stars (Nicolini got 800 guineas a season, plus a benefit), yet the prices necessary to support such salaries proved prohibitive. Meanwhile, the opera suffered from musical competition at the playhouses. The Lord Chamberlain never formally rescinded his prohibition on musical entertainments at Drury Lane, but it soon fell into disregard. Especially after 1714, when Lincoln’s Inn Fields reopened, the straight theatres competed aggressively with each other and with the Haymarket opera, using musical works to do so.
During 1716–17 the Italian opera under Heidegger managed only 31 performances (including six by subscription and eight benefits), and his cashbook (now in the Essex Record Office) makes clear why he abandoned the cause as hopeless. Meanwhile, at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, John Rich presented, besides plays, 36 performances of full-length operas (in English). The works included The Island Princess, The Prophetess and Camilla – that is, both semi-opera and all-sung opera in the new ‘Italian’ manner. Lincoln’s Inn Fields’ singers were not the biggest stars (though Margherita de L’Epine, Jane Barbier and Richard Leveridge were far from negligible), but at bargain rates they attracted audiences. Drury Lane, meanwhile, countered with musical masques as afterpieces, notably Pepusch’s Venus and Adonis and Apollo and Daphne.
As of spring 1717 when Heidegger’s company closed, the taste for Italian opera appeared to be a fad that had run its course. The logic of the situation suggested that ‘serious’ opera should migrate back to the regular theatres, which could use it as an occasional treat in English. The actual course of events was to be entirely different.
London, §V, 1: Musical life: 1660–1800: The stage
By January 1719 plans were afoot to re-establish Italian opera by obtaining letters patent for incorporating a joint-stock company under royal charter devoted to that purpose. George I granted a subsidy of £1000 a year and by July some 60 persons had taken at least one share of £200. Handel was dispatched to the Continent to hire singers. The patent (now in the Public Record Office) spells out the unique governance of this company, which was an odd amalgam of royal household entertainment and publicly held joint-stock company. The ‘Governor’ was to be the Lord Chamberlain, who held veto power in all matters, but each November stockholders were to elect between 15 and 20 directors, on whom operational responsibility devolved. The company would have £10,000 in pledged capital (it actually obtained about £15,000 in pledges), but hoped to call no more than 20% of it. (The prospectus suggests that a subscriber might have to put up £40 and could expect a 25% annual return – a calculation reflecting prevalent South Sea speculative fever more than reality.) ‘General Courts’ of stockholders would be held at least every three months.
The company rented Vanbrugh’s Haymarket theatre. Its normal ticket price settled at a startling 10s. 6d. (5s. for the gallery); subscribers for season tickets paid £15 (later £20) for 50–60 nights, while boxes, generally rented for the season, were extra. Performances were given twice a week from roughly December to June, on Tuesday or Wednesday and Saturday. Members of the royal family attended regularly.
The era of the ‘First Academy’ (1720–28) was artistically probably the pinnacle of opera in London. From 1720–21 to the collapse of the bankrupt company in 1728 Senesino was its principal performer. Francesca Cuzzoni joined in 1722–3 and Faustina Bordoni in 1725–6, giving the company three reigning international stars in addition to Handel. Unfortunately, rivalry between the two women and their supporters created severe tensions and even public disruption during a performance. Administration by dilettante committee proved inefficient. The company quickly ran through all the pledged capital it could collect: financially it was probably doomed from the start. But all such matters of infighting and insolvency pale into insignificance when considered against the artistic achievement of the company, however short-lived. The dozen operas Handel wrote for its eight and a half seasons represent one of the great achievements in the history of opera. Some of the highlights were Radamisto (1720), Floridante (1721), Giulio Cesare in Egitto and Tamerlano (1724) and Tolomeo (1728). By no means was the company devoted entirely to Handel’s work: it opened in April 1720 with Rolli and Porta’s Numitore, and in its early years both Handel and Bononcini had partisans among the directors.
No Italian opera was performed in London in 1728–9. A session of the remaining Royal Academy shareholders voted in January 1729 to let Handel and Heidegger have the use of their scenery and costumes for five years, and the so-called Second Academy opened in December 1729 – initially without Senesino, an effort at cost-cutting. The nature of its financial backing is unknown. The king continued his £1000 subsidy, and private patrons probably helped as well. The reconstituted company operated less lavishly, but artistically much as before. Handel’s Poro (1731) and Orlando (1733) were among its offerings. What little is known of the number of performances and of box-office receipts is unimpressive. The venture had 170 subscribers in 1731–2, and only 140 in 1732–3 (of whom 122 seem to have paid in full). None the less, losses incurred by the Second Academy were probably not more than patrons could bear; its demise came about for other reasons.
Handel and Senesino came to an unfriendly parting of ways in June 1733, and mounting personal hostility to Handel in society circles produced one of the oddest developments in the chequered history of opera in London – the establishment of the Opera of the Nobility, a rival Italian opera company. If one company could not make ends meet, a second was definitely a bad idea, and both companies were to go dismally broke in the course of the next three seasons.
The Opera of the Nobility opened at the third Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre (vacant since 1732) in December 1733 with Porpora’s Arianna in Nasso; Handel riposted at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket, with Arianna in Creta in January 1734. During this season Handel mounted 60 performances (including oratorios), his rivals 52, with both companies insisting on performing on Tuesday and Saturday nights in direct and destructive opposition to each other. At the end of the year, in circumstances that remain mysterious, the Opera of the Nobility took over the King’s Theatre, Haymarket, and Handel became a part-time tenant of John Rich’s at Covent Garden. In 1734–5 the Opera of the Nobility hired the glamorous Farinelli and Handel was virtually beaten from the field – though he probably lost a lot less money. By the spring of 1737 the great opera war was over. Handel joined Heidegger and the remnants of the Opera of the Nobility at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket, during 1737–8, but attempts to raise a subscription for 1738–9 failed, and the Italian opera collapsed for the third time in just over 20 years.
While Italian opera was experiencing artistic triumph but financial ruin, musical entertainment in English was for the most part flourishing. The popular English musical forms of the 1710s continued to thrive in the 20s, and The Beggar’s Opera (see fig.16) had a totally unprecedented success at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1728, changing the whole face of London entertainment. Gay’s oddity enjoyed a staggering 62 performances in its first half-season and spawned a tremendous boom in ballad opera in both mainpieces and afterpieces. Music virtually flooded the legitimate stage, mostly in decidedly popular forms. The suggestion that serious opera might improve its position by returning to English was put forward more than once. Aaron Hill urged Handel to ‘deliver us from our Italian bondage’ in a famous letter of 1732. Others had similar ideas, and the prospective availability of Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1732 helped generate some attempts at the establishment of an English opera company. Thomas Arne senior, styling himself ‘Proprietor of the English Operas’, staged several works including Lampe’s Amelia (1732), J.C. Smith’s Teraminta (1732) and his own son’s Rosamond (1733). These experiments attracted little support: plenty of music was available at Drury Lane and Covent Garden, and English opera could not compete with the Italian in social glamour.
London, §V, 1: Musical life: 1660–1800: The stage
Handel abandoned Italian opera in 1741, and for the next 40 years the history of the form in London is a dizzying sequence of changing managements and a tale of artistic mediocrity. Throughout this period the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket continued to serve as venue and the basic season remained as before – performances on Tuesday and Saturday from December to June, with a total of roughly 50–60 nights. Ticket prices remained at half a guinea, but managers could not afford the fabulous fees that had brought the likes of Senesino, Cuzzoni and Farinelli to London. Artistically the pasticcio reigned supreme. The King’s Theatre company rarely mounted more than ten operas a season, and a large majority were never revived. No more than 15% were newly composed for London, and as time went on, comic opera and ballet loomed increasingly large in the company’s operations.
In this period, management was acutely unstable. In 1741 30 gentlemen pledged £6000 as a subsidy for four years, but the company lost about £3800 each season and survived only two. This venture was headed by Lord Middlesex, who tried to carry on by himself and did manage to bring Gluck to London for 1745–6. Middlesex’s venture had collapsed by the end of 1749 and there was a hiatus until 1753, when Domenico Paradies and Francesco Vanneschi organized a company, surviving two years. 12 separate opera managements can be identified between 1741 and 1778, when the opera house, bought by Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Thomas Harris, entered on an even more unstable phase of its stormy history.
Meanwhile at Covent Garden and Drury Lane, musical entertainments in English were proving very profitable indeed. Although the Licensing Act of 1737 produced a lengthy drought in new works of all kinds, the enormous popularity of the Carey-Lampe afterpiece The Dragon of Wantley (1737) foreshadowed the English opera boom of the 1760s. This was inaugurated, ironically, by T.A. Arne’s Artaxerxes (1762), an all-sung English version of Metastasio’s Artaserse that was regularly revived well into the 19th century. It was followed by lighter fare, with many of the librettos provided by Isaac Bickerstaff. Love in a Village (1762) was a pasticcio arranged by Arne from more than 15 sources, with some original music of his own. Other great successes at Covent Garden were the Bickerstaff-Arnold Maid of the Mill (1765, see fig.17; a charming musical treatment of Richardson’s Pamela of 1740) and the Bickerstaff-Dibdin Lionel and Clarissa (1768). Sheridan’s The Duenna, with music by the Linleys, ran a startling 75 times in 1775–6. Such works had plenty of ‘serious’ Italian music in them, but were offered as part of the regular six-days-a-week theatrical repertory at the patent theatres, always in English and at less than half the price of Italian opera. In the third quarter of the 18th century opera was flourishing in London – but at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket, it had become a decidedly sickly and uninspiring venture.
London, §V, 1: Musical life: 1660–1800: The stage
In 1778 Thomas Harris and R.B. Sheridan, the principal owner-managers of Covent Garden and Drury Lane respectively, bought the King’s Theatre for £22,000 (of which £12,000 was mortgaged). Their plans were not clear: reportedly they intended to use the dormant Killigrew patent of 1662 to authorize a third playhouse. As events fell out, their purchase was the first step into legal snarls from which neither the first King’s Theatre nor its successor was to recover for more than half a century. G.A. Gallini bought the mortgage and tried to take over the theatre in 1780; Sheridan bought out Harris and then sold his interest to William Taylor, who was to remain the evil genius of Italian opera in London until 1815. Gallini and Taylor spent the 1780s fighting for control of the theatre.
In 1782 Taylor had the interior of the building virtually gutted and rebuilt by Michael Novosielski. The result was a shallower working stage, a large pit and an auditorium with five shallow tiers in horseshoe form; the capacity was just over 1800. Taylor’s artistic policy was not markedly different from that of his predecessors, but he was the first manager in many years to spend freely and promote aggressively. The immediate outcome was bankruptcy: the affairs of the King’s Theatre in the mid-1780s are a tangle of recriminatory pamphlets and Chancery actions no one has ever yet quite sorted out. Gallini managed the theatre from 1785 to 1789, despite Taylor’s determined efforts to evict him.
When the King’s Theatre burnt down on 17 June 1789 the situation became even more chaotic. Taylor and Gallini both wanted to rebuild but could not agree to cooperate. During summer and autumn 1789 at least four more schemes were proposed for the future of Italian opera in London. The one that found royal favour was officially put forward by an impecunious law clerk and amateur architect named Robert Bray O’Reilly; in fact he was simply front man for a cabal of nobles headed by the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Salisbury (who happened to be Lord Chamberlain). The plan was to erect a glamorous new theatre along French architectural lines on the north side of Leicester Square. (An architectural plan, of disputed authorship, is now in Sir John Soane’s Museum, London.) The theatre was designed to hold only about 2300 people and had a staggering projected cost of £150,000. The scheme fell through because Taylor and shareholders in the King’s Theatre violently protested at being deprived of the opera licence, and the Lord Chancellor refused to let the patent grant pass the Great Seal.
In summer 1790 affairs took a bizarre turn. Taylor scrounged up backers and commissioned Novosielski to rebuild the King’s Theatre on a grand scale. Opened in February 1791, it measured about 28 metres by 52 and had a capacity of over 3000 (see fig.18) – even though Salisbury awarded a four-year opera licence to O’Reilly for performance at another venue. This was the Pantheon in Oxford Street, erected by James Wyatt in 1772 as an elegant exhibition space and now hastily altered for use as an opera house at a cost of some £22,000. London had not managed to keep its one opera house out of bankruptcy and now it was going to have two expensive modern theatres built for the purpose, only one of which would have a licence. For the new King’s Theatre Taylor hired dancers and Joseph Haydn, used his new building as a concert hall, and bided his time. Haydn even composed an opera seria for London, L’anima del filosofo (though in the event it was never performed).
Until the discovery of the company’s papers in the Bedford Estates Office, London, little was known about the rival Pantheon operation beyond the works it performed and the names of its principal performers – a strong company including Mara and Pacchiarotti. In fact the enterprise was a deliberate attempt to change the nature of the opera establishment in England. The Pantheon was conceived as a kind of ‘court opera’, in which more of the financial burden was to be borne directly by noble patrons, thus freeing the company to pursue innovations in opera and ballet and to hire the best performers in Europe. To compete against Haydn at the King’s, the Pantheon tried (unsuccessfully) to hire Mozart. Artistically its backers were committed to the old-fashioned opera seria, costly and tending to appeal to only a small, élite audience. But as the hastily mounted season of 1790–91 demonstrates, they were willing to support this preference with a second company devoted to opera buffa. Unfortunately very little went right. The company gave 55 performances during 1790–91 and lost a startling amount of money.
Four performances into the season of 1791–2, the Pantheon burnt to the ground under highly suspicious circumstances, and the venture finished the spring in makeshift conditions at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket. The highlight of the season was Paisiello’s La locanda, specially composed for London. Evidence in the Bedford papers suggests that the Pantheon’s backers killed it off when they realized that not even a princely subvention would be adequate to support opera seria in the fiercely competitive London theatre world. The Pantheon was a doomed experiment, and it seems to have lost more than £40,000 in its two seasons.
London, §V, 1: Musical life: 1660–1800: The stage
The burning of the Pantheon solved the city’s two-opera-house problem, and on 24 August 1792 a General Opera Trust Deed was signed, a kind of peace treaty intended to restore amity and fiscal responsibility. It did not work on either count. Trustees were to be appointed and any profits of the new King’s Theatre in the Haymarket used to pay off the Pantheon’s debts, but Taylor somehow succeeded in evading the trustee provision and the company remained mired in debts and lawsuits. Taylor managed the theatre while technically in a debtors’ prison (except between 1797 and 1802, when he was MP for Leominster). Exciting performers, composers and librettists were hired (B.G. Banti, Martín y Soler, Lorenzo Da Ponte), but chaotic management kept the company at the brink of disaster. Ticket prices were high, standards shaky. Competition from Covent Garden and Drury Lane was damaging, for those theatres increasingly featured such popular English operas as Stephen Storace’s The Haunted Tower and The Siege of Belgrade (see fig.19) – better staged, easier to follow and well sung. The ineffectuality of the competition put up by the King’s Theatre is only partly attributable to the innate unprofitability of full-fledged opera. Much of the problem must be imputed to the impresario system and the horrible financial snarls from which the King’s Theatre was never able to extricate itself – a tangle that was to haunt the Italian opera in London for decades yet to come.
London, §V: Musical life: 1660–1800
The burgeoning of London’s concert life around 1700, a development unparalleled elsewhere in Europe, resulted from a confluence of many different factors. With the end of the Commonwealth in 1660, music could be more openly promulgated as a legitimate leisure activity, whether an amusement of the idle rich or a learned pursuit of the connoisseur. Growing wealth and the expansion of mercantile interests contributed to the rise of an urban élite that was itself constantly changing and enlarging. There was, therefore, ready patronage for music in a leisured class of aristocratic and bourgeois enthusiasts, who yet lacked the means or inclination to maintain their own musical establishments (James Brydges, later the Duke of Chandos, was to prove a notable exception in the 1710s). London’s musical life was untrammelled by restrictions, dominated neither by opera nor by the court; for while the Restoration of Charles II had initiated a rich and vibrant musical culture, the role of the monarchy as a patron soon waned. As royal finances lapsed into chaos, the court lost its central place in musical life – a decline accelerated by the Glorious Revolution – and court musicians were forced to supplement their income elsewhere. Musicians nurtured in the new urban milieu developed an alert sense of commercial potential, their emerging professionalism reflected in increasingly virtuoso technique and public projection of their art. Foreign violinists such as Nicola Matteis captured the imagination of London connoisseurs with their dazzling virtuosity and flights of fancy, transporting listeners with expressive powers to match the latest Italian singers. There was also a growing sense of the autonomy of instrumental music, especially orchestral music, around which programmes could be structured. At the same time, lively amateur music-making encouraged the foundation of numerous musical societies without a commercial interest – though often with professional strengthening, a blurring of boundaries characteristic of this early period. One such society, the Academy of Ancient Music, was even inspired by professional musicians themselves, altruistically dedicated to their particular cause. London’s concert life therefore developed from a mixture of functions, motivations and patronage; and as these various factors jostled and coalesced, its structure remained extremely fluid until the later decades of the 18th century.
The birth of the public concert is usually equated with John Banister’s initiative in 1672, but his concerts were clearly founded on some kind of indigenous tradition. Taverns produced a natural venue for music-making, especially during the Puritan closure of the theatres: according to Evelyn and Pepys, organs removed from churches during the Civil War were rebuilt in tavern music rooms, and many theatre musicians were forced to try their living here.
Our music, which was held delectable and precious, that they who scorned to come to a tavern under twenty shillings salary for two hours, now wander with their instruments under their cloaks – I mean, such as have any – into all houses of good fellowship, saluting every room where there is company with ‘Will you have any music, gentlemen?’
Little is known about the standards and social status of tavern performers, partly because the Commonwealth government classed freelance musicians as vagabonds, to preserve the privileges of musicians’ guilds. Anthony Wood mentioned a music meeting in 1648 at the Black Horse, Aldersgate Street; Pepys, 17 years later, referred to ‘the King’s Head, the great musique-house’ at Greenwich; and Ned Ward gave an entertaining account of a visit to the Mitre Tavern in Wapping:
we had heard of a famous Amphibious House of Entertainment, compounded of one half Tavern and t’other Musick-House … we no sooner enter’d the House, but we heard Fidlers and Hoitboys, together with a Humdrum Organ, make such incomparable Musick … we were Usher’d into a most Stately Apartment, Dedicated purely to the Lovers of Musick, Painting, Dancing.
Ward made it clear that no charge was made for the music, but that patrons sometimes tipped the players. Other music houses were more convivial and depended on amateur music-making: Roger North recalled a tavern near St Paul’s where ‘some shopkeepers and foremen came weekly to sing in consort, and to hear, and injoy ale and tobacco; and after some time the audience grew strong’.
London’s concerts therefore developed from East London roots, through a mixture of professional and amateur music-making. Indeed societies in the City continued to play a major part in London’s musical life for many decades, providing a model for a quite different development: the rise of public concerts (promoted and performed by professional musicians), and their eventual acceptance as part of fashionable West End culture. For in essence the public concert was to carve a commercial niche that lay somewhere between bourgeois amateur societies and tavern concerts on the one hand, and the salons of the court and aristocracy on the other.
The year 1672 saw a milestone in the history of public concert promotion, with the first recorded example not only in London but also in Europe. John Banister, a disaffected court musician, brought the experience of court music to the indigenous tradition, advertising a series of daily public concerts in the London Gazette in December 1672. The venue – a room at a Whitefriars tavern, ‘rounded with seats and small tables alehouse fashion’ – was unprepossessing, and the atmosphere informal (a shilling each, ‘call for what you please’). But by engaging top professionals he attracted such large audiences that he was soon able to move westwards to Lincoln’s Inn Fields (where his ensemble numbered as many as 50) and finally in 1678 to Essex Buildings in the Strand.
Another concert initiative similarly moved westwards, transformed from an amateur club into a professional undertaking. Starting as a private diversion for a group of gentlemen, the club moved to the more formal surroundings of a tavern in Fleet Street; but when the taverner started to charge for entrance, the amateurs gradually fell away, to be replaced by professionals who spotted the commercial potential and eventually (c1689) transferred their meetings to a room in Villiers Street, York Buildings. This large and commodious hall, specially fitted out for music, quickly became London’s first fashionable concert venue, ‘for a long time the resort of all the idle and gay folk of the towne’, according to Roger North; and the concert series there during the 1690s were attended by ‘all the Quallity and beau mond’. Such was its success that a rival venue was built in nearby Charles Street (the Vendu), and at both venues enterprising musicians such as J.W. Franck and Gottfried Finger fully exploited the growing market with subscription series advertised in the daily press.
The concept of a weekly subscription series was more than a way of raising advance income, for the high prices also ensured social exclusivity: ‘at Consorts of Note the Prices are extravagant, purposely to keep out inferiour People’, as a journalist wrote in 1709. Similar factors underlay the benefit system, whereby well-placed musicians would promote their individual Consorts of Vocal and Instrumental Musick: this was to become a routine end-of-season ritual for leading performers at subscription series and musical societies. The practice mingled the unashamed commercialism of expensive tickets and alluring advertisement with more traditional patronage, for the benefitee was expected to deliver tickets to his patrons in person. Another money-making exercise for court musicians was the annual performance of an ode in honour of St Cecilia, normally held on 22 November at Stationers’ Hall. The first was perhaps that of 1683 (Purcell’s Welcome to all the pleasures), and the tradition lasted for some 20 years; often the odes (as well as those performed at court) were repeated at the York Buildings room or elsewhere.
These well-publicized events were shadowed by an array of more private music-making, often including amateur performance. One series of weekly concerts, begun by Thomas Britton in 1678, achieved prestige and fame well beyond its apparent status. The venue, a ‘bung hole’ above his coal warehouse in Clerkenwell, was cramped and uncongenial, yet among those ‘willing to take a hearty Sweat’ were aristocratic patrons and celebrated musicians including Banister, Pepusch and possibly Handel. The concerts were more or less open to the public (admission at first was free); and despite the increasing formalization of London’s concert life, they persisted until Britton’s death in 1714. Other societies were purely for amateur instrumentalists. Roger North described one such musical society ‘of gentlemen of good esteem … that used to meet often for consort’; and at another, led by a ubiquitous amateur violinist named Henry Needler, Corelli’s concerti grossi were first introduced to London, to such enthusiastic response that the musicians played them through at a single sitting.
By 1720, therefore, London had developed a lively concert life, but it was as yet relatively unstructured and certainly did not provide a secure basis for musicians’ careers. Subsequent decades witnessed not only a quickening of pace but also regularization through the development of musical institutions and a concert season that ensured a measure of continuity from year to year. Several long-lived amateur music societies were founded in the 1720s, and the benevolent Society of Musicians in 1738; subscription series were formalized at Hickford’s Room, and Handel developed his Lenten oratorio seasons during the 1730s; while music was also put on a new footing at the reconstructed pleasure gardens later in the decade. Concert programmes, too, became more rationally ordered. Whereas North had complained about the ‘consorts, fuges, solos, lutes, Hautbois, trumpets, kettledrums, and what Not, but all disjoynted and incoherent’, gradually a regular two-part plan evolved in which half a dozen instrumental works – concertos, overtures, solos – alternated with songs and other vocal pieces.
Concert life coalesced, therefore, around two principal formats, still not entirely distinguishable: musical societies for the amusement of gentlemen amateurs, mostly based in or near the City; and public concerts (subscription series, benefits and oratorios), generally held at the theatres or at West End halls. Almost all of these events took place between October and May, advertised public concerts being mainly restricted to the spring months when ‘the quality’ came to London. As the pleasure gardens became more regularized, these too provided concerts of a good standard during the summer hiatus.
The most significant of the musical societies was initiated towards 1720 by Maurice Greene and an amateur violinist named Talbot Young. Its development followed a characteristic pattern. Originally meeting at Young’s father’s house in St Paul’s Churchyard, and later at the nearby Queen’s Head, in 1724 the society moved to the Castle Tavern: as the Castle Society it was to become formalized under a committee of amateur directors, with a published constitution. The performers were mainly gentlemen instrumentalists, who met regularly for rehearsals and concerts on a weekly rotation, the earnest tone enforced by strict rules and fines for talking or walking around during the concerts. But there were also ‘auditor members’ as well as lady guests, and as numbers increased the society moved to larger venues, including Haberdashers Hall, before its demise around 1775. Another important City society met in Cornhill at the Swan Tavern (later at the King’s Arms), and both boasted leading professionals such as John Stanley among the performers.
Quite different in its agenda was the Academy of Ancient Music, founded as the Academy of Vocal Music in 1726 to revive the glories of 16th- and 17th-century sacred music and madrigals. Again, though, it was the music itself rather than profit that provided the inspiration, the founders a mix of leading professionals and aristocratic enthusiasts; and again the society was formalized and admitted larger audiences as the century progressed – although these changes brought their own problems, with an increasing partiality for later Baroque music (including Handel’s oratorios), and a gradual decline in missionary zeal for the older repertory.
The Academy met at the Crown and Anchor in the Strand, and many other societies met at London taverns, which often contained substantial ‘long rooms’ for such purposes. Newspaper advertisements and subscription lists contain many references to these societies, which included the Apollo Academy founded by Greene on his secession from the Academy in 1731; and a significant masonic society directed by Geminiani at the Queen’s Head from 1725 to 1727, the ‘Philo-Musicae et Architecturae Societas’. On a lower level, clearly distinguished by Hawkins from such ‘select meetings’, were the ‘alehouse clubs, and places of vulgar resort in the villages adjacent to London, [where] small proficients in harmony … were used to recreate themselves’, and where the price of admission was only sixpence.
