Parlour Songs -- "Access to music" -- the pleasure garden -- the tavern -- the glee club -- the burlesque

Speranza

D. Scott

We should look briefly at some NOT so familiar varieties of entertainment and examine the sources of access to music for the urban middle class in London.

A typical middle-class venue at which Henry Russell may have appeared would be a "Song and Supper" room.

No women are allowed here.

But many Russell songs, like 'A Life on the Ocean Wave', are implicitly addressed to a male audience anyway.

The "Song and Supper" rooms provides entertainment while patrons eat and drink.

They begin to emerge in the 1820s as an expansion of the kind of access to music formerly provided in taverns and coffee houses.

Among the most famous were:

(a) "The Coal Hole"

(b) Evans's (Covent Garden)

(c) Ghe Cyder Cellars, and

(d) The Wrekin.

They all flourish in the 1830s and 40s.

Some of the early music-hall artists, for instance, Charles Sloman and Sam Cowell, serve their apprenticeship in these "Song and Supper"rooms.

The entertainment is liable to switch from respectable glee singing to bawdy songs once midnight had sounded.

As indoor provision for entertainment increases, so outdoor provision begins to contract.

-----

The pleasure garden was not the important scene of musical activity it had been in the eighteenth century.

Then, the same musicians are often heard in the pleasure gardens as had been heard in the theatre or concert hall.


The pleasure garden therefore gives access to the kind of music performed at subscription concerts, such as the Bach-Abel Concerts (1765-82), which were beyond the pocket of the petit bourgeois.

In the second half of the eighteenth century, there are nearly two dozen pleasure gardens and tea gardens providing musical entertainment.

Marylebone and Vauxhall are the oldest, having both opened in the seventeenth century.

In the early 1770s the future for music seemed brightest at the Marylebone Pleasure Garden, recently bought by the composer Samuel Arnold (with his wife's money) and employing as organist and composer the prolific James Hook (1746—1827).

Sadly, Arnold was forced to sell the Marylebone Pleasure Garden, owing to the criminal activities of an employee.

The Marylebone Pleasure Garden did not long survive the departure of Samuel Arnold.

Meanwhile, JamesHook moves to become composer and organist at The Vauxhall Pleasure Garden, a post which he held for nearly fifty years.

James Hook is required to provide songs and cantatas and to perform an organ concerto every night of the season.

As the Vauxall Pleasure Garden season was in the summer, it makes them a particularly "middle-class" (rather than landed gentry)  locale, since the aristocracy had returned to their country residences at this time of the year -- if not engaged in the Grand Tour, or the Italian riviera.

Ballads were not the only thing provided in the pleasure gardens like Marylebone or Vauxhall.

There were firework displays, side shows, and cold suppers served in alcoves.

The Marylebone Pleasure Gardens, the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, and other pleasure gardens are favourite places for courting couples, which explains the popularity of "love songs".

Hook's Vauxhall songs range from the coy

"No, No, No, It Must Not Be"

to the flirtatious

"Take Me, Take Me, Some of You".

Usually, song-writers have the tact to avoid giving embarrassment, by introducing lovers in the traditional and inoffensive shape of nymphs and shepherds -- this was the way with the earliest Italian opera, too, as we saw. Orfeo/Euridice, Apollo/Dafne, etc.

Many songs take advantage of the outdoors setting, either imitating bird-song, like Hook's "The Blackbird", or capturing the romantic evening mood.

Love songs were always to remain popular at the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.

Two well-known later examples are C. E. Horn's "Cherry Ripe" of 1825, and Bishop's "The Bloom Is on the Rye'" which are the big success of the 1833 season.

No one, however, is to equal the creative energy Hook dedicated to the Vauxhall pleasure garden.

In ballads alone Hook's output exceeds two thousand -- many of them being published in the annual "Vauxhall Ballads" collection.

Hook's elegant style, which is indebted to the style galant of Bach and Abel, can be perceived in his still familiar song "The Lass of Richmond Hill".

------

Ranelagh  provides an outlet for Welsh music in 1746, when the blind harpist, John Parry, appeared there.

