Speranza
D. Scott
After the Napoleonic Wars, England was involved in no major hostilities abroad
for a lengthy period.
Furthermore, the kind of internal dissent which met with
vicious suppression at Peterloo in 1819 was contained, if not removed, by the
passing of the Reform Bill in 1832 and, later, by the repeal of the Corn Laws in
1846.
These two parliamentary moves helped stave off a British counterpart to
the continental revolutions of 1848.
During this time the industrial and mercan-
the bourgeoisie became increasingly prosperous as a result of soaring industrial
production and booming foreign trade.
The first plateau of economic expansion
was marked with a Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in 1851.
It is these
years of growing middle-class affluence and its related cultural effects which
will be considered in this chapter.
The prime Victorian virtues of thrift,
self-help, independence, and character, which found their eloquent champion in
Samuel Smiles, all serve middle-class economic interests by stressing the
importance of individual rather than collective action.
The first musical
fruit of middle-class prosperity appeared in the form of the PIANO FORTE.
-----
THE PIANO-FORTE
It was the
acquisition of pianos in large numbers which was to vastly extend the market for
drawing-room ballads, and to standardize the genre as a song with piano
accompaniment (rather than, say, harp).
---- PIANO vs. ORCHESTRA:
In the early part of the nineteenth
century it was taken for granted that a song published with piano accompaniment
was intended for home music-making, or at home functions such as soirees,
since songs at public concerts were normally performed with an orchestral
accompaniment until the 1840s.
The tradition of publishing music heard at
concerts in versions aimed at amateurs stretched back into the previous century.
Then the passion for the German flute among gentleman amateurs had lain behind
such remarkable publications as Handel's complete Messiah arranged for flute.
The piano seemed to attract the middle class in its earliest arrival in England.
Charles Dibdin introduces the pianoo at Covent Garden in 1767, and Drury Lane gained an
official pianist in 1770.
By way of contrast, the piano did not replace the
harpsichord in the King's Band for another twenty-five years.
In the 1830s there
was a great variety of pianos available (grands, squares, upright grands,
upright squares, cabinet pianos, table pianos, giraffe pianos, lyre pianos), but
the design that won the day was Robert Wornum's cottage piano.
Its small size
was not created at the expense of tone quality, and its pleasant shape made it a
satisfying piece of furniture.
Wornum had been working on his cottage design since 1811.
The action on an upright piano is unavoidably more complex
than the grand, where the strings lie in the horizontal plane, and he continued
to make improvements in the late 1830s.
For example, his tape-check action,
which formed the basis of the upright action used in pianos today.
Further
improvements were made to upright design in the 1840s, and henceforth the
softer-toned square piano began to lose favour.
The grand piano, however,
continues to be the first choice for the concert platform.
The upright was
considered a domestic instrument.
Cottage pianos may have been comparatively
cheap compared with grands, but they were still very much luxury goods.
Wornum's
cottage pianos sold for between 42 and 75 guineas in 1838, while a Broadwood's
price list of 1840 puts the cost from 44 to 80 guineas (their grands cost 90-125
guineas, and their squares 38—85 guineas).
These prices have to be measured
against average middle-class incomes of £100-500 a year.
Although
there is a growing market for pianos, as the number of urban middle class
rapidly increased, piano making had remained a skilled trade, relying on few, if
any, pre-manufactured parts.
The preferred description piano maker rather than
piano manufacturer itself suggests the pre-Industrial Revolution,
labour-intensive method of production.
There was no way such a complex
instrument could be made cheaply under these circumstances.
The main
piano-making firm in England, Broadwood, developed an intricate system of
divided labour in the hope of increasing their speed and efficiency, but that
goal does not seem to have been achieved.
At mid-century there were
around two hundred piano makers listed in London directories, many of them tiny
businesses producing only two dozen or so instruments a year.
The demand for
pianos was greatest in London and accounts for its being the centre of piano
making.
The few piano makers operating outside London were, with one or two
exceptions in the far north, small firms.
Pianos reached the provinces via the
railway network, after being sold to local dealers.
The railway had
revolutionized transport in the early Victorian period.
By 1855 there were 8000
miles of track, and trains were no longer thought of as unusual.
Dealers could
not exist solely on selling pianos, since the trade was seasonal.
Christmas and
Spring were the best times for sales (the latter because of its popularity for
weddings).
For the rest of the year, they needed to rely on music sales and their
expertise in tuning.