At the other end of the spectrum, fashionable public concert life shifted to a new hall in the West End, Hickford’s Room in James Street, which was rebuilt in 1714. Details of subscription concerts here are sparse, but they seem to have taken place on a regular basis at least from 1728, when L.C.A. Granom promised an ambitious series of concerts for 6 guineas; the series in 1731–2 was under the management of Geminiani. In 1739 Hickford removed to Brewer Street, and the series the following year featured oratorios and other works by J.C. Smith, a rare example of an extended concert promotion by an English musician. Concert series continued at Hickford’s Room for many years, and it remained a popular venue for benefits, but the room lost its predominance after the death of the leader Festing in 1752.
Handel also became directly involved with charitable causes. The link between concerts and charity was not as strong in London as in other cathedral cities, and the Sons of the Clergy charity, for example, promoted only an annual church service with elaborate music. But Handel’s Messiah performances at the Foundling Hospital (see fig.4) in 1750 began an annual tradition that lasted until 1777 and was imitated by other institutions, notably the Lock Hospital. Handel was also a supporter and benefactor of the Society of Musicians, a benevolent fund for indigent musicians and their families, which began an annual series of benefit concerts in 1739.
Yet again there was strong competition from the Pantheon and from rival promoters such as Salomon and Madame Mara; and it was Salomon who finally toppled the Professionals, with his coup in bringing Haydn to London in 1791. Haydn’s four seasons in London (1791–2 and 1794 at Salomon’s concerts, 1795 at a new coalition named the Opera Concert) represent a high point in the musical life of the capital – not only for the works Haydn created, including the twelve last symphonies and six quartets for Salomon, but also for the intensity and vitality of these concert seasons (see fig.22). This was also a period of great productivity and individuality in piano music – the ‘London Pianoforte School’ of Clementi, Cramer and Dussek, inspired by the technological advances of Broadwood’s pianos – and of Viotti’s distinctive contribution to the violin repertory. Another striking success was the Vocal Concert, founded in 1792 by Samuel Harrison and Charles Knyvett, who unprecedentedly attracted a beau monde audience for English songs and glees, essentially a sociable male after-dinner repertory.
This connection was secured still further by the involvement of the directors (in collaboration with the Society of Musicians) in the Handel Commemoration of 1784 (see Iconography of music, fig.11) – a pivotal event in London’s musical life, which celebrated Handel’s supposed centenary through an elaborate festival at Westminster Abbey and the Pantheon. With forces unprecedented at the time – a total of 525 in the choir and orchestra – this massive celebration, attended by the entire royal family, took on the ceremonial role of a coronation and played an important part in redefining the role of King George III after a period of political unrest. Further festivals followed in subsequent years (Haydn attended the last in 1791), with the active support of the King; in 1785 he also began to attend the Concert of Ancient Music, which accordingly gained a high social profile as a court institution.
Though on the surface flourishing and energetic, London’s concert life was open to several criticisms: its apparently indiscriminate encouragement of foreign musicians; its submission to commercial pressures and attendant ephemerality (which in turn resulted in the ancient–modern schism); and its indifference towards the British school of composition. During the first half of the century programmes had mixed British and foreign music, but increasingly programmes at the more prestigious concerts concentrated on Austro-German symphonies and Italian opera extracts, with British composers relegated to lesser venues and pleasure gardens (and occasionally the Lenten oratorios). In defence it may be argued that this parochial view downplays London’s patronage of resident foreign composers – from Handel and Geminiani, through J.C. Bach and Abel, to Clementi and Dussek. Nevertheless, it is inescapable that during the 1780s and 90s London concert programmes were dominated by two colossi largely in absentia – Handel and Haydn – and that little of lasting consequence was being produced by native composers, their main artistic contribution limited to the glee, which was optimistically elevated to a national art form.
After Haydn’s departure in 1795, London’s concert life lost some of its vitality, with a decline in the number of concerts, institutional cutbacks and (to judge from press coverage) diminishing public interest. In part this reflected political and economic pressures and a reaction against ostentatious luxury; but there was also some sense of exhaustion after the ‘rage for music’, which had translated concerts into the centre of London’s social life and unprecedentedly elevated two concert composers into national icons.
London, §V: Musical life: 1660–1800
London’s parks and gardens have been open to the public at least since Stuart times. Hyde Park was perhaps the earliest example of this, access being granted by Charles I in 1635. Later in the century emerged the organized ‘pleasure gardens’ which levied a small entrance fee and supplied refreshments, music and other forms of entertainment. Marylebone (c1659–1778) and Vauxhall (1661–1859) originated respectively in a popular tavern and a Thames-side country house; others, like Lambeth Wells (c1697–c1829) and Sadler’s Wells (1684–c1879), began their lives as supposedly medicinal springs.
The gardens enjoyed their heyday in the 18th century, especially after both Vauxhall and Marylebone were refurbished by new owners during the 1730s; while Ranelagh, more illustrious than either, was entirely a Georgian creation. Yet their tradition was to persist well into the next century, with Cremorne Gardens (Ranelagh’s natural successor in Chelsea) and the Eagle Tavern among those most frequented by the Victorians. Of the 631 recorded, the following gardens are known to have provided musical entertainment:
Adam and Eve Tea Gardens, Tottenham Court
Road (c1718–before 1811)
Albert Saloon, Shepherdess Walk, City Road (before 1838–c1857)
Apollo Gardens, Westminster Bridge Road (1788–93)
Bagnigge Wells, King’s Cross Road (1759–1841)
Balty’s Hippodrome, Kensington (1851–2)
Belvidere Tea Gardens, Pentonville Road (c1664–1876)
Bermondsey Spa (1770–1804)
Brunswick Gardens, Vauxhall (1836–45)
Cremorne Gardens, Chelsea (1836–78)
Cromwell’s Gardens, Brompton (c1762–97)
Cuper’s Gardens, Lambeth (1691–1752)
Eagle Tavern, City Road (c1822–82)
Finch’s Grotto Gardens, Southwark (1760–c1777)
Flora Gardens, Camberwell (c1849–57)
Flora Tea Gardens, Westminster Bridge Road (c1796–before
1800)
Islington Spa (1784–c1840)
Lambeth Wells (c1697–c1829)
Lord Cobham’s Head, Cold Bath Fields (1728–c1744)
London Spa, at the corner of Rosomon Street and Exmouth Street
(c1685–1754)
Manor House Baths and Gardens, Chelsea (1838–41)
Marble Hall, Vauxhall (1740–1813)
Marylebone Gardens (c1659–1778)
Mulberry Garden, Clerkenwell (1742–52)
New Globe Pleasure-Grounds, Mile End Road (c1827 –
after 1854)
New Wells, near London Spa (c1737–50)
Panharmonion Gardens, King’s Cross (1829–97)
Pantheon, Spa Fields (not to be confused with the more famous
Pantheon in Oxford Street) (1770–76)
Ranelagh Gardens, Chelsea (1742–1803)
Rosemary Branch, Hoxton (c1830–53)
Sadler’s Wells, Clerkenwell (1684–c1879)
St Helena’s Gardens, Rotherhithe (1770–1881)
Sir John Oldcastle Tavern, Faringdon Road (c1744–6)
Surrey Zoological Gardens, between Kennington Road and
Walworth Road (1831–77)
Temple of Flora, Westminster Bridge Road (1789–96)
Vauxhall Gardens, Lambeth (1661–1859)
Weston’s Retreat, Kentish Town (c1858–65)
White Conduit House, Penton Street (c1745–1849)
Yorkshire Stingo, Marylebone Road (c1770–1848)
The style of the various pleasure gardens varied considerably. Vauxhall became the quintessential 18th-century venue after its refurbishment by Jonathan Tyers in 1732: an idealized rural paradise on the edge of London, it brought together a wide cross-section of London society in the summer season (indeed it was one of the few places in London where one might rub shoulders with the likes of Dr Johnson or the Duchess of Devonshire). The gentility of those promenading around the bandstand, or taking cold suppers in alcoves decorated by Francis Hayman and Hogarth, contrasted with the shadier reputation of the ‘dark walks’ and last-night rowdyism. Ranelagh was higher-priced and altogether more genteel: essentially an indoor venue, the enormous rotunda (1742) contained an amphitheatre of supper-boxes and a huge central stove around which the visitors perambulated in sober succession (see fig.24).
Marylebone, a dangerous journey across the fields, never quite came into fashion, but a series of enterprising managers (including Thomas Lowe and Samuel Arnold) devoted consequent energy to the musical entertainments. Many other gardens and spas dotted around the periphery of the city had their Long Rooms, where a particular attraction was organ music on Sundays when families visited them in large numbers.
Characteristic evenings were described by many contemporary diarists (Pepys), essayists (Addison) and novelists (Fanny Burney, Smollett, Thackeray) and depicted by artists, notably Canaletto, Samuel Wale and Rowlandson. Concerts became an established part of the entertainments in the late 17th century. At first the outdoor bandstands (or ‘orchestras’) were simple pavilions, and the audience listened from the promenade and supper boxes: the ‘Moorish-Gothick’ temple at Vauxhall (1758) was a particularly elaborate example (see fig.25). Later, buildings provided protection for listeners as well as performers, not only the Ranelagh rotunda but also, less grandly, Vauxhall’s rococo music room aptly called the ‘Umbrella’ (1752; see fig.26).
Programmes were sometimes advertised, but the most comprehensive information is provided by the ‘Vauxhall Lists’ for 1790–93 (see Cudworth, 1967, and McGairl, 1986). The general pattern – some 12 to 20 items distributed between two acts – was common to all the gardens. The vocal items ranged from solo songs through duets, glees and choruses to vaudeville and small-scale operas; the instrumental works are mainly overtures, symphonies and concertos. All tastes were catered for, with no division between the ‘ancient’ style (Corelli, Handel) and the ‘modern’ (J.C. Bach, Haydn), between serious and popular, or sacred and secular. Many of the composers and performers were English; in fact the pleasure garden was one of the chief institutions in 18th-century England where native music was fostered. Some gardens had accredited composers. In 1745 Jonathan Tyers, the founder of Georgian Vauxhall, secured the services of Thomas Arne (and thus of many of his family and pupils); after him James Hook officiated until 1820, and Henry R. Bishop directed in the 1820s and 30s.
Though at first the gardens offered only instrumental music, it was through songs and extended vocal pieces composed between the 1730s and 1830s that the gardens made their most important contribution to English music (see fig.27). The surviving repertory is extensive: for instance, four of the Vauxhall composers – Arne, John Worgan, Hook and Bishop – produced between 1745 and 1834 no fewer than 33 collections of songs in manuscript or print. The solo songs were generally in the simple ballad form evolved in the late 17th century, later heightened with dramatic devices derived from the Italian opera. Sometimes the texts were by contemporary writers such as John Lockman in the 18th century or Edward Fitzball in the 19th; others were by earlier authors such as Shakespeare in the case of Arne, or Herrick in the case of Horn’s Cherry Ripe. Some texts reflect the surroundings (elegant pastorals or artificial rusticities, hunting and drinking songs), some are national (imitation Scots or Irish), some reflect contemporary taste (Gothic morbidity and medievalism), others indicate topical interests (Hook’s The Rights of Women, 1801, and Bishop’s heroic recitative and aria The Emancipation from Negro Slavery, 1834); and many are patriotic, especially in time of war.
More ambitious were cantatas based on the Italian model (but sometimes including strophic songs); and dialogues for soprano and tenor, directly descended from the 17th-century prototype and almost invariably on rustic or pastoral topics. Larger concerted pieces brought together all the soloists to conclude an act; and after 1750 these were sometimes specially written, such as Hook’s Vauxhall finales or Bishop’s cantata Waterloo for a ‘Magnificent Military Fete’ (1826). Opera at the gardens began in 1730, when The Prisoner’s Opera formed part of a variety programme at Sadler’s Wells; and during the 1770s cockney dialogues by Dibdin were a popular attraction here (he also wrote short operas for Ranelagh). At Marylebone a small theatre was built for performances of Italian operas or ‘burlettas’: the elder Storace put on an English version of Pergolesi’s La serva padrona in 1758, and Arnold promoted an ambitious programme of light operas by Barthélemon and others in the early 1770s. Vauxhall introduced pastiches in the 1820s, but was staging Rossini by the end of the decade, and Bishop’s own five operas for Vauxhall (1830–32) owe not a little to that composer.
Most of the popular London playhouse singers appeared at the gardens, and some became sufficiently associated to be identified in title pages, such as J.C. Bach’s Second Collection of Favourite Songs Sung at Vaux Hall by Mrs Pinto & Mrs Weichsell. The vocal music of the gardens is a valuable source of information about orchestral accompaniment of English song (particularly for the later 18th century, where there is little evidence from theatre music), since much survives in full score, both in manuscript and in print, or in reduced score with instrumental cues.
Less of the purely instrumental music performed at the gardens was written specially for them, being mainly drawn from current repertory: overtures and concertos by Handel and his Italian contemporaries, symphonies from the Mannheim and Austrian schools (including Haydn), theatre overtures by English composers such as Arne, Arnold and Fisher. The one distinctive instrumental genre was the organ concerto. Organs were installed as the gardens expanded (Vauxhall 1737, shown in fig.28; Ranelagh 1746), at the same time as they were becoming popular between the acts of oratorio performances: their carrying power and ability to stay in tune made them the most practical keyboard instruments for outdoor performance. The organist was an important figure, playing continuo and often acting as offical composer and musical director. At Vauxhall the first organist was probably Thomas Gladwin, succeeded by James Worgan and in 1751 by John Worgan, who according to Burney performed ‘every evening’ one of Handel’s concertos prefaced by ‘an extempore prelude, alla Palestrina’ and a fugue by Handel. The only noted garden composers whose organ concertos survive are Arne and Hook, who is said to have played one of his own concertos every night that Vauxhall opened from 1774 to 1820.
Much other instrumental music was provided outside the main concert by wind bands or smaller peripatetic groups hired for supper serenades, especially from the 1760s onwards. The most famous band performance was one of the earliest, the public rehearsal of Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks at Vauxhall (21 April 1749); and Handel’s music was again used for fireworks displays at Ranelagh from 1767 onwards. During the late 18th century military music became increasingly popular, particularly during the wars with France: from 1790 to 1816 Vauxhall had the services of the military band formed by the Duke of York for his regiment, the Coldstream Guards. In 1800, on the occasion of ‘a most superb Oriental Gala’ celebrating recent successes in India, the band performed ‘in a most Magnificent Triumphal Car … several favourite Hindostan Airs’.
The decline of the pleasure gardens began in the later 18th century, as musical taste began to change and the sites were gradually swallowed up in housing and industrial development. Vauxhall tried to adapt with a more populist programme of displays, but after many years of financial difficulty it succumbed in 1859; Marylebone had closed as early as 1778, and Ranelagh followed suite in 1803. Some new gardens did, however, open in the 19th century, such as Cremorne and the Eagle Tavern. Their music followed traditional lines, with concerts (mainly of dance music) and operatic performances: the Eagle staged Don Giovanni, Il barbiere di Siviglia and La sonnambula in the 1840s; and Cremorne in the 1870s presented works by Boieldieu, Auber and Offenbach. But there was also such up-to-date fare as Villikins and his Dinah, Pop goes the weasel and other Cockney ballads, as well as the ‘Nigger melodists’, which appropriately link the story of the later pleasure gardens with that of another Victorian institution, the Music hall.
For further information on institutions and venues, see Grove6
London, §V: Musical life: 1660–1800
R.B. O'Reilly: An Authentic Narrative of the Principal Circumstances Relating to the Opera-House in the Haymarket (London, 1791)
W. Taylor: A Concise Statement of Transactions and Circumstances Respecting the King's Theatre, in the Haymarket (London, 1791)
Opera House: a Review of this Theatre (London, c1815)
E.W. Brayley: Historical and Descriptive Account of the London Theatres (London, 1826)
E.A. Langhans: ‘A Conjectural Reconstruction of the Dorset Garden Theatre’, Theatre Survey, xiii (1972), 74–93
D. Nalbach: The King's Theatre, 1704–1867 (London, 1972)
J. Milhous: ‘New Light on Vanbrugh's Haymarket Theatre Project’, Theatre Survey, xvii (1976), 143–61
E.A. Langhans: ‘The Theatres’, The London Theater World, 1660–1800, ed. R.D. Hume (Carbondale, IL, 1980), 35–65
R.D. Hume: ‘The Nature of the Dorset Garden Theatre’, Theatre Notebook, xxxvi (1982), 99–109
J. Milhous: ‘The Capacity of Vanbrugh's Theatre in the Haymarket’, Theatre History Studies, iv (1984), 38–46
C.A. Price: ‘The Pantheon: Italian Opera and Arson in late 18th-Century London’, IMSCR XIV: Bologna 1987, iii, 307–13
L. Lindgren: ‘Die Bühnenausstattung von Händels Opern in London’, Händel auf dem Theater, ed. H.J. Marx (Laaber, 1988), 143–69
G.F. Barlow: ‘Vanbrugh's Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket, 1703–9’, EMc, xvii (1989), 515–21
J. Milhous and R.D. Hume: ‘The Haymarket Opera in 1711’, EMc, xvii (1989), 523–37
J. Milhous: ‘Händel und die Londoner Theaterverhältnisse im Jahre 1734’, Gattungskonventionen der Händel-Oper: Karlsruhe 1990 und 1991, 117–37
C.A. Price, J. Milhous, R.D. Hume: ‘A Royal Opera House in Leicester Square (1790)’, COJ, ii (1990), 1–28
C. Price, J. Milhous and R.D. Hume: ‘A Plan of the Pantheon Opera House’, COJ, iii (1991), 213–46
C. Price, J. Milhous and R.D. Hume: ‘The Rebuilding of the King's Theatre, Haymarket, 1789–1791’, Theatre Journal, xliii (1991), 423–44
J. Milhous and R.D. Hume: ‘James Lewis's Plans for an Opera House in the Haymarket (1778)’, Theatre Research International, xix (1994), 191–202
C.A. Price, J. Milhous and R.D. Hume: Italian Opera in late Eighteenth-Century London, i: The King's Theatre, Haymarket, 1778–1791 (New York, 1995)
J. Muller and F. Muller: ‘Purcell's Dioclesian on the Dorset Garden Stage’, Performing the Music of Henry Purcell (New York, 1996), 232–42
J. Girdham: English Opera in late Eighteenth-Century London: Stephen Storace at Drury Lane (Oxford, 1997)
J. Milhous and R.D. Hume: ‘J.F. Lampe and English Opera at the Little Haymarket in 1732–3’, ML, lxxviii (1997), 502–31
J. Milhous and R.D. Hume: ‘Heidegger and the Management of the Haymarket Opera, 1713–1717’, EMc, xxvii (1999), 65–84
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A. Le Texier: Ideas on the Opera, Offered to the Subscribers, Creditors, and Amateurs of that Theatre (London, 1790)
R. Mount Edgcumbe: Musical Reminiscences of an Old Amateur, Containing an Account of the Italian Opera in England from 1773 (London, 1824)
W.H. Cummings: ‘The Lord Chamberlain and Opera in London, 1700–1740’, PMA, xl (1913–14), 37–72
E.J. Dent: Foundations of English Opera (Cambridge, 1928/R)
J.M. Knapp: ‘Handel, the Royal Academy of Music, and its First Opera Season in London (1720)’, MQ, xlv (1959), 145–67
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E. Haun: But Hark! More Harmony: the Libretti of Restoration Opera in English (Ypsilanti, MI, 1971)
R. Fiske: English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1973, 2/1986)
J. Milhous and R.D. Hume: ‘Box Office Reports for Five Operas Mounted by Handel in London, 1732–1734’, Harvard Library Bulletin, xxvi (1978), 245–66
C.A. Price: ‘The Critical Decade for English Music Drama, 1700–1710’, Harvard Library Bulletin, xxvi (1978), 38–76
F.C. Petty: Italian Opera in London, 1760–1800 (Ann Arbor, 1980)
J. Milhous and R.D. Hume: ‘Handel's Opera Finances in 1732–3’, MT, cxxv (1982), 86–9
J. Milhous and R.D. Hume, eds.: Vice Chamberlain Coke's Theatrical Papers, 1706–1715 (Carbondale, IL, 1982)
J. Milhous and R.D. Hume: ‘New Light on Handel and the Royal Academy of Music in 1720’, Theatre Journal, xxxv (1983), 149–67
R.D. Hume: ‘Opera in London, 1695–1706’, British Theatre and the Other Arts, 1660–1800, ed. S.S. Kenny (Washington DC, 1984), 67–91
J.M. Knapp: ‘Eighteenth-Century Opera in London before Handel, 1705–1710’, ibid, 92–104
J. Milhous: ‘The Multimedia Spectacular on the Restoration Stage’, ibid, 41–66
J. Milhous: ‘Opera Finances in London, 1674–1738’, JAMS, xxxvii (1984), 567–92
C.A. Price: Henry Purcell and the London Stage (Cambridge, 1984)
R.D. Hume: ‘Handel and Opera Management in London in the 1730s’, ML, lxvii (1986), 347–62
J.M. Knapp: ‘English Reactions to Handel and Italian Opera in London during 1711 to 1720’, Göttinger Händel-Beiträge, ii (1986), 155–69
R. Leppert: ‘Imagery, Musical Confrontation and Cultural Difference in early 18th-Century London’, EMc, xiv (1986), 323–45
C.M. Taylor: ‘From Losses to Lawsuit: Patronage of the Italian Opera in London by Lord Middlesex 1739–45’, ML, lxviii (1987), 1–25
D.J. Burrows: ‘Die Kastratenrollen in Händels Londoner Opern: Probleme und Lösungvorschläge’, Händel auf dem Theater (Laaber, 1988), 85–93
R.D. Hume: ‘The Sponsorship of Opera in London, 1704–1720’, Modern Philology, lxxxv (1988), 420–32
L. Lindgren: ‘Venice, Vivaldi, Vico and Opera in London, 1705–17: Venetian Ingredients in English Pasticci’, Nuovi studi vivaldiani: Edizione e cronologia critica delle opere (Florence, 1988), 633–66
C. Price: ‘Italian Opera and Arson in late Eighteenth-Century London’, JAMS, xlii (1989), 55–107
R. Fiske and H.D. Johnstone, eds.: Music in Britain: the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1990)
E.A. Gibson: ‘Italian Opera in London, 1750–1775: Management and Finances’, EMc, xviii (1990), 47–59
C.M. Taylor: Italian Operagoing in London, 1700–1745 (diss., Syracuse U., 1991)
D.J. Burrows and R.D. Hume: ‘George I, the Haymarket Opera Company and Handel's Water Music’, EMc, xix (1991), 323–41
D.J. Burrows: ‘Performances of Handel's Music during Mozart's Visit to London in 1764–5’, Die Rezeption der Musik Georg Friedrich Händels in der zweiten Hälfe des 18. Jahrhunderts: Halle 1991 [HJb 1992], 16–32
R.L. Neighbarger: An Outward Show: Music for Shakespeare on the London Stage, 1660–1830 (Westport, CT, 1992)
C. Price, J. Milhous and R.D. Hume: The Impresario's Ten Commandments: Continental Recruitment for Italian Opera in London 1763–64 (London, 1992)
S.J. Wynn: ‘Italian Opera and the Critic: the London Music Scene, 1785–1789’, MR, liii (1992), 75–82
T. McGeary: ‘Shaftesbury on Opera, Spectacle and Liberty’, ML, lxxiv (1993), 530–41
J. Milhous and R.D. Hume: ‘Opera Salaries in Eighteenth-Century London’, JAMS, xlvi (1993), 26–83
W. Weber: ‘La musique ancienne in the Waning of the Ancien: l'institution et son public – l'Opéra à Paris et à Londres au xviiie siècle’, Les annales, xlviii (1993), 1519–39
T. Fenner: Opera in London: Views of Press, 1785–1830 (Carbondale, IL, 1994)
W. Baethge: ‘Mit Rindern, Schafe und Spatzenschwärmen: die Londoner Uraufführung der Oper Rinaldo von Händel’, Das Orchester, xliii/11 (1995), 17–22
C.S. LaRue: Handel and his Singers: the Creation of the Royal Academy Operas, 1720–1728 (Oxford, 1995)
L. Lindgren: ‘Critiques of Opera in London, 1705–1719’, Il melodrama italiano in Italia e in Germania nell'età barocca/Die italienische Barockoper, ihre Verbreitung in Italien und Deutschland (Como, 1995), 143–65
L. Woof: ‘Italian Opera as a Socio-Economic Signifier in 18th-Century London’, Song and Signification: Studies in Music Semiotics (Edinburgh, 1995), 10–17
J.A. Winn: ‘Heroic Song: a Proposal for a Revised History of English Theater and Opera, 1656–1711’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, xxx/2 (1996–7), 113–37
R.D. Hume: ‘The Politics of Opera in Late Seventeenth-Century London’, COJ, x (1998), 15–43
E. Ward: The London Spy (London, 1678)
C. Burney: An Account of the Musical Performances … in Commemoration of Handel (London, 1785/R)
W.H. Husk: An Account of the Musical Celebrations on St Cecilia's Day in the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries (London, 1857)
S.W. McVeigh: The Violinist in London's Concert Life, 1750–1784: Felice Giardini and his Contemporaries (diss., Oxford U., 1980)
Z.E. Pixley: The Keyboard Concerto in London Society, 1760–1790 (diss., U. of Michigan, 1986)
S.W. McVeigh: ‘The Professional Concert and Rival Subscription Series in London, 1783–1793’, RMARC, no.22 (1989), 1–135
L.A. McLamore: Symphonic Conventions in London's Concert Rooms, circa 1755–1790 (diss., UCLA, 1991)
W. Weber: The Rise of Musical Classics in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford, 1992)
J.K. Wood: ‘“A Flowing Harmony”: Music on the Thames in Restoration London’, EMc, xxiii (1995), 553–81
L. Finscher: ‘Zur Struktur der europäischen Musikkultur im Zeitalter der Aufklärung’, Europa im Zeitalter Mozarts (Vienna, 1995), 197–203
I. Woodfield: ‘New Light on the Mozarts' London Visit: a Private Concert with Manzuoli’, ML, lxxvi (1995), 187–208
S.W. McVeigh: Concert Life in London from Mozart to Haydn (Cambridge, 1993)
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J.T. Smith: A Book for a Rainy Day (London, 1845), 39ff [on Marylebone], 133ff [on Bermondsey Spa]
J. Timbs: Curiosities of London (London, 1855)
H. Wheatley and P. Cunningham: London Past and Present (London, 1891)
W. Wroth: The London Pleasure Gardens (London, 1896)
G. Thornbury and E. Walford: Old and New London (London, rev. 4/1898)
W. Wroth: Cremorne and the later London Gardens (London, 1907)
J.G. Southworth: Vauxhall Gardens: a Chapter in the Social History of England (London, 1941)
M. Sands: Invitation to Ranelagh (London, 1946)
O.E. Deutsch: Handel: a Documentary Biography (London, 1955/R1974)
C. Cudworth: ‘The Vauxhall “Lists”’, GSJ, xx (1967), 24–42
R. Fiske: English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1973)
E. Croft-Murray: ‘Cremorne Gardens’, The Chelsea Society: the Annual Report (1974), 30
E. Owens: ‘La Serva padrona in London, 1750–1783’, Studi Pergolesiani: New York 1986, 204–20
M. Sands: The Eighteenth-Century Pleasure Gardens of Marylebone, 1737–1777 (London, 1987)
London, §VI: Musical life: 1800–1945
London, §VI, 1: Musical life: 1800–1945: The stage
The financial and managerial entanglements that had afflicted the King’s Theatre during much of the 18th century continued seriously to hamper London’s Italian opera house well into the 19th century. William Taylor was forced to sell part of his interest in the King’s to Francis Gould in 1803–4, but after Gould’s death in 1807 Taylor and Edmund Waters, Gould’s executor, fought so viciously for control that they virtually paralysed the theatre. The King’s was dark in 1813 while the rebuilt Pantheon tried to regain the Italian opera. Waters eventually bought and sued his way into control of the King’s but went irretrievably bankrupt in 1820. Management was then assumed by John Ebers, whose artistically creditable but financially disastrous reign is chronicled in detail in his Seven Years of the King’s Theatre (1828/R).