John Parry, the blind harpist, is the joint editor, with Evan Williams, of the first collections of "Welsh melodies".

Predictably, these are subjected to the usual improvement according to the fashionable taste of the day.

Performances of traditional ballads at the Ranelagh Pleasure Gardens may have suggested to Dibdin the idea of giving some of his new strophic narrative songs the title 'ballads'.

Oe of the earliest examples of this application of that term was in the publication

"The Ballads sung by Mr Dibdin at the Ranelagh Pleasure Gardens"

-- which appeared about the year 1770.

----

Sadler's Wells is originally a small "pleasure garden", consisting of a medicinal spring and nearby music house.

In response to the growing urban population, the spring was discarded and a theatre built on the site to cater, instead, for the middle class's thirst for musical entertainment.

There were many varieties of music theatre, a diversity which resulted from the restrictions on spoken drama.

After the Licensing Act of 1737, the only theatres allowed to present performances of SPOKEN plays were Drury Lane, which until the late eighteenth century held less than two thousand people, and Covent Garden, which held just over that figure.


The Little Theatre in the Haymarket managed to obtain a patent in 1766 to enable it to open for plays in summer, when Drury Lane and Covent Garden were theoretically closed.

This meant that, like pleasure gardens like Marylebone, Vauxhall, Ranelagh, or Sadlers Wells, ithe theatre relied on a middle-class clientele, since the landed gentry were in the country.

Audiences are alerted to what was on at the theatre by newspaper advertisements or by announcements given out either vocally or in handbills at a theatre they are attending.

Not all the middle class were sufficiently independent to be able to spend whole evenings in the theatre.

Lower middle-class shopkeepers, for instance, do not finish work until at least eight o'clock.

So they have to make do with the "afterpiece", a short work like Arne's "Thomas and Sally" which filled up the evening's entertainment -- except in those rare cases when the main-piece was a very lengthy work such as Gay/Pepusch's "The Beggar's Opera".

Entrance to see the afterpiece was at half price.

 In 1763, Covent Garden attempts to end this concession and thereby provokes the worst theatre riot of the eighteenth century.

It costs them £2000 worth of damage.

As for the relative expense of seats within the theatre, the galleries were cheaper than the pit (the modern-day stalls), while the boxes cost most of all.

The upper boxes were frequented by prostitutes.

Houses of ill repute were usually conveniently situated near theatres.

Indeed, the word 'actress' was a common euphemism for prostitute -- while "actor" was neutral.

THE STAGE SONG OUTSIDE THE STAGE.

It is the reason that the growing numbers of industrial bourgeoisie, with their religious non-conformism and new-found respectability, shuns and despises the theatre, however much they might admire individual theatre songs.

-----


When Charles Dibdin the younger took over at Sadler's Wells Pleasure Gardens at the turn of the nineteenth century, he introduced the novelty of "aqua-dramas", like "The Siege of Gibraltar: an aqua-drama" ('acqua-dramma')


Charles Didbin's major crowd-pullers, however, are the pantomimes starring the clown Joe Grimaldi -- not related to the Prince of Monaco.

English pantomime develops out of attempts to popularize the court "masque" (like Arne's "King Alfred: a masque" wich gave us "Rule, Britannia").

Most eighteenth-century pantomimes have mythological or grotesque plots involving characters from the traditional Italian "commedia dell'arte" -- hence the need for an Italian cast like Joe Grimaldi -- not related to the Prince of Monaco.

The earliest pantomimes, contained no dialogue, but included songs, dances, and miming during instrumental interludes known as "The Comic Tunes" -- which relate to the earliest 'intermezzi' of Italian opera.

----

John Rich, who is fond of playing the character of Arlecchino himself, popularizes pantomimes at his Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre.

Machinery, trick scenery, and all manner of gadgetry help attract audiences.

But in the opinion of people like Colley Cibber and Henry Fielding, the pantomime is a fatuous and inferior art-form.

Drury Lane finds it financially attractive to present pantomime afterpieces, but to follow a Shakespeare play with a pantomime is condemned as "very vulgar"

The modern pantomime emerges in Linley's "Robinson Crusoe" (1781) and Shield's "Aladdin and the Magical Lamp" (1788).

