Parlour Songs -- CONTENTS to Scott: "Songs of the Victorian Drawing Room and Parlour" (Aldershot: Ashgate)

Speranza

D. B. Scott

An analytic consideration to the contents of

Scott's essay: "The Singing Bourgeois: songs of the Victorian drawing room and parlour.

Aldershot, Hants, Ashgate, 2001.

D. B. Scott,


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Acknowledgements: to all those who contributed stuff.

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Introduction to the First Edition: the misnomer "drawing-room ballad" to be defined SOCIOLOGICALLY, rather than (never) MUSICOLOGICALLY.
 
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Introduction to the Second Edition: the culturalistists. Problems with sexuality, gender, and ethnicity in the themes of the drawing-room ballads.

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1.

The "foundations" ff the Drawing-Room "Genre" (if ever there was one). How to define a ballad SOCIOLOGICALLY (and never musically)


Introduction


The Italian and the English "Opera" -- the idea that the landed gentry favoured Italian language opera (to keep the riff raff out of sight).


The cultivation of refined 'folk' airs (folksong, fakesong) -- the idea that a girl may enjoy playing this in the piano. Arcadian settings totally unrelated to their historical industrial experiences.


The respectable entertainer  -- Moore, Didbin, Brahman -- the way they created songs in very PRE-VICTORIAN times that will become staples during 1837-1900.

Access to music -- pleasure gardens, concerts, and yes, getting that paino for the parlour.


The Growth of the Market for Domestic Music -- the bourgeoise house (or stately home). Dad pays for the sheet music, Mama decides the subject matter, girls plays it. Brother or fiance may join in in the singing (they were menant for TENOR).


The Rise of the Woman Ballad Composer -- one of the few things they could do while attending gardens, social functions, and easy life in general. While males liked to hunt, fish, and shoot.

Images of Women in Drawing-Room Ballads: in general nice. Prostitutes featuring very minimally. The singer was supposed to enact that character and who wants to enact a prostitute unless you are one?


Cultural Assimilation: the English lack traditions (cfr. Moris dancing). They need exotic elements as Socts, Welsh, Irish, Black minstrel, etc.

African-Americans -- Minstrel Shows -- thy are lively and make for a nice entertaining soiree at the darwing room.

Celts  --
Scots
Irish
Welsh
They provide colour to the otherwise too respectable "English" airs from the Home Counties and beyound.

Sacred Songs -- these are NON Roman Catholic, so the religious message is NOT TO be taken seriously. It just meant that love songs were a no-no, because the darwing-room is no the place to flirt. Rather we talk and sing of Jesus.


Hymns and Sacred Solos -- This were the things to play and sing on Sundays after returning from the parish. The tunes are simple and nice and they have nice choruses where other members of the family or guest can join.

Gospel Song. The Exotic American influence helps. The fact that they are NOT Roman Catholic is a big bonus.

The Negro Spiritual, where negro is used metaphorically since no girl was a negro, literally.

Roman Catholicism -- minimal -- reduced to some eccentricity by some Italian maestro (recall that Queen Victoria's teaching lesson was a "dago": Tosti.

Victorian songs of Christmas and Easter: the Christian calendar. Christina Rossetti, In the mid bleak winter.

Promoters, Publishers, and Professional Performers. Importat int that order: Boosey, Chappell, and perofrmers. NOT like the pretentious Italians who couldn't perform them because their Italian sounds were cosidered to contryfied for the subtlety of the English language well sung. Antoinette Sterling and Clara Butt in the female category: Sims Reeves and Santley and tenor Edward Lloyd in the male cateory. They provide the girl and his guest a model to emulate. The girl would have first hand acquaintnce with the balladeer during the Boosey Ballad Concert, once a week. And this would shape her songbook: not of 'evergreens' but of HITS OF THE SEASON (thus no nead to wrap the compilations into a sondbook that would soon date.

A Best-selling Formula -- as ther wasn't. Sullivan did not have one. Nothing compare his "Lord Chord." Cowel did not have one. Nothin compares his "Better land". Molly did not have one: Nothing comare his "Just a song at twiglith". Maybrick did not have one. Nothing compare his "Last nigt as I lay sleeing. Hulla's Three Little Fishers, and other case studies also go beyond a formula. ON THE OTHER HAND, THE AMERICANS (notably Tin Pan Alley) loved and can't do witout a formula: stopich with memorable chorus, ad two verses only.

English Nationalism and British Imperialism. The need to create a "National Song book" to be sung in the pink spots of the Empire: Tommy Atkins, "Land of Hope and Glory", "Soldiers of the Queen". It's nothing Englishness about it. It's merely MILITARISTIC.

Hegemony. The lower-class will adapt them, regardless.

Continuity and Change. The stiff upper class (Victorian) gives way to feer sentimentality in the Edwardian ballad proper ("Somehere a voice is calling," "I hear you calling me", "Pale hands I love").

Music and Social Class: the lower class will parody the higher class songs notably the Tommies durig the Great War. "Little Great Home in The West" "I've a little wet home in the trench".

Glossary of Musical Terms Used in the Text: mainly from Italian belcanto. Excpet Antoinette Sterling, who was American, the way for a British balladeer to excell is in Italian belcanto, without the need to indulge the boring dry recitativi and stick with the memorable melody the guest of the drawing-room soiree can join in.

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