During this period the King’s became ever more reliant on the staging of imported works. The presence of Lorenzo Da Ponte, house poet at the theatre from 1794 to 1804, promised much; but while he wrote a few original librettos for Martín y Soler, Bianchi and Winter, most of his work was focussed on the production of substitute arias and pasticcios. Adaptations of successful foreign operas increasingly came to dominate the Italian stage in London. To the operas of Paisiello, Cimarosa and M.A. Portugal were added Mozart and Rossini: La clemenza di Tito, Così fan tutte, Die Zauberflöte, Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra, L’italiana in Algeri, La Cenerentola and Tancredi. Leading singers continued to appear, including Banti, Michael Kelly, Josephina Grassini, Giuseppe Naldi, Angelica Catalani, Nicholas Levasseur, Giuditta Pasta, Giuseppe Ambrogetti, Carlo Angrisani, Violante Camporese and Gaetano Crivelli. Even under Ebers’s solid management, however, no important new operas were commissioned as the production of imported foreign operas took precedence. The emphasis was on Rossini – La gazza ladra was a successful novelty in 1821 – although in 1815 Ebers’s director, William Ayrton, mounted the first Meyerbeer opera to be heard in London, Il crociato in Egitto. Among the singers in this period were Marietta Brambilla, Giuseppe de Begnis, Giuditta Pasta, Malibran and the castrato G.B. Velluti.
Throughout these three decades the Italian opera was hamstrung by its own endless internecine disputes and crippling mortgages: the wonder is that it kept going at all. Until the mid-1820s English-language opera was generally in a stronger financial position, though the competitors of the King’s had their own troubles. Within the space of one year both Covent Garden and Drury Lane burnt down (in 1808 and 1809 respectively) and were replaced at enormous cost. Robert Smirke’s vast 1809 Covent Garden cost £188,000 and turned out to be a white elephant.
Both the patent theatres continued to feature music in their offerings that included newly commissioned English operas and, ever increasingly, English adaptations of foreign operas. Their approach is typified in the work of Henry R. Bishop, who was musical director of Covent Garden between 1810 and 1824 and later worked at Drury Lane. His wholesale rewritings of Mozart and Rossini have made him the target of much derision in later histories of music, but they were highly successful at the time (see fig.29). Bishop’s work was guided by the conventions embodied in the pasticcio and contemporary English opera, as well as the need to adjust these works to local performance conditions. He popularized good music, and for his achievement Bishop was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1842 – the first English musician to be so honoured.
Technically the Licensing Act remained in force, but after 1800 the authorities became more lenient about tolerating various fringe and musical enterprises. Of the dozen or so new theatres that were built during the first three decades of the 19th century, many presented programmes which placed them in direct competition with Covent Garden and Drury Lane. Two theatres are particularly important. The Lyceum was licensed for musical works in 1809 and rebuilt in 1816 as the English Opera House, a function it served until it burnt down in 1830 (rebuilt again in 1834). The Royal Coburg (which was to become the Old Vic) opened in 1818; it served primarily as a venue for melodrama.
The early history of Der Freischütz in London shows how the theatres competed. In February 1824 a version of it was given at the Coburg as the ‘legendary melodrama’ The Fatal Marksman, without mention of Weber in the playbill. The Lyceum mounted it in July as an opera, translated as Der Freischütz, or The Seventh Bullet, the music adapted by William Hawes. In August and September it was given in different forms at the Royal Amphitheatre and the Surrey Theatre. Covent Garden mounted it in October in an adaptation by J.R. Planché with the music arranged by Barham Livius; Drury Lane’s version, with additional music by Bishop, was presented in November. The popularity of all the adaptations led to Charles Kemble’s invitation to Weber to compose an English opera for Covent Garden. Weber was too ill to accept Kemble’s additional offer to become music director, although he wrote Oberon and conducted the première; he was frustrated by the demands of ‘English’ form, but still gave London its first important opera première in a very long time.
There is no precise dividing line between 18th- and 19th-century opera production in London, but by the end of the Ebers administration at the King’s Theatre quite different circumstances prevailed from those at the turn of the century. Despite the importation of Mozart and Rossini by the Italian opera company, activity at the King’s remained in many respects extremely old-fashioned and indeed derivative. New venues sprang up, and the English theatres were aggressive in mounting current continental works as well as offering their own home-grown brand of opera. Yet as the King’s seemed unable to mount any potent opposition or to resolve its ongoing financial crisis, the patent theatres, too, were hamstrung by their own financial liabilities and increasingly unable to withstand the greatly intensified competitive climate.
During the 1830s competition from the so-called minor theatres caused grave financial problems for the patent theatres, both of which were still encumbered by the rebuilding costs incurred at the beginning of the century. Frequent management changes, bankruptcies and accusations of poor artistic standards inevitably raised questions about their financial and artistic viability. Alfred Bunn’s attempt to unite the two theatres under his management between 1833 and 1835 was financially disastrous and earned Bunn stinging criticism over his apparent preference for foreign opera. His production of Auber’s Gustave III (1833), one of several French operas to be staged at Covent Garden during his tenure, received 100 performances during its first season. At Drury Lane Bunn presented Malibran in English versions of Fidelio and La sonnambula and later in Balfe’s The Maid of Artois (1836); between 1835 and 1849 Bunn gave more than 20 new British works at Drury Lane, including Balfe’s The Bohemian Girl (1843) and Vincent Wallace’s Maritana (1845). For a time the rebuilt Lyceum Theatre (opened in 1834 as the English Opera House) was a potent competitor: works by Loder, Balfe and others were given up to 1840.
The 1843 Theatre Regulation Act, which provided new legislation for the licensing of all theatres, in effect abolished the patent theatres’ monopoly over dramatic and musical presentations. In 1845 Covent Garden was forced to close as no permanent lessee could be found; over the next two years the theatre hosted, among others, touring foreign opera companies and concerts. Drury Lane continued to be used for English opera, concerts, plays and other theatrical ventures.
Amid the familiar financial difficulties at Her Majesty’s (known as the King’s Theatre until Queen Victoria’s accession in 1837) disagreements between Benjamin Lumley, manager from 1842 to 1858, and his principal artists, together with the demise of Covent Garden, brought about a drastic change in London’s theatrical landscape. In 1847 the composer Giuseppe Persiani and another business associate established the rival Royal Italian Opera at Covent Garden. Almost instantly, however, the new venture was plunged into deep trouble: high start-up costs and the conversion of the theatre into an opera house (costing about £30,000) were inadequately financed; fierce competition with Her Majesty’s left the company still further weakened. It was only under the management of Frederick Gye (1848–78) that the Royal Italian Opera eventually supplanted Her Majesty’s as London’s premier Italian opera house. Gye never made any significant profits (his early seasons showed substantial losses), but his financial acumen ensured the company’s long-term viability. At Her Majesty’s heavy losses led to the closure of the theatre between 1853 and 1856; Lumley reopened the theatre for two seasons while Covent Garden was rebuilt after having been destroyed by fire in 1856 (see figs.30 and 31). Financially, J.H. Mapleson, who took over at Her Majesty’s in 1862, was hardly more successful and after the destruction of Her Majesty’s by fire in 1867 he joined forces with Gye until 1870. On Gye’s death in 1878 the management of the Royal Italian Opera passed to his son Ernest until 1884.
Under the pressures of competition the managers of both opera houses were forced to diversify the repertory beyond the presentation of the standard works of Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti. In an extension of 18th-century production procedures all operas, including French and German works, were performed in Italian and many were adapted to conform with italianate musical and dramatic structures. Her Majesty’s continued to feature ballet as part of its programme, but at the Royal Italian Opera financial constraints resulted in the abandonment of full-length ballets in 1849. At the Royal Italian Opera Gye regularly presented French and German works, as well as Verdi’s operas. All of Meyerbeer’s most recent operas were staged, notably L’étoile du nord (1855) and Dinorah (1859), both produced under Meyerbeer’s supervision. Benvenuto Cellini had a single, disastrous performance in 1853 (conducted by Berlioz); Gounod’s Faust became a staple repertory work (1863; British première at Her Majesty’s that same year). Spohr reworked his Faust (1851) and returned for Jessonda in 1852. Following the closure of Her Majesty’s in 1853, Gye acquired Verdi’s more recent operas, including Rigoletto (1853), Il trovatore (1855) and later Don Carlos (1867) and Aida (1876). The programming of Wagner’s operas owed much to the influence of Emma Albani, who was cast in Lohengrin (1875), Tannhäuser (1876) and Der fliegende Holländer (1877, first staged at Drury Lane in 1870). Competition with Her Majesty’s over novelties was fierce: rival productions and disputes over performance rights were commonplace. Lumley distinguished his theatre’s repertory by the periodic inclusion of newly commissioned operas and Verdi’s early works. The former included Halévy’s La tempesta (1850), Thalberg’s Florinda (1851) and, most importantly, Verdi’s I masnadieri (1847). Many of Verdi’s early operas, such as I lombardi, I due Foscari (both 1847) and Attila (1848), were first staged in London at Her Majesty’s, as was La traviata in 1856. Despite competition from Gye, Mapleson continued to champion Verdi and was able to present the British premières of Un ballo in maschera and La forza del destino.
Both Italian opera houses were still dependent on attracting star names and fought intensely over artists. The defection of Mario, Grisi, Ronconi and Antonio Tamburini from Her Majesty’s in 1847 laid the foundation of the powerful ensemble, which was to become the hallmark of the Royal Italian Opera. Other notable singers joined over the next two decades, including Viardot, Tamberlik, Lablache, Lucca, Patti and Albani. Lumley countered with the sensational engagement of Jenny Lind in 1847; after her retirement in 1849, however, Lumley’s troupe was consistently less effective. Mapleson mounted a more vigorous defence with the engagement of singers such as Tietjens, Christine Nilsson, di Murska, Santley and Gassier. The conducting rested principally in Italian hands, notably those of Michael Costa and Arditi. Costa is credited with the firm establishment of the baton-conductor’s command in London opera. His decision to depart from Her Majesty’s in 1846 was a major factor in the establishment of the rival company; with Costa, almost the entire orchestra left for the Royal Italian Opera. Balfe replaced Costa at Her Majesty’s, but neither he nor the newly assembled orchestra was a match for Costa. Arditi, appointed music director for Her Majesty’s in 1858, was to be closely associated with most of Mapleson’s operatic ventures both in London and the USA.
The performance of French and German operas in their native tongues rested almost entirely on visits by foreign companies. London’s first season of German opera, managed by Bunn, took place at the King’s in 1832 with performances of Fidelio (with Schröder-Devrient) and Der Freischütz. In 1842 Bunn hired Covent Garden for a short season of German and French opera (including Les Huguenots and La vestale), performed by a German company. The Brussels Opera Company presented French operas (including works by Meyerbeer and Auber) at Covent Garden and Drury Lane in 1845. Short seasons of French opera were independently promoted at the St James’s Theatre (1854), the Gaiety Theatre (1885, with the first London performance of Delibes’s Lakmé), and Her Majesty’s (1886). Wagner in German arrived with the Ring, given at Her Majesty’s in May 1882 by a German company under Anton Seidl, followed in the same month by another German company with performances of Lohengrin, Der fliegende Holländer and Tannhäuser at Drury Lane, with Richter conducting.
The promotion of opera in English continued to be pursued by various managements. The history of these schemes has been set out by White (1951, 1983): the more important are mentioned here. The Pyne-Harrison management (as the Royal English Opera) presented winter seasons of opera in English at Covent Garden from 1858 until 1864 (see fig.32). Its repertory consisted mainly of new or recent British composers, including the first production of Julius Benedict’s The Lily of Killarney (1862), supplemented by such works as Martha and Il trovatore. The possibility of a state subsidy for this company was shelved after the death of its most important patron, the Prince Consort, in 1861. The Carl Rosa Opera Company gave its first London season in 1875 (at the Princess’s Theatre). Its repertory ran from Mozart to Massenet, the first British performance of Manon being included in its Drury Lane season of 1885. Up to Rosa’s death in 1889 new works were commissioned from composers such as Cowen, A.G. Thomas, Mackenzie and Stanford. The company was to remain a chief national purveyor of opera in English until after World War II, its significance being that its basis was national touring with regular London visits.
In 1875, on Mapleson’s initiative, the foundation stone was laid of a new ‘Grand National Opera House’, which was specifically to promote ‘the works of English composers, represented by English performers’. It was never built, the site eventually becoming that of New Scotland Yard. In the same year Trial by Jury, with a libretto by W.S. Gilbert and music by Sullivan, was produced at the Royalty Theatre (under Richard D’Oyly Carte’s management). A succession of further pieces made Sullivan the best-known British theatrical composer, established the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, and led to the building of the Savoy Theatre and Hotel (see fig.33). The Mikado (1885) became the most-travelled English opera (or operetta) between The Bohemian Girl and Peter Grimes. Offenbach’s operettas, which had been presented in London in both French and English since 1857, remained popular; his Whittington was written for the Alhambra Theatre (1874). The so-called comedy opera Dorothy (1886, Gaiety Theatre) by Sullivan’s associate Alfred Cellier outstripped with 931 performances even the run of The Mikado and heralded the theatrical genre now known as musical comedy.
Throughout the first half of the 20th century Covent Garden remained London’s pre-eminent international house. Intermittent challenges came, however, from other theatres as well as other managers renting the opera house outside the main season. Under the management of Augustus Harris (1888–96) performances in the original language now gradually displaced the previous Italian, or italianized, performances (since 1889 performances in languages other than Italian had been admitted). In 1892 that displacement was marked by a change in name from Royal Italian Opera to Royal Opera. From Harris’s death in 1896 until 1924 the opera house was governed by a succession of managers on behalf of the Grand Opera Syndicate and operated under a similar scheme until 1939.
Singers heard during Covent Garden’s so-called ‘grand seasons’ up to 1914 included Lilli Lehmann, Tetrazzini, Melba and Caruso, the last two a famous leading pair in La bohème (first staged by the Carl Rosa company in 1897). Puccini’s works increasingly gained the public excitement that those of Verdi had formerly attained (with the first British performances of Tosca and Madama Butterfly in 1900 and 1905 respectively), but this was also a period when the prestige of French opera was sustained in repeated performances of works by Bizet, Gounod, Massenet and Saint-Saëns. Both Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande and Charpentier’s Louise received their first London performances (at Covent Garden) in 1909. Exceptional in the grand seasons was the first production in English of the Ring in 1908, at the instigation of the conductor, Hans Richter; the first London Ring (in German) had been given at Covent Garden in 1892 by the Hamburg Opera, conducted by Mahler.
A public plea by Stanford in 1908 for the foundation of a new national opera house supported by public subsidy gained no official backing. But in 1911 London unexpectedly acquired a new opera theatre when the impresario Oscar Hammerstein I built the London Opera House (renamed the Stoll Theatre in 1916). Two short seasons in 1911–12, with a roster of artists less lustrous than Covent Garden’s, were financially disastrous and ended Hammerstein’s venture.
In 1910 Beecham started to present his own seasons at Covent Garden on either side of the grand season. His productions included the first performances in Britain of Strauss’s Salome and Elektra and of Delius’s A Village Romeo and Juliet. Already in 1909 he had given the first British performance of Smyth’s opera The Wreckers at His Majesty’s (as that theatre had been renamed). In 1910, between his own two Covent Garden seasons, he went back to His Majesty’s for a summer season that embraced the first British performance of Strauss’s Feuersnot, Stanford’s Shamus O’Brien (1896) and three Mozart operas including Così fan tutte, then a considerable rarity. Beecham’s 1913 season at Covent Garden brought the first British performance of Der Rosenkavalier, and a later season at His Majesty’s saw the first British performance of Ariadne auf Naxos.
On Beecham’s initiative Diaghilev brought a Russian opera company to Drury Lane in 1913, Chaliapin opening the season in the title role of Boris Godunov, followed by Khovanshchina and The Maid of Pskov (as Ivan the Terrible). Although Russian opera was not absolutely new to London (A Life for the Tsar had been given at Covent Garden in 1887 and Yevgeny Onegin at the Olympic Theatre in 1892), there had been nothing like this. Not only Chaliapin, but ‘the whole company with its wonderful chorus and completely revolutionary style of operatic acting … made an impact on London such as had not been experienced since the first performances in England of the Ring and Tristan in the 1880s’ (Rosenthal, 1958, p.378).
At Covent Garden the vicissitudes of operatic management between the wars were interlocked with the various enterprises of Beecham, including the British National Opera Company and the Imperial League of Opera. Under the latter’s auspices at Covent Garden (and not in the grand season), Beecham gave the first British performance of Delius’s Koanga in 1935. Among international conductors Walter became a much-loved figure; Melba, Ponselle, Turner, Gigli and Pinza were adored stars in the Italian repertory and Lotte Lehmann, Elisabeth Schumann, Flagstad, Melchior and Richard Tauber in the German. After Puccini’s death (1924) Strauss became the only living composer whose works were regularly featured. (In 1936 Strauss himself conducted the visiting Dresden company in performances of Ariadne auf Naxos.) The British composer and conductor Eugene Goossens was given the honour of writing a new work in George VI’s coronation year, 1937 – but neither this work, Don Juan de Mañara, nor Goossens’s earlier Judith (1929) won success.
Various companies continued to promote opera in English. For the launching of Sullivan’s one ‘serious’ opera, Ivanhoe (1891), D’Oyly Carte constructed a new theatre, the Royal English Opera House. He introduced to that genre the principle of uninterrupted nightly performances (with changing casts), which hitherto had applied only to plays and operettas. Yet not even a run of 160 performances nor a subsequent English-language version of Messager’s La basoche repaid D’Oyly Carte’s investment, and in 1892 he sold the theatre, now the Palace Theatre, to Harris. Two decades later two remarkable ventures ran successfully on the principle of uninterrupted nightly performances. Rutland Boughton’s opera The Immortal Hour achieved 216 performances at the Regent Theatre, King’s Cross, in 1922–3; The Beggar’s Opera in a new musical edition by Frederic Austin opened at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, in 1922 and broke records with its 1463 performances.
While the Carl Rosa company continued its activity, giving the first performances in Britain of Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel at Daly’s Theatre in 1894, another touring enterprise, the Moody-Manners Company, led a shorter but vigorous existence from 1898 to 1916; it occasionally occupied Covent Garden for its London seasons. The most enduring of all ventures into giving opera in English was begun in the 1880s at the Old Vic, where operatic performance was at first confined to extracts and tableaux. With the succession of Lilian Baylis as acting manager from 1898 (and sole manager from 1912) came full operatic presentations, albeit with reduced orchestra. Edward J. Dent was one of its governing body and provided outstandingly successful translations; his influence continued when an expansion of the enterprise in 1931 took in the newly rebuilt Sadler’s Wells Theatre. During the years 1931–5 the operation was known as the Vic-Wells Opera company. At first opera and spoken drama were given at both theatres, but opera became concentrated at Sadler’s Wells. The repertory of Sadler’s Wells Opera embraced several Russian works, the original version of Boris Godunov receiving there its first performance in Britain (1935). Here too Holst’s Sāvitri and Vaughan Williams’s Hugh the Drover, though not new, encountered their first regular audiences, in a repertory which in the first six years extended to more than 50 operas.
London, §VI, 1: Musical life: 1800–1945: The stage
London has long acted as a hub for musical theatre interchange, whether as the natural focus for visiting performers and theatrical companies from elsewhere in the country and overseas or as a source of new material for tours and productions within the country and abroad. A clear musical stage identity was not established for London, however, until the second half of the 19th century, when various dramatic forms that interpolated music gained a distinct repertory (and hence character) for development and a sufficiently wide audience base to support experimentation. Early forms in the first half of the 19th century included pantomime, extravaganza, burlesque and revue, usually incorporating scores assembled from pre-existing material rather than specifically written numbers. From the 1830s burlettas, burlesques and extravaganzas became popular and were particularly associated with the Olympic Theatre; by the 1850s the broad caricature that marked burlesque had become its most prominent feature; in the 1860s the Royal Strand Theatre mounted burlesques that drew upon operatic subjects, such as Der Freischütz or A Good Cast for the Pieces (1866); later still the newly built Gaiety Theatre came to be considered the centre for burlesque, with examples such as Faust up to Date (1888) and Carmen up to Date (1890).
Offenbach, whose work was first seen in London at the St James's Theatre (1857), provided the immediate catalyst for an identifiable British popular musical theatre style – indeed, French influence had been formative earlier in burlesque, revue and comic opera. It was not until ten years later, however, that an explosion of popularity of his works occurred: Orphée aux enfers, for example, was seen in seven productions between 1865 and 1877, and other pieces were regularly in the repertory of the Gaiety Theatre from 1869 until around 1885. Comparison of Offenbach's Les brigands (1869) and Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance (1879) clearly shows the influence of the former on the style of the latter, a style which equalled and then outstripped the popularity of Offenbach from around the 1880s onwards. The worldwide influence of Gilbert and Sullivan is most apparent with the American reception of HMS Pinafore (1879), which led to large numbers of touring companies and the establishment of many local amateur operatic societies; the general global reception of Gilbert and Sullivan is shown by the opening of Patience in Sydney (representing the colonial sphere) some seven months after London and the simultaneous opening in New York and London of Iolanthe (25 November 1882). Other British composers benefited from the high profile that Gilbert and Sullivan had established for London's musical theatre; the most notable of these was Edward Solomon, whose Vicar of Bray opened in both London and New York in 1882.
Gilbert and Sullivan gained the epithet of the ‘Savoy operas’ for their canon through the presentation of their new works from the transfer of Patience (1881) onwards at the Savoy Theatre, newly built by Richard D'Oyly Carte, who also made it the first theatre in London to use electric light (see fig.33). D'Oyly Carte later constructed his Royal English Opera House (1891), but without great success: it became the Palace Theatre of Varieties in 1892. It was only with the management of C.B. Cochran (1923–46) and the world première of No, No Nanette (1925) some six months prior to an American opening that the Palace was established as one of the most important London theatres for musicals, a reputation sustained for the rest of the century.
The new style of ‘musical comedy’ dominated London musical theatre from the 1890s through to World War I. Initially identified with the productions of George Edwardes at the Gaiety Theatre arising out of burlesque and beginning with On the Town (1892), it introduced popular songs and contemporary and exotic locations and fashions into a light dramatic narrative. These works put London at the centre of world musical theatre, continuing the patterns of dissemination established by the Savoy operas: examples include Ivan Caryll and Lionel Monckton's A Runaway Girl (1898, Gaiety), Sidney Jones's San Toy (1899, Daly's) and Leslie Stuart's Florodora (1899, Lyric). The reputation of the Gaiety survived the demolition of the original theatre due to road widening in the Strand (closing on 4 July 1903), and reopened in a new building (26 October 1903; 1267 seats), under the management of Edwardes until 1916. Edwardes also managed Daly's Theatre (constructed 1893), whose notable successes include Jones's A Gaiety Girl (1893, Prince of Wales; 1894, Daly's) which opened at Daly's in New York (1894) and then toured to such places as Boston, Washington, Chicago and San Francisco, and The Geisha (1896), which received productions as far afield as Russia and Australia.