The character of the clown was of little significance until Joe Grimaldi arrived on the scene.

The clown's original function was to serve Columbine's father, Pantaloon.

The comic scoffing tone of Italian pantomime gives it a kinship with burlesque.

It is probably no coincidence that Planche's first pantomime, "Rodolph the Wolf", is performed at the Olympic Pavilion in the same year (1818) that his first burlesque, "Amoroso: king of Little Britain" was performed at Drury Lane.

The burlesque can be traced back to Elizabethan theatre, but begins to be a distinctive genre after the Reformation.

A seminal work was "The Rehearsal" (1671) by the Duke of Buckingham, which makes fun of both dramatic tragedy and contemporary attempts to bring opera to the English stage.

Thomas Arne's "The Opera of Operas: an opera" (1733), based on Fielding's "The Tragedy of Tragedies: a tragedy", established the character of eighteenth-century "burlesque".

Henry Carey's "The Dragon of Wantley", with music by Lampe, written in 1737, is the most successful of these burlesques.

Lampe/Cares's "The Dragon of Wantley" mocks the castrato Farinelli and Handel's latest opera, "Giustino", which contains a dragon.

The burlesque continues to be popular in the nineteenth century and proves a major influence behind the fourteen Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, from "Thespis" to "Grand Duke".

In fact, Gilbert produces his first burlesque, "Dulcamara", five years before he begins to collaborate with Sullivan.
----

Taverns and tea or coffee houses offer another important source of access to music.

Before Hook's employment in the Vauxhall pleasure garden, he played the organ to entertain customers taking tea at "The White Conduit House" in Clerkenwell.

Taverns were more likely to be the scene of active participation in music-making.

The Anacreontic Society, which was made up of aristocrats and wealthy bourgeoisie, held their meetings at "The Crown and Anchor" in the Strand.

The constitutional hymn of this society, 'To Anacreon in Heaven', composed by J. S. Smith, was given new words and adopted in 1931 as the United States' national anthem, 'The Star-Spangled Banner'.

The "Concentores Sodales", i.e. friends of harmony, meet from 1798 onwards at "The Buffalo Tavern" in Bloomsbury.

Lower middle-class music lovers meet at an ale house, such as "The Twelve Bells", in Bride Lane.

"The Madrigal Society" was founded at "The Twelve Bells" in 1741.

The taste of the eighteenth-century mercantile middle class is generally theatrical and secular.

Music in the church is in decline.

More interesting than the musical life of St Paul's was that of Robert Smith's house in The Churchyard.

At Robert Smith's house in the Churchyard of St. Paul's, "The Glee Club" begins to meet in 1783.

It was for Robert Smith's "Glee Club" that Samuel Webbe composes  'Glorious Apollo', which from 1790 is always sung at the start of their meetings.

Glees were not always specifically written as glees, but, just as an "OPERATIC AIR" could be angled towards the drawing room, a musical ensemble in a stage entertainment could be aimed at future use in a glee group.

Taking Bishop as an example, the following table gives the titles of several of his most admired "glees" and the theatrical works in which the tune first appears.


----

'The Winds Whistle Cold'
----- from Bishop's"Guy Mannering: an opera" (1816)

'The Chough and Crow'
----- from Bishop's "Guy Mannering: an opera" (1816)

'Mynheer Vandunck"
------ from Bishop's 'The Law of Java: a musical drama" 1822

'Hark, 'Tis the Indian Drum"
------- from Bishop's "Cortez, or The Conquest of Mexico : a historical play" 1823


In addition to these sources of access to music, the eighteenth century sees a growth in the number of musical publications.

Periodicals stimulate interest in music and, as printing technology progresses sheet music becomes cheaper and more accessible to an expanding amateur market.

The typical glee was in three-part harmony for male voices.

Perhaps the best-known example is John Callcott's 'Ye Gentlemen of England' (an updated early nineteenth-century version of a song which first appeared in 180 Loyal Songs, printed in 1686).