In an advertisement for pianofortes dated 1856, one can note the inclusion of a professional
testimonial to boost sales.
The cost of pianos
began to fall after mid-century.
Moreover, plenty of second-hand pianos were
finding their way on to the market.
D'Almaine & Co., who advertised uprights
priced between 25 and 40 guineas in 1856, announce a sale in The Graphic of 22
January 1887 in which a new piano could be bought for just 12 guineas, and, what
is more, on easy terms.
In the same column, The London Music Publishing Company
Ltd, boasting itself the originator of the 10-guinea piano, advertises
pianofortes, high class, for the million.
A little lower down, Kirkman & Son
state that second-hand grands and cottages are always in stock.
Nevertheless,
many cheap pianos were shoddy and unsatisfactory.
"The
Guard", which circulated in the mid-1850s, suggests that a twenty-year-old piano
was often better than a new one because in those days 'music had not dawned upon
the million, consequently only first rate, high priced instruments were
manufactured.
England and France had led the
industry in the early days, transport difficulties having handicapped the
Viennese.
But British manufacturers suffer badly from German competition from
the 1880s onwards.
Conservatism and mistrust of new technology was to blame.
For
example, over-strung pianos and metal frames were innovations of the late 1830s.
Yet Broadwood did not make their first over-strung piano until 1897, and metal
frames were long and incorrectly held to give inferior tone to wood.
The
piano became the pre-eminent bourgeois instrument for a variety of reasons.
At
first, it was a luxury instrument; therefore, its possession indicated worldly
success.
It was, as already remarked, a pleasing piece of furniture, gleaming in
its mahogany or rosewood case.
A fondness for excessive ornament emphasized this
purely visual appeal.
Indeed, the decorative parts of pianos were the first to
be mass produced: in the second decade of the nineteenth century Broadwood
bought cast-brass moulding by the foot and stamped brass ornaments by the dozen.
The extremes to which this decorative interest could stretch may be seen in the
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, where there is a satinwood piano decorated
with Gothic ornament, inlaid and gilded, with three silk panels at the front
-- the design of Charles Bevan.
The piano had established itself as a
luxury
item of furniture in the 1830s, as the Westminster Review notes
With
a little allowable flattery of the truth, the book-case, in an inventory of the
goods belonging to any well-ordered English house, might be designated as one of
its necessary articles of furniture - not as one of its luxuries.
The place of
popularity among the latter being claimed by the pianoforte.
Sometimes
imaginative modifications were made to improve its function as furniture.
The
Rev. Haweis, writing in 1871, offers the following advice on caring for a piano.
Do not load the top of it with books.
And if it is a cottage, don't turn the
bottom, as I have known some people do, into a cupboard for wine and desert.
The pianoforte is an instrument ideally suited to the parlour or
drawing room in terms of its sound, unlike, for example, the trombone.
Smiles,
discussing domestic music-making in 1852, says of the piano that that's the
instrument for the house and the home.
Would that every household could have
one.
But pianos are still dear, perhaps because the demand of the million for
them has not yet set in.
Furthermore, a rudimentary technique on a piano was
more likely to win family approval than would an elementary skill on certain
other instruments.
Smiles warns of the violin, it is long, indeed, before any
one, however perseverant, can acquire such dexterity on the violin as to give
pleasure to a home-audience.
Moreover, string instruments were thought of
as a MALE preserve for most of the century.
A crinoline served as an effective
barrier to the cello and its unladylike playing position between the knees.
Its
small relation, the violin, was thought no more suitable for women, however,
even in the hands of the virtuosic Paravicini.
Paravicini, who tours in the
early part of the century, wins recognition and admiration for her technical
brilliance.
But her choice of instrument was deplored on the grounds that it was
NOT suited to a FEMALE, a fact universally admitted, and which no skill or
address can get over.
Of course, men were free to play violins and
cellos in the parlour.
But it was women who dominated home music-making, a fact
acknowledged by Macmillan's Magazine.
Our young ladies are the principle
interpreters of our domestic music.
A man tended to choose an instrument,
such as a flute or clarinet, which would mean his calling upon the support of a
woman to provide an accompaniment when he played.
A woman chose self-contained
instruments, like the harp, guitar, or piano, which could supply their own
harmony.
The obligation of ministering to the male was thus as much a part of
domestic music-making as of a woman's other domestic duties.
The harp and guitar
began to decline in popularity towards the mid-century, since the piano coped
far more readily with the ever increasing chromaticism which spelt progress for
bourgeois music, and which filtered through from concert hall to drawing
room.