Imports to the West End are consequently of minor significance in this period, although they included Kerker's The Belle of New York (1898, Shaftesbury) and Will Marion Cook's In Dahomey (1903, Shaftesbury). In the opening decade of the 1900s American interest in West End productions is seen through the continued interest of the American Charles Frohman – a producer active in both New York and London – in adapting new material for Broadway, retaining Jerome Kern in London to secure songs and shows for American use. Kern also began to contribute his own works to London shows (for example his song ‘Rosalie’ was interpolated into Spring Chicken (1906, Gaiety), but it was not until 1916 that Kern received his first billing as a composer in the West End, shared jointly with Ivor Novello, for Theodore & Co. While musical comedy continued with such successes as A Country Girl (1902, Daly's), Miss Hook of Holland (1907, Prince of Wales), Our Miss Gibbs (1909, Gaiety), The Arcadians (1909, Shaftesbury) and The Quaker Girl (1910, Adelphi), European influence in the form of Viennese operetta exerted a strong if temporary hold after the first production of Die lustige Witwe (1907, Daly's), followed by Oscar Straus's Ein Waltzertraum (1908, Hick's) and Leo Fall's Die Dollarprinzessin (1909, Daly's). New theatres built at the start of the century included the Apollo and Adelphi (both 1901), the Coliseum (1904) and the Palladium (1910).
The revue gained greater prominence in the second decade of the century, through such series as those of Albert de Courville (at the Hippodrome), André Charlot (Alhambra), Alfred Butt (Palace) and the versions by Oswald Stoll (New Middlesex Music Hall) modelled on those of the Folies-Bergère. These shows provided an outlet for performers from the declining music hall and variety circuit, eventually incorporating them into personality-led ‘musicals’: the career of Cicely Courtneidge provides a good example of this progression. The gradual hybridization of musical theatre forms produced Chu Chin Chow, a potent combination of spectacle, pantomime and musical comedy which opened at His Majesty's on 31 October 1916. Through clever marketing, including the regular addition of new scenes and costumes, and a desire for escapism generated by World War I troops on leave, the show established a record run of more than 2000 performances, closing on 22 July 1921.
The 1920s saw a large increase in the interchange between Broadway and the West End. Performers, through the greater ease of travel, were able to establish careers in both theatrical centres, while producers could draw on the talent and expanding repertories of both cities for their new productions. London received a series of imports from New York: Fred Astaire, for example, made his West End début in Stop Flirting (10 May 1923, Shaftesbury Theatre), and later with the George and Ira Gershwin shows Lady Be Good (1926, Empire) and Funny Face (1928, Prince's Theatre, later transferring to the Winter Garden). The impetus for this increasing acceptance of American musical comedy in London was for the most part due to the influence of george Grossmith (ii) and his partners J.A.E. ‘Pat’ Malone and Edward Laurillard. Grossmith had been a leading West End comic performer, and had drawn on American writers in the previous decades to find material unknown in the West End to interpolate into his own performances. Apart from introducing the performances of Astaire and the music of Gershwin to the London stage, he also produced Kern's Sally (1921) and commissioned from him the score for The Cabaret Girl (1922). With his partners, Grossmith was also associated with management and musical comedy production at many of London's largest venues, including the Gaiety (1920–21), Apollo (1920–21), His Majesty's (1923–6) and the Winter Garden (with Laurillard, 1919–21; with Malone, 1921–6), formerly the New Middlesex Music Hall, and whose change of function and name marked the loss of one of the last major venues associated with music hall and variety in London. Particularly since Die lustige Witwe there had been a continual operetta presence; however, it had been dominated in the 1920s by the American-derived versions at Drury Lane, a change of emphasis in repertory assisted by the refurbishment of the theatre (1922) to create a new auditorium of 2283 seats. Such large-scale operettas included Romberg's Rose Marie (1925), The Desert Song (1927) and The New Moon (1928), and Kern's Showboat (1929).
London also generated material for major New York success, but this came less from musical comedies than from revues, particularly from those of c.b. Cochran (whose influence was to extend right through to the important collaborations of Vivian Ellis and A.P. Herbert in the 1940s) and of André Charlot. Most notably through the revues London Calling! (1923, London; 1924, New York), and Charlot's London Revue (1925, New York), Noël Coward, Beatrice Lillie and Gertrude Lawrence launched transatlantic careers, as did Jack Buchanan who, as a performer and producer, brought Kern's Sunny to London (1926). A virtually permanent reminder of musical comedy's roots, Gilbert and Sullivan continued to be a staple of the annual repertory, now mostly at the Prince's Theatre rather than the Savoy.
The 1930s were marked by a theatrical confidence that saw the fourth refurbishment of the Adelphi and the building of the Cambridge, Saville and Prince Edward theatres (all 1930). The Saville became associated with British musicals and revues (such as Vivian Ellis's Jill Darling!, 1934, and Billy Mayerl's Over She Goes, 1936), while the Prince Edward opened with Rio Rita but failed to achieve a consistent reputation as a theatre for musical productions; renamed the Casino it opened in 1936 as a cabaret restaurant, and later was also adopted for war service as the Queensbury All Services Club (1942). Several theatres at this time were converted to cinemas to supply a new popular demand, among them Daly's which was eventually demolished in 1937. His Majesty's Theatre became associated with a series of British works that balanced Broadway influence with a more European operetta-based approach: beginning in 1929 with Coward's Bitter Sweet, His Majesty's also saw productions of his Conversation Piece (1934) and Operette (1938), and Posford's Balalaika (1937) and Magyar Melody (1939). The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, gambling on a return to musical theatre of Ivor Novello to reverse its declining fortunes, unwittingly launched his hugely successful series of musical romances Glamorous Night (1935), Careless Rapture (1936), Crest of the Wave (1937) and The Dancing Years (1939). The advent of World War II broke Novello's run of occupancy at Drury Lane: the show was moved out as London theatres were closed at the declaration of war. On the subsequent reopening of theatres weeks later, Drury Lane was adopted as the headquarters for ENSA. Novello's shows never returned to Drury Lane (although they continued in other London theatres to huge acclaim and long runs in the 1940s and early 1950s), but his name and works are still inextricably linked with the theatre.
The war affected the London musical stage in several ways: the repertory became isolated with the exclusion of new American shows for seven years; casts were limited through the military conscription of the youthful and fit; quickly mounted revivals had to take the place of many shows, while new shows tended to be light and distracting (frequently variety vehicles for star turns) or reflected strictly parochial concerns, such as Manning Sherwin's successful Under the Counter, a show about rationing. The provincial and military tours of London productions became a major part of boosting morale. Such isolation and introversion shifted the global appeal of London's new works so that in the first musical theatre transatlantic exchange after the war in 1947, Under the Counter was a disaster in New York, while Oklahoma! began the so-called American invasion of the West End.
London, §VI: Musical life: 1800–1945
The period 1800 to 1945 marks the gradual transition from a concert system based on the patronage of a socially exclusive class, with performers and repertory tied to this context, to a wide new consumer audience, vastly extended through broadcasting and recording, with international soloists and a repertory expanding fluidly around a standardized canon. Concerts of all types proliferated as the season lengthened, the subscription principle broadened and ticket prices came within the range of lower income groups. The predominant form of patronage shifted successively from private individuals through institutions to the music business and eventually state subsidy (including that of the BBC).
London, §VI, 2: Musical life: 1800–1945: Concert life
Though London’s concert life burgeoned during the 18th century, it was still constrained compared to what the 19th would come to expect. The season was short (essentially February to May), and tickets could generally be afforded only by the upper echelons of society, usually known to each other and often to the performers as well. Only concerts at the pleasure gardens and, to some extent, the Lenten ‘oratorios’ were available for a more humble shilling or two. The regular season based around subscription series was well established by 1800, but concert life still lacked durable foundations. Notably, there were no formally established institutions for either symphonic music or choral singing until the founding of the Philharmonic Society (1813; see fig.34) and the Sacred Harmonic Society (1832). The British contribution to the concert repertory had all but dried up, through under-nurturing of symphonic roots and a declining choral tradition.
The first half of the 19th century was a period of flux and realignment. Increasing commercialism and proliferation contrasted with the development of classical concerts as temples of high art. While professional musicians themselves exploited the competitive marketplace for all it was worth, they also kept a wary eye on their image with traditional patrons, as Mendelssohn was quick to observe in 1829: ‘Here they pursue music like a business, calculating, paying, bargaining, and truly a great deal is lacking … but they still remain gentlemen, otherwise they would be expelled from polite society’.
As the season became ever more congested after 1820, beginning before Christmas, the day was also extended by matinées. The audience base widened through more middle-class access to subscription series and a gradual proliferation of cheaper venues – oratorios and benefits at first, later promenade and popular concerts. Already in the 1820s the changing nature of concert patronage was a matter for anguished debate in the periodical press. If traditional aristocratic patronage was turning back to the exclusive private salon, luring the most famous artists by money and flattery, what then was the future for public concert life? Was there a new role for the bourgeoisie?
While some nouveaux riches matched the aristocracy with ostentatious soirées, others preferred to cultivate a sober reputation as connoisseurs, while distinguishing themselves from the old guard of the Ancient Music by focussing on the Viennese classics. Amateur societies in the City, inspired by German merchants, promoted Mozart’s Don Giovanni in about 1808, and the tradition persisted through two short-lived series of City Amateur concerts (both founded in 1818) and others on similar lines. Through their support of public institutions and the discerning programmes of their private concerts, the City bourgeoisie began a realignment of patronage that was only resolved in succeeding decades.
Social themes therefore intersected with differing musical tastes and repertories. Canonization was extended from ‘ancient’ music to the ‘classical’ music of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven (and, for that matter, to new music of serious aspiration by Spohr and Mendelssohn). This high-minded reverence for art contrasted with populist ephemera as well as with the glitz of Italian opera and virtuoso pianism, regarded equally as shallow upper-class infatuations. The change was most clearly articulated by the formation of the Philharmonic Society in 1813. The previous decade, despite Salomon’s advocacy of Beethoven, had been dominated by the Vocal Concerts and other series by such divas as Elizabeth Billington and Angelica Catalani; whereas the Philharmonic’s agenda explicitly elevated modern symphonies alongside ancient music, eschewing vocal solos and even concertos at first (though both these restrictions were soon abandoned). Like the Professional Concert, the Philharmonic Society was founded by musicians, but differed radically from its predecessor in its high ideals and ostentatious disdain for profit. Subscribers were admitted on the basis of artistic credentials rather than social status, resulting in many fewer titled members than at the Concert of Ancient Music and a broader audience claiming artistic discernment based on the new Viennese repertory. Admittedly the path was not always smooth, with some members reviving their allegiance to the Professional Concert in 1815 and accusations of complacency and stasis during the 1830s. With a freelance orchestra and limited rehearsal, the standard of orchestral playing cannot have been high, and although Spohr introduced the baton at a rehearsal in 1820, a dual control system between violinist and pianist persisted for many years. Nevertheless, the Philharmonic was a dominant force for many decades, responsible not only for confirming Beethoven as the keystone of the repertory, but also for commissioning music from Cherubini, Spohr and Mendelssohn (see fig.34). If the latter’s appearance at the Philharmonic in 1829 cemented his reputation and influence in England, his authority as a conductor began to encourage more precision of ensemble, an improvement much advanced by Michael Costa from 1846 to 1855.
In line with the artistic ideals of the Philharmonic was the rise of chamber music concerts. In 1835 a young violinist named Joseph Dando instituted quartet concerts in the City, soon transferring westwards to the Hanover Square Rooms (fig.35) and inviting competition from more distinguished players. Programmes were uncompromisingly based around the Viennese masters, including late Beethoven, despite an admixture of songs and other lighter items. Serious contemplation of masterworks was encouraged by seating in the round, and reflected in titles such as conversazione or soirée musicale. Chamber series were sometimes held at patrons’ houses, emphasizing a link with traditional modes of patronage; or at musicians’ own lodgings, allying them with the artistic and literary community. At John Ella’s Musical Union, founded in 1845, just three chamber works were performed by the finest artists to a rapt audience of cognoscenti, over whom Ella ruled with a rod of silence. The Beethoven Quartet Society, established by the critic T.M. Alsager in the same year, also presented three works – early, middle and late – with similar devotion, the audience following scores or detailed programme notes. Other instrumentalists also took up the classical torch: in 1838 Moscheles began a series of classical piano recitals (though again interleaving songs as well as chamber music).
The patrician Concert of Ancient Music exhibited a similarly reverential attitude towards choral music, but its petrified repertory and ambience were increasingly seen as a moribund relic of the 18th century; and it finally expired in 1848. At the 1834 Royal Festival at Westminster Abbey celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Handel Commemoration, sacred music of the Viennese school was included (in response to public pressure), but choral singing was already moving in quite a different direction. London had always lacked a major amateur society to match the provincial festivals: in 1832 the Sacred Harmonic Society was founded, soon to be transformed into a symbol of religious dissent as a coalition of nonconformist choirs excluded from the 1834 festival. Its membership largely drawn from the musically uneducated lower classes, the society maintained a high moral tone and social purpose, which extended also to its audiences. In 1836 it was granted the use of the larger Exeter Hall, focus of London’s dissenting community and designed for religious and charitable meetings, enabling vast crowds of 2000 and more to attend for no more than a shilling. Amateur choral singing in London grew apace over the next few decades, invigorated by the rise of the sol-fa movement and the singing classes of Mainzer, Curwen and Hullah; and at the Handel Festival of 1859 (see fig.37) the Sacred Harmonic choir numbered 2765. Artistic high-mindedness ensured that Handel oratorios were sung complete, and the society also performed the major new works of Spohr and Mendelssohn, including the London première of Elijah in 1847.
Changing artistic and social function encouraged a desire to redress continental domination of concert repertory. But only gradually was awareness of decline translated into active encouragement of British composers, with initiatives stemming more from musicians themselves than from their patrons: trials of new music at the Philharmonic Society (including symphonies by Cipriani Potter), public performances of student works from the new Royal Academy of Music (opened in 1823), and such initiatives as the British Concerts (1823) and the Society of British Musicians, founded in 1834. The latter was intended both as a forum for discussion and as a focus for publicity through full-scale symphonic concerts. Though foreign works were later admitted and the programmes reduced to chamber music, performances of Bennett and Macfarren during the 1830s and 40s formed a significant prelude to the emergence of a British school of composition.
Most concerts had less exalted aims, their upper echelons dominated by foreign virtuosos, who besides the occasional obligatory appearance at the Philharmonic were mainly to be heard at private soirées and benefits. Private concerts remained an essential feature of the soloist’s diary, both lucrative and an entrée into further engagements, despite protests by such musicians as Spohr and Moscheles: Every time I am applauded at such soirées, I think it is because they are relieved that I have finished playing, and that the thing is over and done with. We sacrifice as little time as possible for such evenings and hurry home as soon as the rules of etiquette permit. Soirée programmes generally mixed salon music and virtuoso showpieces with the latest Italian arias and ensembles, and sometimes English glees. Only rarely was more serious musical attention expected, though there were exceptions, such as concerts at Alsager’s house, where Moscheles gave the London première of Beethoven’s Missa solemnis in 1832.
The benefit concert, that stalwart of the 18th-century concert structure, was gradually transforming in function. Formerly regarded as a reward for good service, the benefit turned during the 19th century into a commercial catch-all, with diverse programmes presented by unknowns in ever-increasing numbers, as well as by international stars. Pianists such as Thalberg or Moscheles performed their fantasias on national airs and improvised on themes provided by the audience; singers contributed a mêlée of Italian showpieces and finales, extracts from Weber and Meyerbeer, English ballads and folksongs. Most extravagant of all were the annual Monster Concerts of Julius Benedict, beginning in 1841, when a roll call of stars – Grisi, Viardot, Mario, Vieuxtemps, Liszt – attracted large and fashionable crowds. But in general the profusion of concerts outran audiences, and halls were routinely ‘papered’ with free tickets for friends and pupils, despite the introduction of tiered prices. Economies resulted in piano accompaniment becoming the norm by 1850 – although this did allow classical works, a trend that was eventually amalgamated into the recital.
Some exploitation exceeded mere benefits. In the 1820s the soprano Catalani organized whole series around her virtuoso showpieces, only to be outdone in 1831 by Paganini’s concerts at the King’s Theatre, as frequent and as high-priced as the market would allow, followed by appearances at the London Tavern in the City (still regarded as problematical for an artist of his stature). Yet when Liszt arrived in 1840 even he cultivated a drawing-room ambience at Hanover Square for London’s first solo piano recitals.
Like benefits, the Lenten oratorios appealed to a diverse audience through mixed programming, interspersing Handel with a jumble of Italian showpieces and English ballads; indeed, their 19th-century manifestations should be regarded more as popular potpourris than serious concerts. Liberalization of theatrical regulations caused the final downfall in 1843; but other organizations were already catering for large audiences at prices of a shilling or so. In contrast to the Sacred Harmonic Society’s moral agenda, the promenade concerts initiated in 1838 clearly attempted to reach a new and uncultivated audience with populist programmes: the latest galops and quadrilles, cornet solos and every imaginable crowd-pleasing gimmick. Yet the great showman Jullien made a point of including movements from Beethoven symphonies, albeit in his own garish arrangements.
During the 1830s and 40s music began to spread outside the narrow confines of the central London concert hall, with the rapid growth of societies for self-improvement, entertainment or education. Dando’s quartet concerts in the City paved the way for cheaper and more accessible concerts by challenging licensing restrictions, and also found an obvious way of economizing without losing artistic prestige. Leading professionals could be heard at literary institutions and musical societies in such outlying districts as Highgate, Islington, Mile End and Camberwell. At the same time, amateur instrumental and choral societies proliferated around London and in the City (where the long-lived Choral Harmonists’ Society was formed in 1833); and music was one of the most striking successes of the Mechanics’ Institutes, less artisan than their name implies, which made a strong cultural impact in less prosperous areas, both for amateur players and for the sizable audiences their concerts attracted.
London, §VI, 2: Musical life: 1800–1945: Concert life
By the middle of the century London’s main musical institutions had become established around a well-defined repertory. The number of concerts and size of audiences continued to increase. The 1851 Great Exhibition and subsequent resiting of the ‘Crystal Palace’ from Hyde Park to Sydenham, a south London suburb, had long-term significance; but that decade’s most prominent musical event was the foundation of the Handel Festival there. The Sacred Harmonic Society provided the nucleus for the nationally represented choir of the Trial Festival of 1857 (numbering 2000, with an orchestra of about 400), prior to the Centenary Festival of 1859, which inaugurated the triennial Handel Festival (fig.37); by the 1880s this had a choir of 4000 and orchestra of about 450, with audiences of around 86,000 over four days. This quintessentially Victorian event was much imitated, notably in the USA, but was never fully respected by serious musicians, even within the Sacred Harmonic Society itself, and adverse comparison was made with the provincial choral festivals which were its most direct model.
The desire for sensitive performance of historical repertory was manifest in the advent of several new groups. The Harmonic Union, a subscription society founded in 1852 ‘for the performance of sacred and secular music both of the Ancient and Modern Schools’, began in December that year at Exeter Hall, the first programme including a Bach motet and C.E. Horsley’s Joseph, and it performed other modern works until its demise in 1854. The Vocal Association (fl 1856–c1866) was conducted by Julius Benedict and modelled on the German Gesangverein for performance of such larger modern choral works as Mendelssohn’s Die erste Walpurgisnacht and Spohr’s Hymn to St Cecilia. The most successful small choir of the decade was the Henry Leslie Choir, which assimilated a previous choir, first with 60 voices intended for madrigals and partsongs; it increased to 240 for large works and explored a wide repertory to a high standard, flourishing until 1887. More convivial vocal activity continued in the Round, Catch and Canon Club, founded in 1843 to sing works of its members, first at the Anchor Tavern and later St James’s Hall, finally folding in 1911.
In orchestral life, the chief innovation was the transformation of the Crystal Palace band into a full symphony orchestra in the year after the 1854 opening. Its second director of music, August Manns, provided two daily free concerts for visitors, and a Saturday concert with augmented orchestra and a more classical programme. The Palace also presented fashionable opera concerts in the summer of 1856, but the orchestral concerts were far more important in pioneering new repertory and raising performance standards. Manns’ regular contact with his players and expert training, together with the support of George Grove, Crystal Palace secretary, resulted in the rapid creation of London’s best orchestra. By the mid-1860s it was probably one of the best in Europe, and its bold expansion of repertory attracted musical connoisseurs from central London, who took specially scheduled trains. Longer seasons than the Philharmonic Society (two series through autumn and spring, later extended to summer), the participation of leading international performers and a distinctly educational ethos all gave the Crystal Palace Concerts a pre-eminence which overshadowed those of central London until the 1880s. Manns also made his concerts the leading forum for new British music, continuing until the official disbanding of the orchestra in 1900 when he was in his 70s.
Even before Manns’ tenure at the Crystal Palace, the Philharmonic Society had reached a crisis point. Long criticized for its conservative programmes before Costa left, it was challenged by a breakaway group of members who created the New Philharmonic Society in 1852 to give ‘more perfect performances of the great masters than have hitherto been attained and to bring the music of contemporary and British composers before the public’. Led by Henry Wylde, its committee consisted not of professional musicians but of wealthy amateurs. In its first season Berlioz performed part of his Roméo et Juliette and gave the first satisfactory performance in England of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. In 1856 the concerts moved from Exeter Hall to the Hanover Square Rooms, resulting in higher prices and a more exclusive audience. In 1858 Wylde became sole director and conductor at St James’s Hall, and some members resigned to form the Musical Society of London whose wide aspirations included the provision of a good library, lectures, conversaziones, and chamber music at St James’s Hall; the society lasted until 1867 when Clara Schumann played in its last concert. The New Philharmonic was effectively finished by 1879, although it continued for three years under Wilhelm Ganz.
The opening of St James’s Hall, Piccadilly, in 1858, provided a much needed new venue in central London (see fig.38). Established by the publishers Cramer, Beale & Chappell ‘for concerts on a large scale and for public meetings’, it comprised a large concert hall and a smaller hall which housed ballad concerts and minstrelsy. S.A. Chappell’s Monday Popular Concerts (1859–76; fig.39) and later Saturday Popular Concerts (1865–1904) presented chamber music and solo performance. Leading organizations and soloists played there, beginning with Ella’s Musical Union and the Henry Leslie Choir and followed belatedly by the Philharmonic Society in 1869, when the Novello oratorio concerts also took occupancy. The Hanover Rooms were thus overtaken and closed in 1874.
Although aimed at increasingly broad audiences, these concerts were all for the musically educated; other concerts were aimed at a more popular audience. The standard and musical respectability of promenade concerts gradually improved during the period, Louis Jullien’s concerts (see fig.36) being taken over by Mellon at Covent Garden after his death in 1860; in 1850 Balfe had begun a series at the Surrey Gardens, then moving to Drury Lane and subsequently Covent Garden. Chappell began ‘Ballad Concerts’ in 1867 as a showcase for his publications, and was copied by others. Hullah’s choral concerts (1850–60), based on highly popular classes in tonic sol-fa, were more didactic, taking place from 1850 at St Martin’s Hall, Long Acre, which was built for him by supporters. Novello had generated a vast business in cheap vocal scores for the Handel Festivals at the Crystal Palace, and in 1869 launched ‘Oratorio Concerts’ under Joseph Barnby. They lasted until 1872, when the choir was amalgamated with the Royal Albert Hall Choral Society, founded with the Hall (fig.40) in 1871 (from 1888 the Royal Choral Society). Its adventurous repertory included four successive performances of Bach’s St Matthew Passion in 1873, the Verdi Requiem (under the composer) in 1875 and Dvořák’s Stabat mater in 1884, also conducted by the composer. Barnby subsequently conducted the London Musical Society, founded in 1878, which flourished until 1887 ‘for the practice and performance of the works of composers which are not generally known to the musical public’, given in St James’s Hall. Another choir associated with a new building was the Alexandra Palace Choral Society, founded at the institution located on a north London hill site (analogous in function and location to the Crystal Palace). Directed from its opening in 1873 by Thomas Weist-Hill, its programmes included revivals of Handel’s Esther and Susanna (with an orchestra of 42 and a choir of 300); it also ran a symphony competition for British composers.
If performances of Handel with large forces were popular, Bach demanded smaller and better-trained choirs and was comparatively little-known in the 1870s. The Bach Society had been formed in 1849 to collect compositions and relics, and to further understanding of his music. It gave the first English performance of the St Matthew Passion in 1854 under Sterndale Bennett, but was dissolved in 1870. The foundation of the Bach Choir in 1875 was prompted by the desire to perform the B minor Mass, then unknown to English musicians; two performances took place at St James’s Hall in 1876, conducted by Otto Goldschmidt. In addition to Bach it performed new choral music, such as the Brahms German Requiem, and achieved high standards under Goldschmidt and later under Stanford.
By the early 1880s there were already complaints by tired critics of concerts, the Musical World avowing that the receptive capacities of the ‘professional worker and amateur student’ were sorely overtaxed. But by then some of the older institutions were showing signs of age. The Sacred Harmonic Society collapsed after Costa’s death and the Handel Festival passed into the hands of the Crystal Palace, with new standards and a wider repertory imposed by August Manns. In 1882 a large amateur choir and orchestra was formed as the Handel Society and dedicated to the revival of the composer’s less familiar works and the practice and performance of other music, including all the Handel oratorios except Joseph and Esther and Mozart’s C minor Mass. New interest in historical repertory is reflected in the Magpie Madrigal Society founded in 1866 to perform 16th- and 17th-century madrigals and contemporary works, some composed for it. It was closely associated with the Royal College of Music, and was active until 1911.
The growing popular audience for classical orchestral music was wooed by a series of concerts by leading German conductors. In 1879, Hans Richter’s Orchestral Festival Concerts (later known as the Richter Concerts) began to offer the first sustained challenge to Manns. In 1884 Henschel, having resigned the position of first conductor of the Boston SO, began the London Symphony Concerts. For 11 years they introduced innovative repertory. Smaller-scale performances received a further stimulus with the opening by the piano makers of the 500-seat Steinway Hall (renamed Grotrian Hall in 1925) and, more significantly, Bechstein Hall in 1901.
