The Piano In Nineteenth Century British Culture

Since the publication of The London Pianoforte School (ed. Nicholas Temperley) twenty years ago, research has proliferated in the area of music for the piano during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and into developments in the musical life of London, for a time the centre of piano manufacturing, publishing and performance. But none has focused on the piano exclusively within Britain. The eleven chapters in this volume explore major issues surrounding the instrument, its performers and music within an expanded geographical context created by the spread of the instrument and the growth of concert touring. Topics covered include: the piano trade and how piano manufacturing affected a major provincial town; the reception of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier and Clementi's Gradus ad Parnassum during the nineteenth century; the shift from composer-pianists to pianist-interpreters in the first half of the century that triggered crucial changes in piano performance and concert structure; the growth of musical life in the peripheries outside major musical centres; the pianist as advocate for contemporary composers as well as for historical repertory; the status of British pianists both in relation to foreigners on tour in Britain and as welcomed star performers in outposts of the Empire; marketing forces that had an impact on piano sales, concerts and piano careers; leading virtuosos, writers and critics; the important role played by women pianists and the development of the recording industry, bringing the volume into the early twentieth century.

Since the publication of The London Pianoforte School (ed. Nicholas Temperley) twenty years ago, research has proliferated in the area of music for the piano during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and into developments in the musical life of London, for a time the centre of piano manufacturing, publishing and performance. But none has focused on the piano exclusively within Britain. The eleven chapters in this volume explore major issues surrounding the instrument, its performers and music within an expanded geographical context created by the spread of the instrument and the growth of concert touring. Topics covered include: the piano trade and how piano manufacturing affected a major provincial town; the reception of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier and Clementi's Gradus ad Parnassum during the nineteenth century; the shift from composer-pianists to pianist-interpreters in the first half of the century that triggered crucial changes in piano performance and concert structure; the growth of musical life in the peripheries outside major musical centres; the pianist as advocate for contemporary composers as well as for historical repertory; the status of British pianists both in relation to foreigners on tour in Britain and as welcomed star performers in outposts of the Empire; marketing forces that had an impact on piano sales, concerts and piano careers; leading virtuosos, writers and critics; the important role played by women pianists and the development of the recording industry, bringing the volume into the early twentieth century.

Music and Performance Culture in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Temperley is the first book to focus upon aspects of performance in the broader context of nineteenth-century British musical culture. In four Parts, 'Musical Cultures', 'Societies', 'National Music' and 'Methods', this volume assesses the role music performance plays in articulating significant trends and currents of the cultural life of the period and includes articles on performance and individual instruments; orchestral and choral ensembles; church and synagogue music; music societies; cantatas; vocal albums; the middle-class salon, conducting; church music; and piano pedagogy. An introduction explores Temperley's vast contribution to musicology, highlighting his seminal importance in creating the field of nineteenth-century British music studies, and a bibliography provides an up-to-date list of his publications, including books and monographs, book chapters, journal articles, editions, reviews, critical editions, arrangements and compositions. Fittingly devoted to a significant element in Temperley's research, this book provides scholars of all nineteenth-century musical topics the opportunity to explore the richness of Britain's musical history.

This volume illuminates musical connections between Britain and the continent of Europe, and Britain and its Empire. The seldom-recognized vitality of musical theatre and other kinds of spectacle in Britain itself, and also the flourishing concert life of the period, indicates a means of defining tradition and identity within nineteenth-century British musical culture. The objective of the volume has been to add significantly to the growing literature on these topics. It benefits not only from new archival research, but also from fresh musicological approaches and interdisciplinary methods that recognize the integral role of music within a wider culture, including religious, political and social life. The essays are by scholars from the USA, Britain, and Europe, covering a wide range of experience. Topics range from the reception of Bach, Mozart, and Liszt in England, a musical response to Shakespeare, Italian opera in Dublin, exoticism, gender, black musical identities, British musicians in Canada, and uses of music in various theatrical genres and state ceremony, and in articulating the politics of the Union and Empire.

This collection of sixteen new essays, all commissioned from cultural and musical historians, was inspired by the themes and approaches of Professor Cyril Ehrlich's pathbreaking work on British social history in music. This volume discusses issues such as the music marketplace, piano culture, musicians' work patterns, music institutions, concert history, and national and urban identities - all with a clear focus on art music traditions. The cultural importance of serious music, from Belfast to Calcutta, has long been assumed for the period but rarely demonstrated. Here the issue is interwoven with the social and economic realities confronting music and musicians in Britain across the 19th century.

Roy Johnston and Declan Plummer provide a refreshing portrait of Belfast in the nineteenth century. Before his death Roy Johnston, had written a full draft, based on an impressive array of contemporary sources, with deep and detailed attention especially to contemporary newspapers. With the deft and sensitive contribution of Declan Plummer the finished book offers a telling view of Belfast?s thriving musical life. Largely without the participation and example of local aristocracy, nobility and gentry, Belfast?s musical society was formed largely by the townspeople themselves in the eighteenth century and by several instrumental and choral societies in the nineteenth century. As the town grew in size and developed an industrial character, its townspeople identified increasingly with the large industrial towns and cities of the British mainland. Efforts to place themselves on the principal touring circuit of the great nineteenth-century concert artists led them to build a concert hall not in emulation of Dublin but of the British industrial towns. Belfast audiences had experienced English opera in the eighteenth century, and in due course in the nineteenth century they found themselves receiving the touring opera companies, in theatres newly built to accommodate them. Through an energetic groundwork revision of contemporary sources, Johnston and Plummer reveal a picture of sustained vitality and development that justifies Belfast?s prominent place the history of nineteenth-century musical culture in Ireland and more broadly in the British Isles.

The volume aims to investigate the world of the piano in France, and the evolution of the instrument between the ancien regime and the Restoration. Particular attention will be devoted to the circulation of central European pianists at the turn of the nineteenth century, their influence on the development of piano culture and technique and the impact this had on French musical tastes. Nineteen contributions will explore the piano industry, aspects of performance practice and the bravura tradition, and will investigate certain lines of interaction between publishers, composers, institutions and concert venues between the French Revolution and the first Industrial Revolution. The ultimate aim will be to determine more comprehensively the role of piano culture within nineteenth-century Parisian musical life.

Charles Hallas one of the leading musicians of the nineteenth century and intimate with almost all of the great composers and performers of his time, as well as a friend of the Royal Family and known as much as a pianist and chamber musician as a conductor, in London, throughout the country and abroad, in addition to Manchester. Robert Beale presents a new perspective on Hall life and achievement, constructed mainly from primary sources, which serves to dispel many of the inaccuracies and omissions that have stemmed, to a great extent, from Hall own autobiographical account of 1896. His edited memoirs omit much of the competition and controversy, struggles and disappointments of his career in Manchester, and, indeed, hardly convey the scope of his activities elsewhere. Hallas a key figure in the shift from contemporary to classical repertory in orchestral concerts and piano performance. Not only did he found the Manchester orchestra, in 1862-3 he also gave the first known cycle of Beethoven's piano sonatas. His early annual recital series in London marked a new era in the musical history of his time. The formation of the modern 'symphony orchestra' took place during the period of Hall professional life, and he was a pioneer in the process, in both artistic and business terms. Having adopted the role of orchestral conductor when it was itself relatively novel, he became one of the acknowledged masters of the craft over four and half decades - as well as continuing to appear as solo pianist and chamber musician, and in addition he was enormously influential as musical pedagogue and educationist.