By the 1880s broader audiences were introduced to classical music. Earlier educational initiatives had been concerned with choral music. A new phase in the popularization of instrumental music began with the People’s Concert Society formed in 1878 with the aim of ‘increasing the popularity of good music by means of cheap concerts’. The essential feature was the maintenance of high artistic standards and the programmes were closely modelled on those of St James’s Hall. The concerts were held in various disadvantaged parts of London including the People’s Palace in the East End and 1d charged for most seats. The operation relied on artists giving their services or taking nominal fees and was partly supported by subscription. The concerts lasted well into the 20th century. The Vocal and Instrumental Concerts of the South Place Ethical Institute, Finsbury, began in 1887 with free admission and a silver collection. In the first season there were seven concerts, in the second 13 and by the third season concerts were held weekly through the winter. When Conway Hall was built for its use in 1927–8 it was not licensed, so the South Place Concerts Society was formed for members only, thus breaking the tradition of free admission. It became an important showcase for young artists, soloists and chamber groups. The Oxford House Choral Society was founded in 1898 at Oxford House, the Oxford University Settlement in Bethnal Green, to give East Londoners the opportunity to take part in choral music. It gave regular concerts in the Excelsior Hall. In 1903 it appeared at St James’s Hall and gave an annual concert at Queen’s Hall from 1904 to 1921, and afterwards at St Martin-in-the-Fields.
London, §VI, 2: Musical life: 1800–1945: Concert life
With a range of choral, orchestral, solo and chamber music firmly established at St James’s Hall, the Royal Albert Hall, the Crystal Palace and smaller venues, central London still lacked a high-quality symphony orchestra performing a wider repertory, including new music. This came about through the opening in 1893 of the Queen’s Hall (fig.41), comprising a large hall of 2500 and a smaller hall of 500. Its first licensee, Robert Newman, sought a popular audience for good-quality orchestral music and from 1895 arranged a series of promenade concerts with the newly formed Queen’s Hall Orchestra in the summer at cheaper prices when other concert series were not available; the initiative reflected a new respectability for the promenade concept since the Monster Concerts of Jullien; admission to both the standing room and the body of the hall and to most of the seats was far cheaper than at any other concerts. With Henry Wood as conductor from 1895 until 1941, the concerts took over an educational role which connects 19th-century concert life to modern times. The first programmes still reflected the traditional mixed content, with a ‘serious’ first half and a popular second with ballads and instrumental solos, but gradually a modern structure emerged. Like Manns, Wood achieved his results by a combination of good training and regular contact with his players, who played every night of the week except Sunday for a ten-week summer season.
The new hall and concerts symbolize the beginnings of a new era. Following the disbanding of the Crystal Palace Orchestra and final closure of the Saturday Popular Concerts, St James’s Hall closed in 1905. Henceforth, serious music lovers could choose from a cluster of venues in central London, custom built and often more efficiently managed than in the past as regards tickets, seating, ventilation and general facilities. It also reflected the growing interest in orchestral music, whereas no new choral venues appeared or societies were formed. Most prominent were the appearance of celebrity solo performers. With the piano culture now at its apogee, the new concert rooms of piano manufacturers offered frequent recitals enabling such houses as Broadwood and Erard to promote visiting celebrities. Thus concert life and the exploitation of brand names – concert instruments prominently labelled – were sustained almost continuously through the year at Bechstein Hall, Steinway Hall and Aeolian Hall (pianola makers). As the main source of concert hall income shifted from subscriptions to tickets for individual concerts, crass profitability was sometimes preferred to social exclusiveness. Chamber music, long the preserve of the most educated musical class, was dominated by the concerts of the Joachim Quartet until his death in 1907 (the concerts were held in St James’s Hall until 1905). The work of the Joachim Quartet was continued by the Classical Concert Society (1908–22).
Documentation is still inadequate to chart the full range of music performed, types of audience, and locations during this period of rapid commercial development and population growth. The 19th-century obsession with Beethoven and Mendelssohn continued, along with the establishment of a limited core of Haydn and Mozart and of familiar operatic overtures and Wagnerian extracts ‘in bleeding chunks’. Wood made his mark with exotic French and Russian additions and in difficult modern scores, most notably Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces in 1912. Richard Strauss was welcomed as a celebrated composer and conductor, and Elgar made strides as the outstanding representative of the English musical renaissance.
Choice of ‘early music’ still reflected acceptable 19th-century taste, and the later 20th century’s emphasis on historical repertory such as Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos or Mozart’s piano concertos was still not apparent. Purcell, the bicentenary of whose death had been celebrated in 1895, was once again forgotten in performance as opposed to study, and Vivaldi was not yet known to the public. But programmes were beginning to relinquish Victorian excess, with shorter menus of overture, concerto and symphony, and perhaps a newly popular tone poem.
One sign of the broadening market is the fact that performances of serious music were not confined to conventional venues. For example, London’s first encounter with Parsifal, in June 1913, was a truncated version without singers as part of the Coliseum’s music-hall offerings. Beecham’s innovatory Sunday concerts, with a new orchestra recently acclaimed in Berlin and such novelties as the violin concertos of Weingartner and Busoni, with Kreisler and Szigeti as soloists, took place at the Palladium. Throughout the year there were no longer significant gaps in the concert calendar. Some music was available at Easter, and the summer months were filled by a prodigious list of proms: 61 concerts between mid-August and late October. The Annual Register reported a prom season ‘by far the most prosperous ever yet enjoyed … . Night after night the house was literally packed by enthusiasts’. Most popular was Wagner, whose ‘emotional fervour & dramatic intensity … make a strong appeal to those who wage the fight of life’ (Athenaeum).
In an age of cheap labour and large demand, impresarios and highly paid and promoted artists flourished. An impresario’s largesse could be indulged in an orchestra where about 100 players was the norm for any music, regardless of period or style. All were men, except for an occasional harpist, though plenty of women players were available: hence an occasional indulgence in the novelty of a ladies orchestra. Top violinists and pianists (there were not yet stars on such other instruments as the cello) were recognizably new, despite superficial resemblance to the obvious precursors, Paganini, Liszt and Anton Rubinstein. The new breed, epitomized by Paderewski, performed with an extravagance of tone, interpretative flair, gesture and pecuniary expectation which was variously attributed to genius, national temperament, manipulation by grasping agents, transatlantic influence and the response of vulgar audiences. In similar mould there were new virtuoso conductors, with Nikisch as exemplar, whose interpretations of familiar classics brought profitable acclaim – even to the innovative extent that concerts could succeed without a soloist. All the same, visits by high-quality foreign orchestras stood out, such as Newman’s invitation of the Colonne Orchestra and the appearance of the Meiningen orchestra under Steinbach in 1902. Smaller ensembles drew upon similar repertory in programmes which were usually a ragbag, even when carried by an artist of distinction. Few serious musicians could yet attract a sufficient audience without the ‘assistance’ of a singer or contrasting instrumentalist to provide diversity or light relief. The programme of a violin recital would normally include a concerto and ‘solo’ Bach, both with piano accompaniment. Singers rarely avoided Melba’s sound advice to ‘sing ’em muck’ – and not only in the outback or provinces – along with morsels of lieder, opera and art song. The genteel parlour entertainments of a dominant piano culture, with its dependent economics of music publishing – royalty ballads and music-hall songs, ‘effective’ piano pieces, even recitations – were still common enough in Wigmore Street. Kreisler might play at Chappell’s ballad concerts in Queen’s Hall, but on the same occasion Gervase Elwes would sing a new setting of Lead Kindly Light.
The potential audience was immense: a vast metropolitan population, enjoying increased leisure and purchasing power, and a measure of recent emancipation from the Sabbatarian constraints which had until recently denied access to the pleasures of a ‘continental Sunday’. Dispersal from workplace to suburbia was offset by the opportunity to return provided by cheap efficient public transport. Such new forms of public entertainment as the music hall already exercised a huge mass appeal, and hopes were expressed that serious music might be similarly marketed, for patronage and subsidy were virtually non-existent, in the guise of ‘respectablizing’ entertainment by raising its tone for family consumption. More central to music’s need was Robert Newman’s express intention, as he told Henry Wood, to recruit new custom ‘by easy stages … raising the standard until I have created a public for classical and modern music. Similar hopes for stable audiences, committed to music itself rather than to evanescent fashion, doubtless underlay a rapid proliferation of institutions and events during the first decade of the 20th century. A rash of orchestras, with misleading flags of stable identity, was one such excrescence. The London Symphony Orchestra (LSO, 1904) was founded as a players’ cooperative in defiance of Wood’s attempt to raise standards by challenging the deputy system in his Queen’s Hall Orchestra (1895). Hans Richter conducted the orchestra’s inaugural concert at the Queen’s Hall on 9 June 1904. There followed, in rapid succession, the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra (1905), the New SO and the Beecham SO (1909), all with access to an overflowing pool of players. None could offer enough secure employment to guarantee that long-term commitment and regular rehearsals which would have been conducive to ensemble and style, as with the best continental and American orchestras. At symphony concerts a London tradition of inspired sight-reading became deeply entrenched, even a source of pride, with conductors learning to cope.
By 1913, the last year of peace, it was a journalist’s commonplace to marvel at or deplore the excess of London’s musical calendar, ranging from rapturously received first English performances of Der Rosenkavalier to polite interest in Dolmetsch’s clavichord. It made ‘the head swim’ exclaimed the Daily Telegraph, which carried notices of 50 concert and opera performances in a week, declared that ‘efforts to create audiences … are useless’ and doubted that all this activity ‘denoted a musical nation’. A typical week began on Sunday 18 May with two afternoon concerts. At the Palladium the National Sunday League provided ‘light orchestral music’ with Yvonne Arnaud, musical comedy star and conservatoire pianist, in the Grieg Piano Concerto, and an ‘immense audience’ invaded the Albert Hall to hear Maggie Teyte, Kreisler and Backhaus, the latter in Grieg’s Piano Sonata. On Monday an afternoon recital at the Aeolian Hall was followed by evening concerts at the Queen’s, Bechstein and Steinway halls. On Tuesday afternoon Bechstein Hall offered a piano recital by the newcomer Artur Rubinstein; Aeolian Hall a vocalist with harp; and at Queen’s Hall Casals, Thibaud and Bauer attracted a small audience because trios were ‘seldom played’. That evening vocalists at the Aeolian and Bechstein halls probably fared similarly, if only because the week’s attractions at Covent Garden included Caruso in Pagliacci and Destinn and Scotti in the latest novelty, Tosca. On Wednesday there were three afternoon and four evening concerts of no great account (one conducted by Serafin), but on Thursday afternoon, in addition to a singer at the Bechstein Hall, Teyte was at the Queen’s Hall for ‘barely an hour’ with two intervals, in Debussy ‘perfectly sung’ and ‘paltry American songs only fit for a ballad concert’ (The Times, 23 May 1913). That evening a Wagner centenary concert at the Albert Hall, a violinist at the Steinway, and vocalists at the Bechstein and Aeolian entertained those who could not attend Melba’s ‘rentrée’ in La Bohème at Covent Garden. On Friday afternoon, while Isolde Menges played the Brahms Violin Concerto with Nikisch at Queen’s Hall, the London String Quartet occupied Bechstein Hall; and that evening the LSO were in the large venue while Comtesse Hélène Mersztyn gave a piano recital at the Aeolian. Saturday afternoon offered only the Wessely String Quartet and a piano recital by Egon Petri.
When London’s musical life was torn apart by war, a surfeit of musical events was followed by dearth. The open international market was disrupted by the removal of ‘enemy’ performers, and such leading contemporary composers as Richard Strauss got short shrift. But despite ‘Hun-baiting’ by some hitherto obscure piano makers and a measure of muck-racking journalism, with Bechstein Hall a significant casualty, there was remarkably little concession in repertory to nationalistic sentiment: the old masters, including Wagner, remained in central place. The return to peace in 1918 brought ‘business as usual’ back to music, with a flood of returning soloists seeking London platforms. But there was little sign of that loyal audience which Newman and enthusiasts for the musical appreciation movement had hoped to build. The rapidly growing suburbs provided their own centres of entertainment, one form of which, the cinema, soon engulfed all others. The omnipresent ‘silent’ cinemas were invariably accompanied by continuous music – much of it standard classics – and employed the overwhelming majority of professional instrumentalists. Their influence upon the education of future audiences held promise; but the immediate effects on concert life were less auspicious, notably in the quality of orchestral playing. The demand for rank and file players was buoyant as never before; but foreigners were excluded by work permit regulations, and women instrumentalists, who had entered and even led orchestras in wartime, were no longer welcome. When Newman died in 1926 it seemed likely that even the Queen’s Hall would become a cinema. If that calamity, avoided only by the BBC’s intervention, best symbolized the immediate crisis in concert life, its deeper malaise was recognized by many contemporaries in 1927, when a visit by Furtwängler’s Berlin PO demonstrated what was lacking in routine London performances. Another notoriously public incident was when Schnabel explained in a letter to The Times that a Mozart concerto had been inadequately prepared and that his offer to subsidize rehearsals was nullified by the use of deputy players. Thus were London standards mocked until, quite suddenly, the rot was stopped.
Standards of orchestral playing in London were transformed within a few years by a transformation of the city’s musical environment. The successive blows dealt by ‘talking’ cinema, the slump and long depression, and the slower but relentless collapse of the old piano culture, cumulatively destroyed employment opportunities for the vast majority of musicians. Henceforth orchestras could be selected with relentless discrimination, then rehearsed and disciplined as never before; and there were conductors with the skill and will to exert such command. Similarly unprecedented was the beginning of substantial patronage for music, with long-term commitment and lofty ideals, again for the spread and improvement of musical taste. In 1930 the BBC created Britain’s first permanent symphony orchestra with full-time contracts, while a society for the promotion of contemporary music was founded in London in 1931 under the name Macnaghten Concerts. The following year Beecham established the London Philharmonic Orchestra, with contracts less exclusive, but sufficient to ensure stability for the decade. Its legendary first concert – Berlioz’s overture Le carnaval romain, Mozart’s Prague Symphony, Delius’s Brigg Fair, Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben – took place after 12 rehearsals and, as Ernest Newman wrote, informed ‘you Londoners… what an orchestra ought to be like’. Beecham’s patronage came in part from the traditional but short-lived support of wealthy friends, its departure demonstrating the evanescence of such funding. Far more significant, for this enterprise and for the whole future of professional music-making, was the recording industry, now firmly based in London and, with the new electrical process, capable of financing, exploiting and documenting London’s orchestral revolution: gramophone records amply demonstrate the new quality of playing. London concerts generally became more selective in repertory with less resort to the ragbag and second-rate; many recitals attempted some kind of austere balance; ballad concerts abandoned the metropolis, and even remnants of the Victorian parlour culture began to fade into oblivion.
With the disruption of war in 1939, cultural euphoria became fashionable with images of Myra Hess at the National Gallery and ordinary men and women uplifted by Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The permanent audience for concerts, long coveted, was now thought to be attainable through the influence of responsible broadcasting and the gramophone. A plethora of concerts – in cinemas as well as the Queen’s Hall until its destruction in 1941 and the Albert Hall thereafter – may have consisted mostly of a handful of Classical and Romantic works (the repertory of piano concertos now including ersatz cinema products) read at sight by scratch orchestras. But, it was claimed, indulgent repertory and performance could be attributed to wartime exigencies. The peace would offer utopia with, at long last, commitment from government and adequate licence.
For further information on institutions and venues, see Grove6
London, §VI: Musical life: 1800–1945
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W. Weber: ‘The Rise of the Classical Repertoire in Nineteenth-Century Orchestral Concerts’, The Orchestra: Origins and Transformations (New York, 1986), 361–86
T.M. Ellsworth: The Piano Concerto in London Concert Life between 1801 and 1850 (diss., U. of Cincinnati, 1991)
W. Wright: ‘Liszt's 1827 Concert Appearances in London: Reviews, Notices, Playbills and Programs’, The Journal of the American Liszt Society, no.29 (1991), 61–8
A. Jacobs: Henry J. Wood: Maker of the Proms (London, 1994)
C. Ehrlick: First Philharmonic: a History of the Royal Philharmonic Society (Oxford, 1995)
C. Bashford: Public Chamber-Music Concerts in London, 1835–50: Aspects of History, Repertory and Reception (diss., U. of London, 1996)
O. Biba: ‘Wiener Geiger in London: die Konzertreise der Brüder Hellmeberger im Jahr 1847’, Musikblätter der Wiener Philharmoniker, li (1997), 167–73
S. McVeigh: ‘The Benefit Concert in Nineteenth-Century London: from “Tax on the Nobility” to “Monstrous Nuisance”’, Nineteenth-Century British Music Studies, i, ed. B. Zon (Aldershot, 1999), 242–66
S. McVeigh: ‘The Society for British Musicians (1834–1865) and the Campaign for Native Talent’, Music and British Culture, 1785–1914: Essays in Honour of Cyril Ehrlich, ed. C. Bashford and L. Langley (Oxford, 2000)
London, §VII: Musical life: since 1945
The determined resumption of London’s musical life after World War II re-established the pattern of mainstream professional concert and opera performances that had been in place during the inter-war years. This was maintained throughout the second half of the 20th century, despite the fact that during this period the musical environment changed radically. In that time the cultural assumptions on which the traditional pattern of musical life was based, together with the social, intellectual, economic and technological circumstances from which it developed, were subject to continuous challenge and modification. Yet the consequences of this process have largely been accommodated within traditional concert protocols, suggesting that the very familiarity of these conventions may have been a significant factor in their retention. London's musical life in this period was marked by two separate cultural upheavals, each associated with very different economic circumstances. The first of these occurred in the early 1960s, a period of radical thought at a time of public prosperity, as a strong reaction against the British musical status quo, characterized by a surge of interest in the alternatives offered by the avant-garde and historical repertories. The second, a postmodernist reorientation that gathered pace during the 1980s, asserted the principle of cultural relativism. By the early 1990s the canonical works of the traditional concert repertoire had lost their customary pre-eminence and were increasingly obliged to vie for audience attention with works from other musical traditions. The stock-market reversal of October 1987 initiated a deep economic recession in Britain; following abruptly from a period of growth and financial optimism, this generated a strong sense of economic deprivation and inequality in parts of London, spurring some minority ethnic groups to reassert their cultural identity through various art forms. The new climate of cultural pluralism encouraged the higher profiling of these and other popular traditions, so undermining long-held assumptions as to the appropriate beneficiaries of arts subsidy.
The postwar introduction of public subsidy for the performing arts was perhaps the most important single innovation of the period for music provision in London. The Arts Council of Great Britain was established in 1946 to provide government subsidy at arm's length from government control. The Council's function followed from the morale-boosting work of the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA) and the Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA), whose sponsorship of orchestral and operatic performances during the war had generated an important new audience for classical music. The Arts Council's Royal Charter specified that it should ‘increase the accessibility of the fine arts to the public’ and ‘improve the standard of execution of the fine arts’. For the first time, some of London's opera and ballet companies and orchestras received continuous public funding in place of sporadic private patronage, and the Arts Council provided the funds to establish a permanent opera company (later the Royal Opera) at Covent Garden, retrieving the building from its wartime role as a dance hall. Also important was the 1948 Local Government Act, which enabled discretionary arts expenditure by local government; this helped to fund the London orchestras (channelled through the London Orchestral Concerts Board) and allowed growth in the range and scope of London's music festivals. Some 40 years later, however, the growing diversity in the city's artistic and musical culture generated public debate about the basis on which the Arts Council subsidized the arts. The agreement to broaden criteria for grants to the arts came just at the time of imposed constraints on public sector spending. One consequence was increased reliance by music organizations, especially the four contract London orchestras (the LSO, the RPO, the Philharmonia and the LPO) on business sponsorship as a primary source of funds. Such sponsorship is, however, subject to changing circumstances and thus less secure in the long term.
The permanence and quality offered by the recorded format in the late 20th century effectively changed the economic basis of London's concert life. Where the financial basis of the commercial aspect originally lay in the inseparability of the performers’ action and the musical sound, technology has made the performance into a vendible commodity completely independent of the point of origin. This produced the paradoxical situation where royalties generated from the sales of recordings were needed by London orchestras to subsidize their concert appearances; box-office revenue was simultaneously being reduced because the repertory was more cheaply and conveniently available in recorded form. Although this was a universal situation, London’s abundance of professional performances accentuated its impact on concert life. For example, in 1993–4, recordings accounted for 28% of the four London contract orchestras’ total schedule, with concert performance at 27% Another factor at play was the technology of the transistor radio and the electric guitar that had fuelled the rise of the pop youth culture of the 1960s; musical taste was fragmented away from the popular orchestral classics, which had been an important element of CEMA and ENSA programmes. However, recording and broadcasting also affected concert life in directly musical ways, particularly in the higher standards they set for live performance, and the influence they exerted on musical fashion. The BBC's London presence (continually expanding from its pre-war basis), in the form of its orchestras, particularly the BBC SO, the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts and its studio recordings, made it a major contributor in London's music provision overall, and the single most influential arbiter of taste there in the late 20th century.
London, §VII: Musical life: since 1945
World War II silenced opera at Covent Garden from 1940 until 1945. Sadler's Wells Opera continued presentations at the New Theatre and returned to its own theatre in 1945 with the historic first performance of Peter Grimes (under Reginald Goodall, with Peter Pears in the title role). Covent Garden had a visit from the S Carlo Opera of Naples before its own combined opera and ballet companies presented Purcell's The Fairy Queen. Ballet and opera henceforth shared the theatre equally. The new financial factor in British operatic promotion was the steady provision of state subsidy to opera through the Arts Council. Both the Covent Garden Opera Company (as the postwar company was called until its change in 1968 to Royal Opera) and Sadler's Wells Opera (in 1974 renamed English National Opera) remained dependent on it. A continuity of management was established for both companies, which henceforth dominated the London opera scene.
There was hardly any challenge from speculative impresarios between the Stoll Theatre seasons of Italian opera of 1946–8 and the arena-style performances of Aida (1988) and Carmen (1989) presented by Raymond Gubbay at Earls Court to audiences exceeding 14,000, and later similarly at the Royal Albert Hall. There were also a few short-term productions of a more specialized nature, including transfers from New York of Menotti's The Medium, The Telephone and The Consul (Aldwych Theatre, 1948; Cambridge Theatre, 1951), and Gershwin's Porgy and Bess (Stoll, 1952).
The Sadler's Wells repertory established a firm foothold for opera in English, while at Covent Garden a brief foray into opera in English translation gave way to the pre-war ideal of international opera in (mainly) the original languages. Among composers whose new works were given at Covent Garden, from Vaughan Williams to Alexander Goehr, were Britten (Gloriana, Billy Budd) as well as Tippett, who with three operas established the most conspicuous presence; Birtwistle's Gawain was one of the very few contemporary English operas to be regularly revived. Sadler's Wells (later the ENO) gave new British works by Birtwistle, Peter Maxwell Davies, Bryars and others. Of non-British composers after Stravinsky, Henze was the best represented in London, from Boulevard Solitude (New Opera Company, 1962) to We Come to the River, a Covent Garden commission produced in 1976, and Der Prinz von Homburg (ENO, 1996). The Royal Opera also presented the first British performances of Stockhausen's Donnerstag aus Licht (1985) and Berio's Un re in ascolto (1989). The ENO staged Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre (1982), Glass's Akhnaten (1987) and Schnittke's Life with an Idiot (1995).
Homage to the Second Viennese School was belatedly paid with the first British productions at Covent Garden of Wozzeck (1952), Moses und Aron (1965) and the complete Lulu (1981, under Colin Davis). Hindemith's Mathis der Maler (1995) and Pfitzner's Palestrina (1997, following the first British production by Abbey Opera in 1981) were also given at the Royal Opera. Russian opera of the Soviet era included Shostakovich's Katerina Izmaylova (Covent Garden, 1963), Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel (New Opera Company, 1965) and War and Peace (ENO, 1973).
Handel's operas, previously confined to rare and specialized revivals, now earned a more general exposure, from Covent Garden's Alcina with Sutherland (1962) to the ENO's Semele (1999). Until the mid-1970s, the heroic castrato parts were reallocated to tenors. Thereafter such roles, along with the castrato roles in Mozart's Idomeneo, La clemenza di Tito and Mitridate, were usually restored to original pitch, either by female impersonation of the male characters or by the employment of countertenors, among whom James Bowman won prominence. London was, however, slow to adopt the operatic use of period instruments. Covent Garden's first hearing of such instruments was a performance of Rameau's La princesse de Navarre in 1977 by the English Bach Festival. Under the musical direction of William Christie, Covent Garden staged a revival of Purcell's King Arthur (1995, including the complete spoken parts), as well as Rameau's Platée (1997).
An increased interest in Baroque opera by no means diminished the taste for Wagner. The Ring was regularly staged at Covent Garden (notably under Solti); Sadler's Wells Opera (since 1968 at the much larger and more central Coliseum) presented an important new production under Goodall. The appointment of Bernard Haitink as the Royal Opera's music director in 1987 brought renewed prominence to Wagner's works with an acclaimed revival of Die Meistersinger (with John Tomlinson as Sachs) and a controversial new production by Richard Jones and Nigel Lowery of the Ring.
In 1994 the Royal Opera launched a ‘Verdi Festival’ under the auspices of Edward Downes with the aim of presenting all of Verdi's operas by 2001. These included concert performances of rarely heard early works such as Il corsaro and Giovanna d'Arco, as well as a joint production with the Paris Opéra Bastille of Don Carlos (in French, with Roberto Alagna in the title role), both versions of Simon Boccanegra, and Stiffelio and Verdi's later reworking of this opera as Aroldo.
The postwar era brought stars such as Hotter (1947), Geraint Evans (1948), Christoff (1949), Gobbi (1950), Callas (1952), Sutherland (1952) and Bumbry (1963) to London. During the following decades a number of international stars regularly returned to Covent Garden, among them Pavarotti, Domingo and Kiri te Kanawa. The 1980s and early 1990s saw many British singers leading major productions at both opera houses, notably Felicity Lott, Ann Murray, Thomas Allen, Philip Langridge, Anthony Rolfe Johnson and John Tomlinson. Among conductors Carlos Kleiber, Solti, Kubelík, Kempe and Haitink exercised decisive authority, as did Colin Davis, Charles Mackerras, Mark Elder and Edward Downes, whose careers embraced both London opera houses. To Kubelík and Mackerras is particularly due the important British cultivation of Janáček, while Mackerras's conducting of Le nozze di Figaro (Sadler's Wells, 1965) was an early instance of an ‘authentic’ approach in such matters as articulation and ornamentation.
Above all, however, this was the era when the stage director took on an increasingly conspicuous role. At Covent Garden the arrival of Visconti (1958) and Zeffirelli (1959) had a notable impact, as did the work of Peter Hall from 1965. At the ENO David Pountney, Jonathan Miller, Jones and Lowery staged similarly distinctive, if perhaps more controversial, productions from the 1980s. The greater freedom claimed by the director (including the choice of stage designer) brought a widespread departure from the more or less literal staging that had previously been the norm. The importance of the director's ‘concept’ which overlaid the original libretto could result in drastic transformations of varying artistic cogency. At the ENO, an updated Hänsel und Gretel (Pountney) and a ‘de-Japanned’ Mikado (Miller) were successful, while the Napoleonic setting for Cherubini's Medée at Covent Garden in 1989 (London's first staging with authentic French spoken dialogue) was a much derided example.
The tightening of the national economy in the 1980s caused financial worries and an increased drive to find private sponsorship. By the mid-1990s financial mismanagement, the long-term reduction in government funding, and the image of opera as ‘élitist’ placed the future of the art form in London, and more particularly of the Royal Opera, in serious doubt. The institution of lottery grants to assist capital building projects only partly alleviated such uncertainty. The additional resources aided the redevelopment of the Royal Opera (commenced in 1997), provided the ENO with funds for a site feasibility study and a stabilization grant, and enabled the construction of the new Sadler's Wells Theatre (reopened 1998 for dance and opera). But they also engendered a greater degree of public scrutiny and calls for broader access to opera in return for continued subsidies. Changes in management at both the ENO and the Royal Opera in 1998 introduced some degree of financial and organizational stability. Throughout this troubled period opera remained richly varied. The Royal Opera, performing at several venues while its own theatre was being refurbished, mounted its first production of Paul Bunyan, as well as a revival of I masnadieri at the Edinburgh Festival and in Germany (the planned London production had to be cancelled), and various concert performances including Parsifal (with Domingo) and Boito's Mefistofele. The ENO staged new productions of Parsifal, Der fliegende Holländer and Musorgsky's Khovanshchina and Boris Godunov, as well as the first British staging of Zimmermann's Die Soldaten (1996). Repeat visits to London by the Kirov Opera under Gergiyev brought concert performances of works by Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich.
London, §VII: Musical life: since 1945
Between 1945 and the end of the 20th century, London’s concert life was transformed by a considerable expansion and diversification of repertory on one hand, and a progressive decline in concert attendance on the other. This evolution falls into three distinct phases. The first 15 years saw the determined resumption of pre-war patterns: performances of a narrowly-drawn orchestral repertory of canonical (or exemplary) and popular works, enhanced by the visits of major international musicians who were eager to resume their London appearances. In the second phase, initiated by the 1960 Henry Wood Promenade Concerts (the first season planned by William Glock, newly appointed as controller of music at the BBC), innovatory programming incorporated new repertory drawn from modernist and early music, complemented by the exploration of unfamiliar works by the central composers. In the third phase, from the 1980s, London’s culturally diverse population began to generate alternative experiences in the shape of world musics, ‘crossover’ and new age concerts, while improvements in the quality and available range of recorded music meant that people relied less and less on the concert as their main means of enjoying music and expanding their knowledge of it. Musical organizations attempted to counter declining interest through programming and marketing initiatives designed to make concerts more attractive and informal to new and younger audiences.
After the war London’s orchestras had to adjust to the return of players from the armed forces and to recruit new members. By 1949 there were three full-time concert orchestras – the LSO, the LPO and the BBC SO – and three giving occasional concerts: Walter Legge’s Philharmonia (primarily an EMI recording orchestra), Beecham’s RPO (initially making recordings and serving the Royal Philharmonic Society’s concerts), and the ad hoc New London Orchestra (centred on the New London Opera Company). In addition, a few chamber orchestras presented Baroque or Classical repertory (the former still very little played and usually in performances of symphonic dimensions) and occasionally new works; these groups included the Jacques, the Kalmar, the Boyd Neel, the Goldsbrough (now the English Chamber Orchestra) and the newly formed London Mozart Players.
Some cinemas also doubled as concert venues immediately after the war. The bombing of the Queen’s Hall in May 1941 had destroyed London’s most important orchestral and choral concert venue. The Promenade Concerts were switched to the Royal Albert Hall, where they remained through the rest of the century. The Central Hall in Westminster provided the main alternative venue until the building of the Royal Festival Hall (1951), which was a principal site for the Festival of Britain. It was initially unpopular because of its location (on the south bank of the Thames), its overall appearance and its dry acoustic.
Writing in 1949, Ralph Hill argued that an overprovision of concerts featuring the standard classics and popular repertory meant that the average audience attendance for each was low, and that except for the Promenade Concerts the BBC SO should restrict itself to specialist works beyond the financial scope of the commercial promoter. Hill also ascribed lower audiences to the high price of concert tickets for the younger and older age groups (the same groups that had been attracted by ENSA and CEMA’s concerts during the war) and to the difficulty for suburban travellers of attending the inconvenient Royal Albert Hall location at the later starting time of 8 p.m. instead of the 6 or 7 p.m. of wartime concerts. Orchestral programmes of the period were conservative, relying on frequent performances of core works. The most performed composers in the 1948–9 season were Beethoven (including 15 performances of the ‘Eroica’ Symphony), Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Elgar and Wagner; the menu of overture, solo concerto and symphony followed the pre-war pattern. Concerts in the 1950s virtually ignored the European and American avant garde and the work of the Viennese serial composers. (It is perhaps notable in this context that the rising generation of major British composers – Harrison Birtwistle, Peter Maxwell Davies and Alexander Goehr – and the new music enthusiasts John Ogden and Elgar Howarth chose to study in Manchester rather than London.)
Musical modernism had its first real outlet in London when William Glock joined the BBC as controller of music in 1959, with responsibility for the Promenade Concerts from 1960 to 1973. Glock took a radical and innovatory approach to programming and repertory, encouraged a new generation of British performers in early and contemporary music, raised standards in the BBC SO and recruited Pierre Boulez as its chief conductor in 1971. The effect was to revitalize London’s concerts, to bring the city’s experience of the avant garde into line with that of European and American centres of musical culture, and to open up new opportunities to young British composers.
Several Arts Council reports in the 1960s and 70s alleged orchestral overprovision in London, though it was not until the 1990s that the question was seriously addressed and note taken of the decline in audience numbers that had by then gone on for decades. For example, the optimistic tone of Lord Goodman’s Report of the Committee on the London Orchestras (1965) was in direct conflict with the decrease in audience size outlined in its statistical appendix. While Goodman acknowledged that ‘too many concerts are played to halls which are half empty or worse’, he was proud that London provided ‘music on a scale befitting a great metropolis’, and considered that the point at issue was ‘whether the potential demand [of audiences] is fully exploited’, rather than presenting concerts ‘in the right places and in the right way’. However, the inescapable conclusion of the report was that ‘present work available justifies the existence of rather more than three but less than four orchestras’.
The Royal Festival Hall (fig.44) became more central to London’s concert life and accepted as an international venue. In 1967 came the addition of the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Purcell Room to the South Bank site. As well as these and the Royal Albert Hall, concert venues in use in the 1960s included several cinemas, a variety of inner and outer London town halls and the Fairfield Hall in Croydon; open-air concerts were given at the Crystal Palace, at Kenwood House on Hampstead Heath and in other parks.
Only 20 years after the Goodman report, London’s concert life presented a very different face. The most exciting programmes were being given by new and revived chamber orchestras, specialist ensembles and choirs: the London Sinfonietta, the Nash Ensemble, the Fires of London and Lontano in 20th-century music; the Academy of Ancient Music, the English Concert, the Taverner Consort and Players, the London Baroque Orchestra, the Monteverdi Choir and the Tallis Scholars in historical performance and early music; the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields, the London Mozart Players, the City of London Sinfonia, the Orchestra of St John’s, Smith Square and the English Chamber Orchestra in the mainstream repertory. Out of 1244 works performed in London in the 1991–2 season, only half were composed before 1900, while about 100 were written after 1982. The disadvantage of this diversification was that it tended to polarize the audiences attracted to different types of event; another threat to audience size was posed by small independent record companies taking advantage of the new, cheaper digital technology to broaden and diversify their repertoire. The cost of tickets and travel provided mounting disincentives to concert attendance, as did certain concerns of urban life: location, parking and personal safety.
The interaction of these factors meant that by the late 1980s a high priority had to be given to marketing concerts in ways that would attract specifically targeted audiences. The abolition of the Greater London Council and the winding up of the London Orchestral Concerts Board in 1986 left a vacuum in the capital’s management structure. Greater London Arts (later the London Arts Board) was established, and the Arts Council also created an independent governing board with responsibility for artistic policy at the South Bank Centre as a whole. The centre, no longer simply a space for hire, became an integrated complex and the initiator in programming events and repertory around its resident orchestras and ensembles. This approach has been characteristic also of the Barbican Centre (opened 1982), which receives an annual subsidy from the City of London; both these venues have emphasized thematic programming of concerts and festivals, designed to link the work of the resident groups, a strategy that has helped to market the events and to generate audience interest. Major thematic festivals have included ‘Mahler, Vienna and the 20th century’ and ‘Tender is the North’ at the Barbican, and composer series at the South Bank. The significance of education for audience-building was boosted by the 1992 National Curriculum in music, with practical involvement in composition and performance replacing traditionally passive music appreciation. One technique has been to pair concerts and appropriate education projects, with children composing or improvising pieces under the influence of a programmed work, often supervised by orchestral players. Sometimes the results of these workshops were presented in conjunction with the concert performance.
In 1994 a Review of National Orchestral Provision was produced jointly by the BBC and the Arts Council, a conjunction that acknowledged the BBC’s status in concert life. The BBC’s role was now held to be not only the familiar one, ‘to foster the growth of the art form’, but also ‘to keep the widest possible repertory of great music in performance’. While the review stated that ‘orchestral music continues to dominate concert-giving in this country and draws larger audiences than any other [single] area of classical music’, London’s own musical diversification has made concert life there less reliant on symphony orchestra provision than any other city in Britain, and the question is less of provision and more of attendance. The fact that the growth in the Proms’ audience during the 1980s and 90s was matched by decline at the Royal Festival Hall points to the special attraction of the Proms series (including its programming of new or unfamiliar works) and the significance of an identifiable profile for successful concert marketing. The location of the Barbican in the City of London confirmed the postwar shift in London’s musical axis away from the surrounds of Oxford Circus, with only the Wigmore Hall and the BBC’s Broadcasting House concert hall remaining in an area that had previously dominated the city’s musical life since the 18th century. The Wigmore Hall, the traditional venue of solo and chamber music recitals, has experienced a revival because of its carefully themed concerts and choice of artists. It was managed by Westminster Council until it closed for refurbishment in the 1991–2 season and is now a trust. Meanwhile, individual promoters including Victor Hochhauser and Raymond Gubbay have met the niche market demand for ‘spectacular’ performances of such popular orchestral classics as Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture, many at the Albert Hall. Outdoor concerts, for example at Kenwood House, continue to attract strong support.
It has become clear that the single core audience for art music concerts which survived into the postwar years had ceased to exist by the century’s end; it has been replaced by a variety of smaller audiences with more focussed areas of musical interest which may nonetheless sometimes converge, as for events featuring famous performers. It is probably the cheapness, convenience and variety of recorded and broadcast music that presents the biggest threat to the health of London’s concert life; more pervasively than ever before, music faces questions about the relevance of live concert performance to its essence as an art form.
London, §VII: Musical life: since 1945
The contemporary (or ‘new’) music spectrum in London in the late 20th century reflected in full the fragmentary nature of composition of the period, with its bewildering abundance and frequent interaction of written and improvised styles. While the contemporary mainstream has been able to define and develop itself largely within the existing concert and funding structures of musical life, other types of contemporary music such as experimental music, electro-acoustic and some ‘crossover’ or ‘fusion’ styles have tended to assert themselves outside these frameworks, showing their musical and sometimes political independence.
London concerts did not sustain ventures into the modernist and avant-garde music of Europe and North America until the 1960 Promenade Concert season, the first planned by William Glock (see §3 above). This contact was to change London's musical life in several important respects. First, it turned London from a provincial to an international centre of contemporary music. Secondly, the performance demands and different musical attitudes of the new music repertory generated a number of specialist ensembles, while injecting a fresh set of challenges for established orchestras. Third, it changed and revitalized the repertory given at London concerts. Fourth, interest in contemporary music was a prime mover in the rise in the number and quality of London's music festivals. All these factors established London as a productive centre for freelance composers. This helps to account for the fact that in London most contemporary music of the more traditional British kind was from the 1960s eclipsed under the welter of new musical influences, except for such specialist consumers as the Anglican Church.
Another factor that fuelled the work of both composers and performers was the strength of the patronage system for new music in London. This functioned not only at the institutional level (the BBC) and that of national subsidy for the arts (the Arts Council), but also among private individuals, trusts and commercial sponsors. The BBC played the single most crucial role in the dissemination of new music in London by means of its live concerts, as well as through a broadcasting schedule that allowed its audiences to catch up with not only the modernist repertory but also its polemics. The BBC implemented a commissioning policy that was intended to bring forward talented young composers, and employed some of them as producers. The shift in mainstream contemporary musical culture away from exclusively modernist preoccupations has meant that no controller of the BBC after Glock has been able, nor perhaps has needed, to take such a strong initiative over repertory. Contemporary music in London receives practical support from a wide range of musical and educational charitable trusts, festivals and concert series and musical organizations such as the London-based British Music Information Centre (a library resource and listening centre founded in 1967) and the Society for the Promotion of New Music. The latter runs a sophisticated information network, arranging concerts of works by emerging composers and educational projects. Festival and concert series such as those held at the Almeida Theatre offer a platform to composers and performers and act as a focus for the sponsorship that the festival culture encourages. Major concert series have included the Macnaghten Concerts (refounded in 1950), the Park Lane series (1956), which offers opportunities to young professionals, and the Redcliffe Concerts of British Music (1964). The 1980s also saw a rise in the number of composition options available on courses offered by universities and conservatories in London.
From the 1960s on, a number of ensembles were formed that specialized in the performance of contemporary music. Each of these groups established its own repertory, its own pool of specialist players (many of whom transmitted their skills through conservatory teaching) and its own audiences. The instrumental groups giving concerts of contemporary music in 1988 included the Fires of London, the London Sinfonietta, the Arditti Quartet, the Nash Ensemble, the Endymion Ensemble, Exposé, Gemini, the Grosvenor Group, Lontano, Metanoia, Music Projects/London and the Parke Ensemble. Important vocal groups were Electric Phoenix, Singcircle, London Sinfonietta Voices and the New London Chamber Choir. Some of these ensembles, such as the London Sinfonietta (1968), the Fires of London (1967, which ended under that name in 1987) and the Nash Ensemble (1964), achieved a particular stability in their different musical areas and so generated a significant corpus of late 20th-century concert works, with all the benefits to composers that this implies. The scoring of the Fires of London (which began as the Pierrot Players) was based on the instrumental ensemble of Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire, plus a percussionist. The Nash Ensemble is a classically based chamber group with a commitment to new music. By 1993 the London Sinfonietta had given 216 world premières (including 98 commissioned works) and made 100 recordings. Its defining sound, characterizing much of its repertory, comes from a chamber orchestra formation of 14 players (with single strings) inspired by Schoenberg's First Chamber Symphony. The changes in concert life since the 1960s, together with current commissioning practice, have ended the traditional, concert-based process of repertory assimilation; contemporary works now tend to be established by means of recordings and broadcasts rather than repeated concert programming. Commissions usually provide for a first performance, and programmes often use premières to attract an audience, but, except for established composers, subsequent performances are usually difficult to secure.
Non-traditional concert venues came to be seen as stylistically more appropriate surroundings to hear new repertory. These have ranged from the expanse of Camden's Round House (an informal space, formerly a turning-shed for railway engines), the Conway Hall in Holborn and the Horticultural Halls in Westminster, to the bare-bricked intimacy of the Almeida Theatre in Islington. The Queen Elizabeth Hall in the South Bank complex offers a compromise in the form of a building that is modern in spirit, with a medium-sized, informal auditorium and an adaptable stage area. The flexibility of a venue is an important consideration both because of the importance of music theatre in post-1945 composition (see also §2 above) and because of the unique formations of instrumental forces which characterize many concert pieces.
The fragmentation of London concert audiences during the second half of the 20th century, which had an adverse effect on some aspects of London's concert life (see §3 above), worked to advantage in the area of contemporary music, where committed audiences were built up through astute thematic programming (designed to provide the listener with a sense of artistic context) sometimes combined with ‘meet the composer’ events, workshops and talks, all of which also developed a communal sense of musical interests. The compositional shift that has moved much contemporary music away form the avant-garde ground it occupied during the 1960s, towards the more listener- and performer-friendly idioms of the 1990s’ postmodernism, has fuelled an enthusiasm for high-profile contemporary premières that recalls the attraction that new works had for an 18th-century audience in the same city.
London, §VII: Musical life: since 1945
Even before 1945 early music, especially that of the Renaissance, had been a significant element in London's musical life. From the 1880s onwards Latin polyphony formed part of the Bach Choir's repertory, and the following decade saw Arnold Dolmetsch's first London concerts using old instruments. R.R. Terry's pioneering work at Westminster Cathedral before and during World War I brought much continental and English polyphony, including the masses of John Taverner, back into use, and at the same time the English madrigal repertory was being explored by groups such as Charles Kennedy Scott's Oriana Madrigal Society. The early 1920s experienced a short-lived but intensive wave of enthusiasm for 16th-century English music, commonly referred to as ‘Elizabethan Fever’, whose manifestations included widespread celebrations of the Byrd, Weelkes and Gibbons tercentenaries, an attempt to establish an Elizabethan Competitive Festival in London, the first notable early music recordings (of madrigals performed by the English Singers, who were the first professional vocal consort in Britain to specialize to some extent in this repertory), the first early music broadcasts and the foundation of the Haslemere Festival in 1925, as well as much scholarly activity.
For the first few years after 1945 live performances were less important to the development of an audience for early music than broadcasting. From its inauguration in 1946 the BBC Third Programme included much early music in its programmes, beginning with the monumental History in Sound of European Music, and continuing with many short series devoted to particular types of music, and exploring the then little-known medieval period as well as the relatively familiar 16th century. At the same time the widening of the recorded repertory that resulted from the development of the LP record led to a large number of early music recordings by groups such as the Deller Consort. There were a few professional lutenists and viol players, but many performances and recordings perforce used modern string and wind instruments.
In the later 1950s and early 1960s the growing popularity of Monteverdi's Vespers and events such as performances of The Play of Daniel and visits from distinguished foreign ensembles, including Noah Greenberg's New York Pro Musica, represented the first steps in the large-scale revival of interest in early music which began in earnest a few years later. For the first time reproductions of medieval and Renaissance instruments other than viols were being made and coming into professional use; it was a common criticism of many concert programmes and recordings in the later 1960s that the emphasis was more on exploiting the new instrumental sounds, especially those of the more exciting wind instruments, than on the quality of the music. Two of the most important ensembles that rose to prominence at that time were Musica Reservata and the Early Music Consort of London, whose director David Munrow did much not only to popularize early music but also to raise the technical standard of early instrument performance, as well as leading the move away from programmes based on dances and other short pieces to ones including a proportion of larger-scale works of greater musical significance. One of the most important ensembles was the Consort of Musicke, directed by Anthony Rooley, which specialized in a systematic exploration of the Italian madrigal repertory. Rooley was also a strong influence on the more general development of interest in early music, founding an Early Music Centre in London and encouraging the spread of amateur as well as professional activity; such was the growth of enthusiasm that in 1973 it was possible for Oxford University Press to found a specialist quarterly journal, Early Music.
During the last quarter of the 20th century the practice of using period instruments and performing styles was increasingly applied to later music, initially that of the later 17th and 18th centuries, as performed by such groups as the Academy of Ancient Music, founded by Christopher Hogwood, and the English Concert, directed by Trevor Pinnock, but more recently to much 19th-century music as well. The Tallis Scholars, directed by Peter Phillips, are one of the principal vocal ensembles to specialize in Renaissance polyphony, while the Gabrieli Consort, directed by Paul McCreesh, and The Sixteen, directed by Harry Christophers, are among the ensembles whose activities cover both Renaissance and later music, but there are many groups of all kinds performing and recording regularly.
London, §VII: Musical life: since 1945
(i) Theatres and associated genres.
(iii) International significance.
London, §VII, 6: Musical life: since 1945: Popular music theatre
As an international centre for popular musical theatre, London's identity in the first half of the 20th century combined elements that clearly reflected its position both geographically and culturally between Europe and the USA. Since 1945 the West End–Broadway axis has come to dominate the focus of attention, although European links have remained despite the huge decline in operetta performance. This emphasis is shown in the changing repertory of those main theatres most closely and continually associated with the genre, including the Theatre Royal (Drury Lane), His (later Her) Majesty's, the Palace, the Prince of Wales and the Adelphi. Drury Lane, for example, is typical in its swings between American and British shows and in its trend towards ever longer runs. In the 1930s and 40s it was occupied by the musical romances of Ivor Novello, and during the war acted as the headquarters for ENSA; it opened after the war with the much heralded but ultimately disastrous Pacific 1860 by Noël Coward. This was followed by a series of American shows that began with Oklahoma! (1947) and continued through the 1950s with The King and I, and through the 1960s with Camelot, Hello Dolly and Mame. In the 1970s a revival of The Great Waltz achieved success with its European flavour and the following new English musical Billy Liar gave a further British presence until the long occupation of David Merrick's Broadway stage version of 42nd Street (1984–9), the classic American backstage story. From 1989 Drury Lane presented Miss Saigon, a show by the French writers Bloublil and Schönberg, produced by the British company of Cameron Mackintosh, and which closed ten years later.
Other West End theatres have had important but occasional associations with popular musical theatre. The Prince Edward had originally been opened in 1930 to house large musical shows and subsequently was renamed the London Casino (1936), but by 1954 its large scale made it ideal for conversion to a Cinerama screen; it was re-established as a theatre under its original name in 1974, subsequently staging the first productions of Evita (1978–86), Chess (1986–9) and Martin Guerre (1996–8), along with the Broadway production of Crazy for You (1993–6) and Hal Prince's production of Showboat (1998). The Coliseum was the venue for the first London productions of Annie Get Your Gun (1947) and Kiss Me, Kate (1951), shows which, along with Oklahoma!, are significant in the postwar establishment of the sense of an ‘American invasion’ of West End musical theatre. Kiss Me, Kate was presented again at the Coliseum by the ENO in 1971, one of the isolated cases of a musical being absorbed by the opera house in London. Sadler's Wells saw the first major London production not by the D'Oyly Carte Company of a Gilbert and Sullivan work in Iolanthe (1962) and was home to several operetta revivals in repertory in the early 1970s. Gilbert and Sullivan has been a continually present if increasingly less consistent force through the various incarnations of the D'Oyly Carte Company (at the Savoy, Sadler's Wells, Prince's and Queen's theatres, among others), the ENO's Patience (1969), The Mikado (1986) and Princess Ida (1992), and occasional independent productions.
Although variety as a genre had effectively ended throughout most of the country by the late 1950s, personality-led variety maintained a longer presence in the capital, particularly at the Palladium and the Prince of Wales. Increasingly these limited runs were confined to single performances in concert format at venues such as the Royal Festival Hall and the Royal Albert Hall. The role of the television entertainer or pop star in the West End has become one of appearances in such musicals as Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat and Grease, mutually beneficial to both the commercial success of the show and the public profile of the personality, and seldom requiring the suppression of the star's known public persona to dramatic requirements. The number of such popular personalities who have convincingly taken to West End theatrical roles is limited, and includes Tommy Steele (Half a Sixpence and Singin' in the Rain), Petula Clark (The Sound of Music and Sunset Boulevard) and Brian Conley (Jolson).
The role of intimate revue, prominent as sophisticated entertainment in the 1940s and 50s was finished as a mainstream theatrical force by the 60s, mostly through the greater ability of television satire to respond more quickly to current events. In its final few successful years it provided memorable platforms for performers such as Hermione Gingold, and was particularly associated with the Lyric Hammersmith and the Ambassadors theatres. While musical satire still appears occasionally in fringe shows, its West End appearances have been through limited concert-style engagements of specific groups whose audiences have been gained through radio and television. The Mermaid Theatre in the City of London, opened in 1959 with Laurie Johnson and Lionel Bart's musical Lock Up Your Daughters but only intermittently active in the last part of the 20th century, became particularly associated with compilation revues after its Cowardy Custard (after Noël Coward, 1973), which became a great Broadway success under the title Oh! Coward. It was followed by Cole (after Cole Porter, 1974) and Side by Side by Sondheim (1977), another Broadway success.
With the desire for spectacle at the heart of much musical theatre, there has been a premium on the occupancy of those few venues that could cope with large-scale effects. In particular, the expansion in the late 1970s and 80s through renewed interest in the form of the musical and the advanced technologies employed for its presentation (for example with Time, 1986) threw this into relief. The practical considerations that made Drury Lane appropriate to stage an earthquake or the sinking of an ocean liner for Ivor Novello in the 1930s were equally applicable to that theatre's choice for Miss Saigon in the 1980s. As the larger theatres increasingly became occupied with long runs (latterly of ‘mega-musicals’ which are resident for more than a decade), and the production costs rose to levels only within the management of the large-scale organizations, other venues began to present musical shows on a smaller scale, often of newer works that were denied access to the West End. Of these the Donmar Warehouse, a former venue for tours and the Royal Shakespeare Company, established a reputation after its 1992 reopening for introducing more chamber-style works such as Sondheim's Assassins (1992) and Yeston's Nine (1996). Also in the 1990s the fringe theatre the Bridewell – a modern conversion of an industrial space, like the Donmar Warehouse – has taken on a role of presenting new productions and revivals of lesser-known works, while many other small fringe theatres have hosted intimate musicals requiring only a few performers.
London, §VII, 6: Musical life: since 1945: Popular music theatre
The immediate aftermath of World War II was significant in establishing an approach towards the role and status of West End musical theatre that still persists. There was already a strong audience base created by the wartime demand for escapist entertainment, although productions were often hampered by wartime strictures. When Oklahoma! arrived from Broadway in 1947 it was the first American production in the West End for seven years and its advance publicity and musical familiarity contributed to its great success. Alongside the arrival of Annie Get Your Gun within months of Oklahoma!, the profile of American shows was high, offering something positive and escapist in the face of a Britain of shortages and rationing; they also presented youthful energy, something inevitably absent from much wartime theatrical casting. West End producers exploited this enthusiasm for American shows both through productions from Broadway and through home-grown shows which played to elements of what was perceived as an American style of musical theatre presentation and construction, as with John Toré's Golden City (Adelphi, 1950) – a South African Oklahoma! – or Ivor Novello's last stage work, Gay's the Word (Saville, 1951–2), which took the stylistic debate between American and British musical theatre as its subject.
There has always been a symbiotic relationship between the repertory and fringe theatres and the West End, one in which new performers and new shows under development can be presented to agents and producers for potential West End exposure, while the gradual release of familiar West End successes to regional and fringe theatres maintains a living repertory and renews interest in the form. Sandy Wilson's The Boy Friend (Wyndham's, 1954–9) was developed from a single-act entertainment from the Players' Theatre, while Salad Days (Vaudeville, 1954–60) was written by Julian Slade as an ‘end of term romp’ for the repertory company of the Bristol Old Vic. Neither was conceived as a West End vehicle, yet both transferred there in 1954 to achieve runs of over 2000 performances, providing a temporary diversion from the American-dominated view of the West End. Another source of innovation came from outside the West End, at London's Stratford East, where Joan Littlewood's experimental company was developing a theatre based on more recognizable everyday life, rather than the removed fantasies of a theatre essentially for an educated middle class. Their surprise success, Fings Ain't Wot They Used t' Be (1959), with music by Lionel Bart, incorporated slang and an unromanticized East End setting; it became a huge hit, also marking a contemporary move in theatre in general towards the presentation of greater realism. Mostly, however, there has been a limited role for London in receiving transfers of productions from regional theatres.
The focus of the theatrical producer has shifted substantially as economic demands have escalated. Whereas C.B. Cochran was able to cultivate the creative relationship of Vivian Ellis and A.P. Herbert through their three shows Big Ben (1946), Bless the Bride (1947) and Tough at the Top (1949), increasingly the tendency has been to find immediate and proven successes that minimize the risk of financial loss. This has led to an increasing number of revivals of the most familiar parts of the canon: the 1937 show Me and My Girl in a revised form achieved long West End and Broadway runs in the 1980s and West Side Story is a West End perennial. Also, the repackaging of familiar material has become common, as with the revue-style shows based round the output of a single composer; examples include the Mermaid Theatre shows of the 1970s and the use of songs by Louis Jordan in Five Guys Named Moe (Lyric, 1990) and by Leiber and Stoller in Smokey Joe's Café (Prince of Wales, 1997). The length of runs has also extended, increasing the potential of return to investors; whereas C.B. Cochran closed Bless the Bride (Adelphi, 1947–9) when still playing to capacity in order to try a new show, by the 1990s several mega-musicals had achieved the status of tourist landmarks and with a corresponding emphasis on merchandizing. Consequently, they seem assured of even longer runs; these include Cats (New London, 1981), Les Misérables (Palace, 1985) and Phantom of the Opera (Her Majesty's, 1986), all still running in 2000. The hold of a limited group of production companies behind such ventures has been further emphasized with the subsidies to the Royal National Theatre for the staging of selected musicals from Cameron Macintosh, the production company for Miss Saigon and Phantom of the Opera in London and around the world. Although the resultant stagings have been much acclaimed, the exclusive American bias has led to a debate about the role of the National Theatre programming in balancing the presentation of world theatre and works of British origin.
Although such a bias corresponds to that of much of the postwar commentary on London's musical theatre, the supposed domination of the West End by Broadway since Oklahoma! in 1947 is by no means so clear-cut. The postwar ‘American invasion’ was more a point of view than a tangible reality: those few American shows that did achieve long runs were for the most part outperformed by contemporary British shows: Carousel at Drury Lane (1950–51) was significantly outrun by its contemporary but now forgotten Blue for a Boy at His Majesty's (1950–52). However, the self-fulfilling prophecy resulted in a crisis of confidence, one which was not to dissipate until the start of the Lloyd Webber-Rice canon in the late 1970s. This attitude has also shown how London musical theatre has frequently aspired to the merits of Broadway, but underplayed both its own different demands and the sheer range and number of its own productions.
London, §VII, 6: Musical life: since 1945: Popular music theatre
Several shows from 1945 onwards have gained success on Broadway and in film from the West End, such as Bart's Oliver! (New Theatre, 1960) and Heneker's Half a Sixpence (Cambridge, 1963). The Rocky Horror Show, which began in the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs (1973), transferred to several other theatres before reaching the Comedy Theatre (1979), and subsequently became an international cult hit through the film (1975). From 1935 to 1951 Ivor Novello was hugely successful, writing and composing to please the West End public through catchy melody and dramatic staging, and his name was sufficient to ensure high advance sales and long runs; his two large shows, King's Rhapsody and Gay's the Word, ran simultaneously in the West End in 1951. His mixture of artistic creativity and production control was potent and has parallels with Andrew Lloyd Webber, (see Lloyd weber, (2)), the instigator of many of the dominant musicals in the West End in the 1980s and 90s. Lloyd Webber has equally captured a public imagination and had even more shows running at the same time in the West End, but has also found global success commensurate with the increased cultural dissemination. With the international roles of the Really Useful Company of Andrew Lloyd Webber (whose shares were floated on the stock market for four years) and Cameron Mackintosh, productions that originated in London have been reproduced exactly in leading cities around the world, and the role of London as an originator and disseminator of musical theatre has never been as strong as at the end of the 20th century.
This influence is, however, severely restricted by the interests of these few production companies and the limited number of shows they represent. For example, Mackintosh's production of Miss Saigon opened at Drury Lane in 1989 and by 1999 had been seen in some 60 cities, including Toronto (1993–5), Budapest (1994 and 1995), Los Angeles (1995), Vancouver and Copenhagen (1996), and Melbourne (1999). The works of Lloyd Webber in particular have met with large continental success, where Hamburg has hosted long-running licensed productions of Phantom of the Opera and Cats, and new or newly adapted theatres dedicated to his works have been opened in Bochum (for Starlight Express), Basle (Phantom of the Opera) and Wiesbaden (Sunset Boulevard). Invariably, this move towards the pre-packaged musical has lead to a decline in the significance of the individual performer in already established shows and acted as a brake on the further evolution of the form of the musical through the reduced turnover of different shows and productions. The London theatres traditionally associated with the musical are now seldom free for new productions: at the start of 1999 runs of over a decade were occupying Drury Lane (Miss Saigon), the Palace (Les Misérables), the New London (Cats), the Victoria Apollo (Starlight Express) and Her Majesty's (Phantom of the Opera).
While many fundamental ideas on the role of popular musical theatre have remained much as they were at the time of their Gaiety Theatre inception in the late 1890s and 1900s, the scale of their financial significance has grown enormously. The large part that tourism plays in the financing of London has made that city's theatre in general and musicals in particular of worldwide commercial interest; coach parties of British and foreign tourists account for much of the ticket sales, and musicals are routinely included with holiday packages. The control of most of the main theatres through a limited number of companies, particularly those of Stoll Moss and the Really Useful Company, has lead to a scale of coordinated promotion not previously seen in the capital. Although such large company interests are sometimes in opposition to an art form that relies on individual creativity, by the end of the 20th century the number of productions and their public popularity had never been as strong.
For further information on institutions and venues, see Grove6
London, §VII: Musical life: since 1945
Political and Economic Planning: The Arts Enquiry Music: a Report on Musical Life in England Sponsored by the Dartington Hall Trustees (London, 1949)
R. Hill: ‘Through the Looking Glass’, Music 1950, ed. R. Hill (Harmondsworth, 1950), 7–23
J.E. Potts: ‘Analysis of 1948–9 Orchestral Programmes’, Music 1950, ed. R. Hill (Harmondsworth, 1950), 49–60
Opera (1950–)
S. Hughes: Glyndebourne: a History of the Festival Opera (London, 1965, 2/1981)
H. Rosenthal: Opera at Covent Garden: a Short History (London, 1967)
R. Jarman: A History of Sadler's Wells Opera (London, 1974)
M. Haltrecht: The Quiet Showman: Sir David Webster and the Royal Opera House (London, 1975)
D. Arundell: The Critic at the Opera: Contemporary Comments on Opera in London over Three Centuries (New York, 1980)
N. Goodwin, ed.: The Royal Opera 1980–81 (London, 1980)
Royal Opera House Retrospective 1732–1982 (London, 1982)
A.J. Saint and others: A History of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, 1732–1982 (London, 1982)
E.W. White: A History of English Opera (London, 1983)
E.W. White: A Register of First Performances of English Operas and Semi-Operas from the 16th Century to 1980 (London, 1983)
C. Priestley: Financial Scrutiny of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden Ltd: Report to the Earl of Gowrie, Minister for the Arts (London, 1984)
H. Rosenthal: ‘Oper und Musik an Covent Garden’, Oper Heute, ix (1986), 113–29
F. Donaldson: The Royal Opera House in the Twentieth Century (London, 1988)
T. Sutcliffe: ‘London Under Siege: in the Face of Public Outcry and Government Scrutiny, the City's Two Major Opera Companies Struggle to Preserve their Identities’, ON, lxii (1997–8), 10–17
C. Williams-Ellis: The Royal Festival Hall (London, 1951)
A Policy for the Arts: the First Steps, Cmnd 2601 (London, 1965)
Lord A. Goodman: Committee on the London Orchestras (London, 1965)
The Arts Council of Great Britain: Annual Report: ‘A New Charter’ (London, 1967)
F. Hawkins: The Story of Two Thousand Concerts (London, c1969)
A. Peacock: A Report on Orchestral Resources in Great Britain (London, 1970)
W. Kellaway: London Philharmonic (London, 1972)
A. Orga: The Proms (London, 1974)
M. Pearton: The LSO at 70 (London, 1974)
Lord J. Redcliffe-Maud: Support for the Arts in England and Wales (London, 1976)
D. Cox: The Henry Wood Proms (London, 1980)
R. Simpson: The Proms and Natural Justice: a Plan for Renewal (London, 1981)
M. Nissel, ed.: Facts about the Arts: a Summary of Available Statistics, no.615 [Policy Studies Institute] (London, 1983)
The Arts Council of Great Britain: The Glory of the Garden: The Development of the Arts in Great Britain (London, 1985)
C. Ehrlich: The Music Profession in Britain since the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1985)
B. Barrell: ‘Concert Analysis: Orchestral Concerts 1984–85’, Composer, no.89 (1986), 1–5
J. Myerscough: Facts about the Arts 2, no.656 [Policy Studies Institute, London] (1986)
F. Routh: ‘The Future of London Orchestral Concerts’, Composer, no.89 (1986), 6–8
R. Shaw: The Arts and the People (London, 1987)
R. and G. Shaw: ‘The Cultural and Social Setting’, The Cambridge Guide to the Arts in Great Britain Vol.9: Since the Second World War, ed. B. Ford (Cambridge, 1988), 3–44
C. Ehrlich: Harmonious Alliance: a History of the Performing Right Society (Oxford, 1989)
W. Glock: Notes in Advance (Oxford, 1991)
L. Hoffman: The Advisory Committee on the London Orchestras (London, 1993)
A. Peacock: Paying the Piper: Culture, Music and Money (Edinburgh, 1993)
BBC/Arts Council Review of National Orchestral Provision (London, 1994)
M. Chanan: Musica Practica: the Social Practice of Western Music from Gregorian Chant to Postmodernism (London, 1994)
R. Porter: London: a Social History (London, 1994)
J. Winterson: ‘An Evaluation of the Effects of London Sinfonietta Projects on their Participants’, British Journal of Music Education, xi (1994), 129–41
M. Chanan: Repeated Takes: a Short History of Recording and its Effects on Music (London, 1995)
C. Ehrlich: First Philharmonic: a History of the Royal Philharmonic Society (Oxford, 1995)
C. Ehrlich: ‘The Market Place’, The Blackwell History of Music in Britain, vi: The Twentieth Century (Oxford, 1995)
R. Hewison: Culture and Consensus: England, Art and Politics since 1940 (London, 1995)
J. Ritterman: Report of the Consultation (London, 1995) [BBC/ACE National Review of Orchestral Provision, 1994]
The Arts Council of England: Annual Report, 1995/96 (London, 1996)
H. Carpenter: The Envy of the World: Fifty Years of the BBC Third Programme and Radio 3 (London, 1996)
I. Marwick: The Penguin Social History of Britain: British Society since 1945 (Harmondsworth, 1982, 3/1996)
Association for British Sponsorship of the Arts: A Survey of Arts Sponsorship in the UK (London, 1990–96)
Association for British Sponsorship of the Arts: Annual Report, 1995/96 (London, 1996)
Until the Royal Academy of Music was founded in 1822 London, like most European capitals, had no specific institution for the professional training of musicians. For most of those who intended to make music their career, the medieval system of apprenticed or articled pupils still took the place of a central institution; in the case of organ pupils trained in a cathedral loft the system survived until the mid-20th century. The first general training-ground for musicians over the centuries was often provided by membership of a cathedral choir; many former choristers of St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey made music their profession. Above all, the Chapel Royal (see §II, 1, above), which had the power to impress talented boys as choristers, attracted gifted youngsters who received sound musical training and were encouraged to compose. During the 18th and 19th centuries, it became increasingly common to look on musical skill as exotic; when the RAM was eventually founded, most of the first professors were foreigners.
1. The Gresham Chair of Music.
London, §VIII: Educational institutions
The seven Gresham professorships (in divinity, law, rhetoric, music, physics, geometry and astronomy) were established in the City of London in 1596 to provide free adult education under the will of Sir Thomas Gresham (1518–79): the holders were required to lecture twice weekly, free of charge, in Latin for the benefit of foreigners and in English for citizens. John Bull was the first professor of music; having no Latin, he was permitted to lecture in English only. Another distinguished early professor was William Petty. Not until the appointment of Edward Taylor in 1837 were the Gresham music lectures again delivered with real competence; the use of Latin and the twice-weekly lectures had by then been abandoned, and lectures were only occasional. More recent professors have included Frederick Bridge, Walford Davies, Antony Hopkins, Iannis Xenakis and John Dankworth. In 1985 an eighth chair, in commerce, was instituted.
One reason for the failure to appoint musicians to the Gresham Chair during the 17th and 18th centuries lay in the lack of general education the articled pupil system imposed. Many able practical musicians lacked any wider culture until the last quarter of the 19th century. Indeed, the first proposal to introduce degrees in music at the University of London in 1865 failed because leading musicians protested that it was unreasonable to insist on the matriculation of music candidates.
London, §VIII: Educational institutions
The University of London, founded in 1837, did not confer degrees in music for its first 40 years. In 1876 the senate, on receiving a memorial from the council of Trinity College, agreed to institute the degrees of Bachelor and Doctor of Music. The first examinations were in 1877. The university nevertheless had no music faculty and no professorship until Frederick Bridge was appointed to the new King Edward VII Professorship in 1903 (Trinity College brought about this development by giving £5000 to found the chair). The preparation of candidates for examination, however, formed no part of the professor’s duties. Up to 1964 the only internal candidates for the BMus degree were students in the colleges of music (the RAM, RCM and Trinity College), Goldsmiths College (at that time an independent college of the university with a music department preparing students for the BMus degree and education diplomas in music), and other institutions where there were teachers recognized by the university. External candidates prepared in other institutions or by private tuition were also admitted to the examinations. No facilities for the study of music existed within the university until an active teaching department of music was established at King’s College under Professor Thurston Dart in 1964. King’s College subsequently established two further professorships, one in 1992 in performance studies, later named after Thurston Dart, the second in 1994 in composition, named after Henry Purcell.
The taught degrees at the three colleges (King’s, Royal Holloway and Goldsmiths) formerly conformed to a common syllabus and examinations but, since the mid-1980s, the undergraduate and, more recently, the postgraduate courses have been gradually devolved to the separate colleges which are in effect independent. Their degree programmes tend to be broadly based, covering a wide range of historical, technical and creative aspects of musical studies, offering opportunities for specialization at the higher levels. The university’s distinguished School of Oriental and African Studies offers specializations in non-Western music.
By 1988 King’s College had become an international community, each year attracting 35 undergraduates, over 20 masters students and about six research students working at doctoral level. A large lecturing staff supported by a team of assistant teachers not only covers all the periods of musical history, composition and analysis but also the requisite ancillary skills.
Music has played a prominent role in the life of Royal Holloway College (now Royal Holloway and Bedford New College) since its foundation as a university college for women in 1886; Emily Daymond, a pupil of Parry and the first woman DMus in the country, was the first director of music. Although practical music, and later history and theory, was taught as part of the general curriculum, a department of music was established only in 1969–70 under Ian Spink. In 1999 it had 12 academic staff plus postdoctoral research fellows covering music history, analysis, performance, composition and ethnomusicology. The annual intake includes some 50 undergraduates pursuing the BMus and BA degrees, and 20 postgraduates (MMus, MPhil, PhD). The department has taken the lead in developing teaching and research collaborations with partner institutions in the European Union and in Central and Eastern Europe.
In 1988 Goldsmiths College became a School of the University of London and assumed the same status as King’s and Royal Holloway, offering the same range of degree courses. The college has a strong commitment to composition, performance (including jazz and experimental work) and ethnomusicology. It has developed a particular ethos for musical activities across a wide variety of idioms and genres and in creative and performing arts. This work is enhanced by its Centre for Russian Studies and the Stanley Glasser Electronic Music Studio. The College has close links with the community in south-east London, and through its department of professional and community education runs an extensive range of part-time courses.
The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) is the leading centre in Europe for the study of Asia and Africa. Of a student body of some 3000 about 80 take courses in music, taught by seven academic staff and a variable number of performance teachers. The department of music offers a unique musical education through ethnomusicology and regional music studies.
Music has been a subject of research and teaching at SOAS since 1949 when a lectureship was created in Indian music. Since then the musics of Africa, the Islamic Middle East, South-east Asia and East Asia, the study of ethnomusicology as a discipline, and interests in Chinese and Jewish musics have been developed. In 1979 a centre of music studies was created and this became the department of music in 1998. Degrees offered in 1999 included a joint honours and a single honours BA, an MMus in ethnomusicology, and MPhil/PhD by research.
Other musical activities include concerts of Asian and African music, seminars, academic conferences and summer schools. The department enjoys a reciprocal teaching relationship with King’s College and an academic exchange agreement with the department of music, Kathmandu University.
The University of Surrey, developed from Battersea Polytechnic in 1966, is located in Guildford. The music department was formally established in 1970 when the first professor was appointed. It offers bachelor and higher degrees and is especially noted for its unique and well-established BMus Tonmeister course in the theory and practice of sound recording. This four-year course allows students to spend their third year working in the appropriate industries. The department has about 50 undergraduate students and a number of research students in musicology and composition.
City University is situated in London, between the centre of Islington to the north and the Barbican Centre to the south. There are 150 students in the music department comprising 80 BMus/BSc students and 70 full- and part-time postgraduates pursuing MA courses in ethnomusicology, composition, electro-acoustic composition, musicology and music performance studies; MSc/postgraduate diploma in music information technology, and research courses (MPhil/PhD and master/doctor of musical arts). There are eight full-time academic members of staff, one research fellow in music therapy, and specialist visiting lecturers in sound recording, composition, Indonesian music and African music. All individual performance tuition is provided by professors at the GSMD.
The research interests of the academic staff are reflected in the courses offered. The BMus/BSc honours degree in music is concerned with music in today’s multicultural and technological society. It adopts a global and interdisciplinary approach to music, and includes the study of the traditional and popular musics of the world as well as classical traditions other than the Western. The department houses a wide range of ethnic instruments including three Indonesian gamelans from Bali, central Java and Sunda. It offers exciting new perspectives of the world of sound, interpreting music in its widest sense as part of our general environment.
Kingston University was developed from the former polytechnic and prior to that, Gipsy Hill College. The school of music offers the full range of bachelor and masters courses as well as supervision for research degrees. In addition, there is a secondary PGCE course, an MA in composition for film and television, and an undergraduate course taught in collaboration with the University of Hong Kong. The university also offers foundation and access courses for nearby colleges of higher education at Richmond and Merton respectively. Full-time student numbers in 1999 stood at 250, including 22 pursuing research. The school’s research work focusses on world music, particularly Chinese music, music and mathematics, music technology, music education, performance and composition. The school is housed in four buildings on one site including a purpose-built professionally designed rehearsal hall/recording studio which has been used by EMI and the BBC.
Founded in 1887, the London College of Music has metamorphosed from an autonomous institution based in Great Marlborough Street to become part of what is now the Thames Valley University based in Ealing, west London. It has built on its original mission as a conservatory providing practical and theoretical studies in music. In 1997 it expanded to become the London College of Music and Media (LCM2) with its unique blend of music, media arts and creative technologies.
The merger between the London College of Music and the music department at Ealing College in 1991 saw the beginning of a new period of collaboration. The cultural enrichment from Ealing College with a new base in Ealing Film Studios offered opportunities for launching new courses to provide students with appropriate skills for the 21st century. A million-pound grant in 1997 enabled LCM2 to equip itself with the latest technology, mirroring its strong focus on contemporary music, performance and composition, developed since 1995. LCM2 stages over 100 performance events in the locality each year, reflecting its mission to involve the local community while providing students with vital performing experience.
The University of Surrey, Roehampton (formerly Roehampton Institute of Education), London is made up of what were four autonomous and historic colleges, Southlands, Whitelands, Frobel and Digby Stuart. In 1975 a collegiate structure was developed to form the institute whilst allowing each college to retain its own unique identity. All the music teaching is carried out at Southlands College. The music division has five full-time members of staff and several visiting lecturers engaged in research and performance in 20th-century music, acoustic and electro-acoustic composition, music in education, French music, cross-arts collaboration, music therapy, non-Western musics, music and gender, and west African drumming. Besides its undergraduate courses the division offers a graduate diploma and MA in music therapy which are recognized by the Association of Professional Music Therapists.
London, §VIII: Educational institutions
The first practical attempt to found a music school in London was made by Charles Burney in 1774. Impressed by the conservatories in Naples and Venice, where he had witnessed the remarkable effect of a longstanding tradition of providing musical training for orphans, Burney urged the adoption of a similar plan at the Foundling Hospital in London, already noted for the music of its chapel services. At first well received, his scheme was soon lampooned by a pamphleteer whose sarcastic criticism of the hospital governors for entertaining Burney’s proposal aroused opposition which led to its defeat.
Two important conservatories no longer in existence are the London Academy of Music and the National Training School for Music. The London Academy was founded by Henry Wylde in 1861; in 1904 three other institutions were amalgamated with it: the London Music School (founded 1865), the Forest Gate College of Music (1885) and the Metropolitan College of Music (1889), under the direction of T.H. Yorke Trotter; in 1905 the Hampstead Academy was also incorporated. Under Yorke Trotter the academy became a centre for the training of teachers according to his own system of music education for children. Throughout its history the London Academy included elocution and dramatic presentation among its activities; in 1935, under the direction of Wilfrid Foulis, its title was extended to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA). It moved from London at the start of World War II in 1939 and training ceased; in 1945 it reopened solely as a drama school.
The National Training School for Music was founded in 1873 and represented the fulfilment of a proposal by Prince Albert to afford free musical training to the holders of scholarships awarded on a national basis. The scheme had been discussed as early as 1854 and was revived after his death by the (Royal) Society of Arts. The school was opened at Easter 1876 with Arthur Sullivan as principal. 82 free scholarships ‘in favour of particular towns and counties’ had been established by donation, and more were promised. In 1878 a proposal to amalgamate the new institution with the RAM was defeated; but in 1882, by which time John Stainer had succeeded Sullivan as principal, it was replaced by the present RCM.
The six principal existing conservatories in London are discussed below in chronological order of foundation.
The RAM was founded in 1822 at the instigation of John Fane, Lord Burghersh (later 11th Earl of Westmorland), and opened in March 1823 under the patronage of George IV; the first principal was William Crotch. The foundation committee had intended that it should be supported by subscriptions and donations, and that there should be 80 resident students, half boys, half girls; but because of shortage of funds the academy opened with only 21 students, aged between ten and 15. It was housed in a building in Tenterden Street, Hanover Square. In 1827 the financial position was so disastrous that the academy’s closure was avoided only by an appeal for donations and an increase in fees.
The academy received its royal charter on 23 June 1830. In 1834 William IV directed that a quarter of the proceeds of the Westminster Abbey music festival should be given to the academy. A board of professors was appointed in 1853 to advise the committee of management; it recommended that students should no longer be resident, and requested an annual grant from the government. £500 was granted under Gladstone in 1864, but Disraeli refused to continue the grant in 1867 and an attempt was made to close the institution. The professors were then able to insist on the formation of a new board of directors on which they were strongly represented. The grant was renewed in 1868 with the return of Gladstone’s ministry, and from that year the academy began to prosper.
The academy moved in 1912 to its Marylebone Road premises, which were extended and enlarged in the 1960s and again in the 1970s. Concerts are given in the Duke’s Hall, and opera performances in the Sir Jack Lyons Theatre (opened in 1977). On the appointment of Sir David Lumsden as principal in 1982, in succession to Sir Anthony Lewis, the academy embarked on its ‘In pursuit of excellence’ campaign, recruiting a number of internationally respected musicians, some of whom played an important part in shaping the academy’s policy as well as its teaching. In 1991 the institution commenced its association with King’s College in which a four-year BMus degree in performance was developed. This development displaced the GRSM diploma course that had been offered by the Royal Schools of Music for many years. Three years later the MMus degree commenced, thus allowing the principles and philosphy of the BMus course to be extended in a more specialized form. A redefinition of its relationship with King’s in 1996 shifted the validation of the degree award to the University of London.
The academy marked its 175th anniversary in 1997, and with a grant from the National Heritage Lottery it was able to increase its overall space by a third with the purchase of 1–4 York Gate. This allowed for the rehousing of its collection of string instruments combined with the repair and manufacture of instruments. As a result of Government capping of funded places for home and European Union students since 1993, the institution was forced to reduce its student numbers. In 1999 these were 550.
British Army bands were officially recognized in 1803. They were equipped with instruments and uniforms by the individual regiments’ officers and trained by civilian bandmasters. The need to reform the system and to train bandmasters from within the ranks was first authoritatively expressed in 1856 by the Duke of Cambridge in a circular to commanding officers recommending the establishment of a Military School of Music. The school was opened in March 1857 at Kneller Hall, Twickenham. The first superintendent was a civilian, Henry Schallehn, a former bandmaster and director of the Crystal Palace Band, 1854–6; he had a visiting staff of four instructors. The school was acquired by the government in 1865. The first three superintendents were civilians, but in 1890 a bandmaster was commissioned and took charge of musical training at Kneller Hall, since when a commissioned officer has always held the post with the appointment of director of music. In 1998 the responsibility for musical training at Kneller Hall was vested in the chief instructor as head of department.
Five separate courses of training are provided: a foundation course in performance for new recruits to Army Music; two upgrading courses the first of which prepares junior non-commissioned officers in the musical management required for promotion to sergeant, and the second designed to train the more senior ranks in advanced musical and administrative skills; the honours degree course for bandmasters is a three-year course to train prospective bandmasters; and the advanced certificate of music is awarded to bandmasters who wish to be considered for promotion to the rank of captain and the appointment as a director of music.
Founded by H.G. Bonavia Hunt in 1872 as a college of church music, this institution was incorporated with the title Trinity College, London, in 1875 (renamed Trinity College of Music, London, in 1904). Its activity was initially limited to the training of choirmasters, and the curriculum to an appropriate range of practical and theoretical studies: harmony and counterpoint, voice production, choir training and music history; but after 1876 all branches of music were included. In that year the college submitted a successful memorandum to the University of London urging the award of degrees in music, and for some years afterwards special provision was made in the college to prepare candidates for matriculation and consequent eligibility to proceed to the BMus. In 1902, after a petition to the university urging the establishment of a chair of music, the college endowed the King Edward VII Professorship, the first holder being Sir Frederick Bridge, then chairman of the college council.
Courses of training at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, including BMus and MMus degrees, are provided for performers and composers to a professional standard, with areas of particular interest including the pre-Baroque and improvised music. In 1999 there were more than 500 students undertaking undergraduate and postgraduate courses. Outreach courses are offered for teachers and professional musicians, with about 1000 teachers and performers registered in 1999. The college is also involved in community projects, and with the training of young musicians through its junior department, which was established in 1906.
A pioneer in the field of local examinations in music, the college instituted a system of certificate examinations in 1874 which includes speech as well as music and extends to over 1500 local centres throughout the world, leading to the award of professional diplomas of fellow (FTCL) and licentiate (LTCL), and the associateship (ATCL).
The present buildings in Mandeville Place, off Wigmore Street, have been occupied since 1880, and extended in 1922 and 1964, and two other buildings in Marylebone provide practice and academic study facilities. The college has planned to relocate to the Royal Naval College at Greenwich in the year 2001.
This institution was the first municipal music college in Great Britain, being founded in 1880 by the Corporation of London as the Guildhall School of Music and opened in a disused warehouse in Aldermanbury with an initial enrolment of 62 part-time students. The school quickly outgrew its first home and in 1887 moved to newly built premises in John Carpenter Street, Blackfriars. Further extensions became necessary in 1898, 1927 and 1970, and the school moved to new premises in the Barbican in 1977. In 1920 full-time courses were introduced and, in due course, departments of speech, voice and acting were established; in 1935 the school incorporated the two disciplines of music and drama. Stage management was introduced in 1970. A licentiate course in music therapy was introduced in 1968, jointly administered with the British Society of Music Therapy. This was superseded by the current postgraduate diploma in music therapy in 1987, validated by the University of York.
The school, which continues to be owned, funded and managed by the Corporation of London, has a typical annual full-time roll of some 650 students (about 520 music, 75 acting, 55 stage management) representing about 40 nationalities. There are in the region of 240 part-time students, a third receiving tuition as part of their music courses at City and Sussex universities.
Courses offered include: four year performance BMus (validated by the University of Kent); MMus in composition (one year, validated by City University); a postgraduate diploma in musical performance; advanced courses in opera, vocal studies, individual instrumental studies; orchestral training, jazz and studio music, and early music; and a diploma in continuing professional development (modular programme).
Founded by royal charter in February 1882 under the presidency of King Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, the RCM took over the premises of the former National Training School for Music as well as continuing its policy of providing musical training for the holders of endowed scholarships awarded on a national basis. The governing body consists of the president and council; the president always being a member of the royal family. The college was opened in May 1883 under the directorship of George Grove, with 50 scholars elected by competition and 42 fee-paying students; Grove was succeeded by Parry, who was director until 1918. The rapid growth of its activities soon made the original building inadequate, and a new site in Prince Consort Road, to the south of the Albert Hall, was granted by the commissioners for the Great Exhibition of 1851; new and much larger buildings were opened there in May 1894 (the old building became the premises of the College of Organists, later the Royal College of Organists). A concert hall containing a fine organ, the gift of Parry, was added in 1901; in 1964 a further extension was added to the west of the original site, and the rebuilding of the opera school and the provision of a new recreation hall followed in 1973.
The college provides comprehensive training mainly for full-time students. Student numbers were reduced in the late 1980s, since when the RCM has aimed to offer places to 520 students (170 of whom are postgraduates). Courses are provided for composers and performers, providing opportunities for the development of professional skills, including teaching skills. Under the terms of its royal charter the college can confer degrees and diplomas in music. It offers a doctorate in music (DMus) which is available through full-time or part-time study. There are two masters courses in composition, one of which enables students to specialize in composition for screen. There is also a range of postgraduate diploma qualifications offered for those specializing in solo and ensemble performance, early music performance, orchestral playing, concert singing, opera and keyboard accompaniment. All undergraduates enrol for the four-year BMus (Hons) degree course. The associate diploma (ARCM) is awarded for instrumental performance and is available externally.
The college administers considerable scholarship endowments and several substantial special funds. It also possesses a valuable collection of musical instruments, housed in a purpose-built museum which opened in 1970, a fine reference library, a centre for screen music studies housed in the RCM studios which were relocated centrally in 1995, and a 400-seat theatre, the Britten Opera Theatre, opened in 1986.
Administered in collaboration with the Royal Opera House, the Opera Centre was founded in 1963 at a former cinema in the East End to provide ‘advanced training for student singers, répétiteurs and stage managers’. It essentially continued the work of the National School of Opera, which had been in existence since 1948 under the direction of Joan Cross and Anne Wood. Humphrey Procter-Gregg, the centre’s first director, was succeeded in 1964 by James Robertson. It accepted about 30 singers, six répétiteurs and six stage managers (half this number enrolling each year), usually for two-year courses. The centre gave stage performances in London at least twice a year. In 1978 it closed and was succeeded by the National Opera Studio, which is based at Morley College and provides one-year courses for advanced postgraduate trainees.
London, §VIII: Educational institutions
In addition to the universities and conservatories in London there are three other important colleges concerned with the study of music.
The Royal College of Organists (RCO), founded in 1864 as the College of Organists on the initiative of Richard Davidge Limpus, organist of St Michael Cornhill, was designed to provide a central organization for the profession, a system of examination for the church, opportunities for meetings and lectures, and encouragement for the composition of church music. Its headquarters were in Bloomsbury. After the Royal College of Music had moved into new buildings (1894), in 1904 the College of Organists was granted its former premises in Kensington Gore, next to the Albert Hall. Originally built in 1875 for the National Training School for Music, this curious building purports to be ‘in the English style of the 17th century, with panels decorated with sgraffito’. The college was granted a royal charter in 1893 and became the Royal College of Organists. It is largely an examining body, not a teaching one, though the organization of lectures and recitals has always formed part of its work; its examinations are theoretical as well as practical. The first examinations held by the college, in 1866, were for the diploma of fellowship; in 1881 an intermediate examination for associateship was introduced and one in choir training was added in 1924. Associateship (ARCO) must precede fellowship (FRCO), which may be followed by the choir training diploma (CHM); holders of that diploma may proceed to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Diploma in Church Music (ADCM), for which the examination is administered jointly with the Royal School of Church Music. The college’s influence is reflected in the high esteem in which its diplomas are held.
The Royal School of Church Music (RSCM) was founded by Sydney Nicholson in 1927 as the School of English Church music, and at first was controlled by a provisional council with an advisory committee of members of the Church Music Society. It had a twofold purpose: to invite church choirs to seek affiliation; and to establish a College of St Nicolas for the study of church music and the training of church musicians. The College of St Nicolas was opened at Chislehurst in 1929 with ten resident choristers, a staff of tutors under Nicholson as warden, and resident students who generally combined their studies of church music, choir training and liturgical matters at Chislehurst with a general musical training at the RAM or RCM. In 1939 the college moved to Leamington Spa, then to Canterbury; in 1954 the headquarters of both the school and the college became Addington Palace, Croydon, a former seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1945, by permission of George VI, the school was renamed the Royal School of Church Music.
In 1974 it became necessary for financial and other reasons to close the College of St Nicolas. With the move from the headquarters at Addington Palace in 1996 to Cleveland Lodge, Westhumble, near Dorking, residential courses were no longer possible. Cleveland Lodge now operates as a regional centre for music training while continuing to place more emphasis on training organized at centres around the country, both on a residential and non-residential basis. It also offers a foundation certificate in church music linked to a series of training courses throughout the UK.
Morley College possesses one of the largest centres of adult education in Britain and has been celebrated for its musical activities since 1907 when Holst was appointed director; several other eminent composers, including Tippett, and celebrated performers have taught there. From September 1999 students have been able to study music as part of a BA combined honours programme offered by South Bank University.
J. Ward: Lives of the Professors of Gresham College (London, 1740)
W.W. Cazalet: The History of the Royal Academy of Music (London, 1854)
F. Corder: A History of the Royal Academy of Music from 1822 to 1922 (London, 1922)
Guildhall School of Music: 50 Years of Music 1880–1930: Jubilee Souvenir (London, 1930)
H. Rutland: Trinity College of Music: the First Hundred Years (London, 1972)
L. Foreman: From Parry to Britten: British Music in Letters 1900–1945 (London, 1987)
R. Charters and D. Vermont: A Brief History of Gresham College 1597–1997 (London, 1997)
London, §IX: Commercial aspects.
London has always been the centre of music publishing in the British Isles, although the trade also flourished to a lesser extent in Edinburgh and Dublin during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Compared with Italy and France, England was slow to exploit the development of music printing, and had no 16th-century printers of the stature of Petrucci, Attaingnant, Gardane or Ballard. In the first half of the 16th century, apart from occasional music in liturgical books from Pynson's Sarum Missal (1500) onwards, only isolated attempts were made to print music. These include two pieces printed by John Rastell (c1520–30) and the fine XX Songes produced by an unknown printer in 1530; the former were the earliest English examples of music printed from type by single impression, which became the standard method up to 1700. From the accession of Queen Elizabeth in 1558 the most common form of musical publication was the metrical psalter with tunes, issued under a royal patent first granted to John Day in 1559. It was a profitable enterprise, and several editions appeared most years for over a century. Other music printing was governed by a complex succession of patents, dating from Tallis's and Byrd's privilege of 1575, but the real stimulus to its development came from the printer Thomas East, whose publication of Byrd's Psalmes, Sonets and Songs in 1588 inaugurated the brief flowering of the English madrigal school, which, together with the appearance of lute-song books from 1597, produced a rich harvest of publications. The market for such music, however, was comparatively small and heavily dependent on aristocratic patronage; there was little profit to be made, and so music played only a minor part in the activities of those printers who produced it.
Changing fashions led to a rapid decline in output after 1615; musical works appeared only occasionally over the next 35 years, during which time the patent system fell into disuse and was eventually abolished in 1641. Only with the emergence of John Playford and his English Dancing Master (1651) did England produce a man whose chief interest lay in music publishing. Playford, who did not print his own publications, ensured commercial success by catering for a far wider range of tastes than his predecessors, with publications that included country dance books, instrumental tutors, theatre music, songbooks, catches and psalm books. Like most publishers over the next two centuries he also acted as an instrument dealer. For nearly 40 years he had a virtual monopoly, but soon after his death in 1687 his son Henry faced competition, especially from John Walsh, who set up in business in 1695. An important late 17th-century innovation was the development of printing from engraved copper or pewter plates; although occasionally found earlier from Parthenia (c1613) onwards, it now rapidly became the usual method of printing music, having considerable advantages of flexibility and cheapness. Thomas Cross was its first significant exponent; he continued to use pure engraving, whereas others soon found it more convenient to stamp the plates with punches as far as possible.
With engraving the single-sheet song quickly developed, and was produced in great quantity during the first decades of the 18th century; such songs were either sold singly or formed into collections with an added title-page, often appearing as periodical publications like the Monthly Mask of Vocal Music. Their popularity lasted throughout the 18th century; they were apparently a speciality of the London trade, later imitated in Dublin but not on the Continent. The standard of engraving varied enormously, and is seen at its best in the superb illustrated songbooks, such as Bickham's The Musical Entertainer (1737–9).
With their shrewd business sense the John Walshes, father and son, dominated the London trade in the first half of the 18th century, although several rivals flourished and piracy was common owing to the lack of an effective copyright law for music until 1777. English publications took on a more cosmopolitan look, reflecting the new popularity of Italian music and the presence of Handel and other foreigners in London. The growth of music clubs and a general increase in musical activity meant that music of all kinds was in demand, from orchestral parts to flute airs; indeed, 18th-century England displayed a wider range of publications than any other country. Although most were undertaken at the publisher's expense, works were often issued ‘for the author’; publication by subscription also played a significant part, especially in the case of volumes of sacred music. By about 1750 the Walsh pre-eminence was beginning to wane, and the latter half of the century saw the London trade divided between a number of important firms, such as John Johnson, Bremner, Welcker, Preston, the Thompson family and James Longman and his successors, as well as a host of lesser figures. Plates were frequently passed on from one firm to another and re-used with changed imprints.
The development of cheaper and smaller pianos in the early decades of the 19th century led to an increase in domestic music-making among the middle classes, resulting in a great demand for songs and piano music. Several still extant firms were founded at that time, notably Boosey, Chappell, Cramer and Novello. The majority of publications were ephemeral; sets of the latest polkas and quadrilles, operatic arrangements and variations on popular airs appeared by the thousand. Music for the burgeoning amateur choral movement, as found in both choral societies and church choirs, was provided cheaply by the firm of Novello from the 1840s, and the production of inexpensive music was aided by the repeal of paper taxes. Music printing by lithography, although known in England from about 1805, did not become common until the middle of the century; its possibilities for providing decorative music covers, often in colour, were then thoroughly exploited, especially for music-hall songs and ballads, upon which the prosperity of many firms depended in the latter part of the century. There were English editions of foreign operas, but such demand as there was for foreign chamber and orchestral music was largely satisfied by imported editions, although firms like Augener and Robert Cocks produced editions of the standard classical solo and duo repertory.
With the appearance of a line of notable English composers at the turn of the century a number of important new firms found work, including Stainer & Bell and the music department of the Oxford University Press, both of which also became involved in issuing scholarly editions of early music. London has also had longstanding branches of a number of important continental firms, including Schott (the oldest, going back to 1838), Breitkopf & Härtel, Simrock, Universal Edition and Bärenreiter. They have experienced various degrees of autonomy from their parent companies (particularly during the war years). The advent of the gramophone, radio and television led to a steady decline in the demand for popular sheet music. Since publishers, however, also collect a percentage of performing and mechanical right fees, the recording industry developed a strong interest in the music publishing trade, and after World War II a series of takeovers eroded the independence of most important London publishers, who increasingly came under the control of recording and other media companies. British popular music publishing is now dominated by two multinational companies, International Music Publications (owned by the Warner Music Group) and Music Sales, with their many subsidiaries. The concern of most publishers is now primarily with the exploitation of performance and recording rights, and the production of printed music often plays only a minor role in their activities. Many present-day London ‘music publishers’ are that in name only, being created solely for accountancy purposes. The unprofitability of most serious new music, together with increased costs of production, has had unsettling effects on the publishing trade in London, as elsewhere. A number of firms have moved out of the capital, or retain only a showroom there, and hire libraries and general stock have been reduced, though the range of publications remains impressive. In this regard the extension of copyright in British publications from 50 to 70 years, introduced in 1996 as part of European Community harmonization of regulations, has provided welcome relief to many firms.
London, §IX: Commercial aspects.
Although references to organs in Westminster Abbey date back to the 13th century, the first important London organ builders were the Dallam family, who went to London from Dallam in Lancashire in the early 17th century. ‘Father’ Smith, who had left Germany in 1660, built his first organ in England at the royal chapel, Whitehall, and another in 1669 for the Banqueting Hall.
The Harris organ-building family flourished in the 17th century. Renatus Harris, grandson of the founder and the most celebrated member of the family, was a rival of ‘Father’ Smith, and when the two men entered into competition in the building of an organ for the Temple Church in 1683, there was so little to choose between their instruments that the ultimate decision of the benchers in favour of Smith’s was delayed for nearly a year. John Harris (son of Renatus) completed the organ of St Dionis Backchurch (Lime Street) in 1724; he went into partnership with his brother-in-law John Byfield. Associated with this partnership were Richard Bridge, who built organs for the Priory of St Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield (1729), and Christ Church, Spitalfields (1730); and the Jordans, father and son, inventors of the Swell box, which was first applied to the organ they built for the church of St Magnus, London Bridge, in 1712.
Other organ builders at that time include Thomas Griffin (d 1771), who built the organ of St Helen’s, Bishopsgate, in 1741; George England, who flourished between 1740 and 1788, and his son George Pike England, who probably built the first organ with pedals in London at St James’s, Clerkenwell, in 1792; Gray & Davison, whose factory in London was established in 1774 by Robert Gray; Crang & Hancock, of whom the former altered old Echoes into Swells (at St Paul’s Cathedral and St Peter upon Cornhill); Bishop & Son, established about the end of the century by James C. Bishop; and John Snetzler, a German who settled in London in 1740 and from whom the firm of Bevington & Sons (1794) was descended by way of Snetzler’s successors, Ohrmann and Nutt.
One of the earliest 19th-century organ builders was Benjamin Flight, who set up in partnership with Joseph Robson in 1806. The firm of William Hill & Son carried out some of its work in collaboration with Henry John Gauntlett, who advocated reforms in organ building including the adoption of the C compass organ. In 1916 the Hill firm was amalgamated with Norman & Beard of Norwich and London to form Hill, Norman & Beard. Other surviving firms of London organ builders established during the 19th century include those of Joseph W. Walker & Sons (1828) and Henry Willis & Sons (1845), both of which left London, in 1975 and 1968 respectively. N.P. Mander Ltd is the most important 20th-century firm of organ builders in London; it is also well-known for restoring old instruments.
The making of stringed keyboard instruments flourished in London from the 17th century. The early builders, who principally made spinets, include the Haward family, Stephen Keene and John Player. The Hitchcock family were important keyboard makers in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Joseph Mahoon, ‘harpsichord maker to His Majesty’, and Hermann Tabel were two important early 18th-century figures. Tabel trained both Jacob Kirkman and Burkat Shudi, two men who subsequently dominated the harpsichord trade in London until almost the end of the 18th century. The few harpsichord and clavichord makers active in London in the 20th century included Thomas Goff, who was known particularly for his clavichords.
The piano found favour in London from the 1770s onwards. The Broadwood firm, which grew out of Shudi’s harpsichord-making business, is the oldest firm of keyboard makers in existence. In the early 1780s John Broadwood made his first grand piano. Kirkman and his nephew Abraham Kirkman also made pianos, and the firm was carried on by the latter’s descendants until 1896, when it was amalgamated with that of the Collards. The firm of Stodart (1776–1861) was founded by Robert Stodart, a pupil of John Broadwood. Stodart made grand pianos and also combined the principles of the harpsichord with those of the piano, an invention for which he took out a patent in 1777. Sébastien Erard went to London in 1786 and established workshops there in connection with those of his firm in Paris. The London factory was maintained until 1890. Longman & Lukey (1771), an offshoot of the music-publishing firm of J. Longman & Co. (1767; later Longman & Broderip), made numerous spinets, pianos and ‘portable clavecins’. When Longman & Broderip went bankrupt in 1798, John Longman, the successor of the founder James Longman, became a partner of Clementi. Clementi then went into partnership with F.W. Collard in 1810 and remained in the firm until 1830; after Clementi’s death in 1832 the firm was known as Collard & Collard. It was purchased by Chappell in 1929.
In 1800 John Isaac Hawkins of London and Philadelphia patented an upright piano a little over one metre in height; the younger Robert Wornum invented diagonally and vertically strung low upright pianos respectively in 1811 and 1813, and in 1827 brought out his ‘piccolo’ piano, about one metre high, the new crank mechanism of which he patented in 1829. He established a public concert room at his piano warehouse in Store Street, initiating a practice later followed by other firms who had warehouses in London: Steinway in Lower Seymour Street in 1878, Bechstein in Wigmore Street in 1901 and the Aeolian company in New Bond Street in 1904.
From the late 18th century London was one of the world’s principal centres of piano making. Many early advances in piano technology were made by London builders before Americans took the lead in the second half of the 19th century. The main London firms founded in the 19th century and extant in the 20th include Chappell (1810) and Cramer (1824–1960), both of which were originally music publishers, Challen (1820; it ceased independent manufacturing in 1959) and Brinsmead (1835).
Among the many makers of string and wind instruments in London were Richard Hunt, who made viols and lutes dated from the 1660s; Thomas Urquhart, whose violins bear dates between the 1660s and 1680s and who also made flutes; the Stanesbys, who made wind instruments in the late 17th and early 18th centuries; Barak Norman, a maker of viols and one of the first English makers of cellos, active between 1668 and 1724, and in partnership with Nathaniel Cross from 1715; Peter Wamsley, a violin maker from 1725 onwards, one of whose apprentices, Joseph Hill (1715–84), became the founder of the firm of W.E. Hill & Sons still run by his descendants; Richard Duke, who copied Stainer and Stradivari violins (c1740–80); Thomas Cahusac, a publisher and maker of flutes from the 1740s to 1798; the elder Robert Wornum, publisher and maker of violins, cellos and of the guitar-lyre between the 1770s and 1815; the Milhouse family, who moved their wind-instrument-making business to London in 1787; Tebaldo Monzani, flute maker from 1790; George Astor, flute maker and publisher; John Köhler, a bandmaster of German birth, who settled in London in 1780 and founded a firm for making brass instruments which was carried on by his descendants for nearly 100 years; Edward Light, the inventor of the apollo lyre and the harp-lute (dital harp), about 1794; John Parker, maker of wind instruments in Southwark in the 1790s; G.H. Rodenbostel, trumpet maker in Piccadilly from 1761 to 1789; John Betts and his nephew Edward Betts, violin makers at the turn of the century and, like the contemporary Dodd family, also bow makers; Hart & Son, three generations of violin makers, the earliest of whom founded the firm in 1825; William Wheatstone, professor and manufacturer of the German flute in the 1820s; Charles Wheatstone, inventor of the concertina, for which his firm held the patent from 1829 for many years; Rudall, Carte & Company, makers of flutes from the early years of the 19th century; Georges Chanot the younger, a violin maker who left Paris for London in 1851 and, after working there with Charles Maucotel until 1858, established his own firm, which was subsequently carried on by his descendants; and Boosey, music publishers from 1816, and later manufacturers of all types of band and orchestral instruments. Hawkes & Son (1865), equally important makers of military band instruments, amalgamated with Boosey in 1930. Dietrich Kessler began to make viols in London in 1959.
London, §IX: Commercial aspects.
Humphries-SmithMP
KidsonBMP
KrummelEMP
E. Roth: Musik als Kunst und Ware (Zürich, 1966; Eng. trans., 1969 as The Business of Music: Reflections of a Music Publisher)
J.A. Parkinson: ‘Pirates and Publishers …’, Performing Right, no.58 (1972), 20–22
J. Coover: Music Publishing, Copyright and Piracy in Victorian England … 1881–1906 (London, 1985)
D. Hunter: ‘Music Copyright in Britain to 1800’, ML, lxvii (1986), 269–82