PRIORITY OF SONG.
Though piano pieces, duets, and occasional concerted pieces were
played, domestic music-making was largely VOCAL, all'italiana.
The preference for vocal music
was explained in scornful terms by the Rev. Haweis in his "Music and Morals" of
1871, an influential text arguing for the wholesome effects of 'good'
music.
It is thought almost as rude to interrupt a lady when she is speaking
as to talk aloud when she sings.
Accordingly the advantages of being able to
sing in society are obvious.
The lady can at any moment fasten the attention of
the room on herself.
If a girl has a voice, the piano is too soon suppressed in
favour of it.
It is true she usually accompanies herself; that is, she
dabbles about on the keys.
But the room listens, and the room applauds.
The
maiden is happy; and mamma thinks she requires no more singing lessons.
The cessation of singing lessons was no doubt eagerly welcomed by
papa too, since half-a-guinea a lesson was not an unusual remuneration for
'professors of singing' at mid-century.
The ability of a singer to command
greater attention than an instrumentalist persisted throughout the century.
E.
Lake painted the following description of 'at home' functions in 1891.
Here
in London, we first ask an artist to perform.
Then ensues the pause of curiosity
- the silence of expectation.
But directly the music begins.
Then, if it be
vocal we have the maddening murmur, whilst if it ventures to be instrumental,
then the row is deafening.
Haweis considered drawing-room music to be
little more than a manifestation of | superficial and vain amateurishness.
Haweis
regrets that piano playing had become a mere accomplishment for young ladies
and that the piano occupied the same place in a girl's education as Latin
grammar did in a boy's.
Eliza Cook had also protests in her journal at the
enforced musical training for girls, nearly twenty years before Haweis' book
appeared.
No one can love music more than ourselves.
But we have a holy
horror of the general domestic exhibitions of playing and singing.
We cannot
imagine why every girl should be expected to shine in an art which requires a
peculiar combination of faculties, taste, and feeling.
Cook found that her
remarks led to her being involved in some serious domestic remonstrances, but,
unabashed, in the next volume of her journal she wrote a satirical
description of a soiree at Fullblown Villa, Netting Hill, the home of Mrs
Perennial Peony.
It is a humorous and probably all too accurate picture of
domestic musical life among the wealthy middle class.
There are three
remarkably fine young feminine Peonys in the family, and all have received a
first-rate education — that is, upwards of two hundred a year has been
expended on each of them.
Music is the mania that pervades the establishment.
It
it is the petted exotic of their hotbed of accomplishments.
All the
daughters are described as having a genius for SINGING, but each plays a
different instrument (this is 1852).
Miss Peony plays the harp.
Miss Peony labours
away at the poor strings, and vexes the ears of all around her with 'difficult
compositions', alike interminable and tiresome.
She has unfortunately acquired
such alarming celerity of execution, that a runaway locomotive is the nighest
approach to it.
Miss Cora plays the piano, priding herself on her
sentiment of expression.
But her notion of expression is bounded by a
consecutive number of hard bangs, and as uniform a consecutive number of weak
touches that can scarcely be heard.
Her head is accustomed to work with wondrous
energy over the forte passages, and her eyes are duly upturned to the ceiling
at every interval of'pianissimo' effect.
Miss Lavinia, who plays guitar,
is probably the least endurable.
For, unfortunately, she 'takes no note of
time', and leaves her hearers to do so only from its 'loss'.
Cook
concludes, music assumes the character of a rabid epidemic in this family and
'a serious infliction is endured' by all who sit out their musical soirees.
A
conflict persisted throughout the nineteenth century between the high hopes of
people like Smiles, quoted earlier, and the reality of domestic music-making.
When the middle class began to take an avid practical interest in music in the
1830s, it was welcomed by writers on music as showing 'signs of a disposition to
restore music to its proper place, by cultivating it intellectually, and not
sensually'.
And even in the 1870s, when the true nature
of this intellectual cultivation of music had been revealed, the Rev. Haweis
is still torn between his contempt for drawing-room music and his over-riding
belief in the morally wholesome effects of music:
That domestic and
long-suffering instrument, the cottage piano, has probably done more to sweeten
existence and bring peace and happiness to families in general, and to young
women in particular, than all the homilies on the domestic virtues ever yet
penned.
The problem was that Haweis desperately wanted domestic music
to be taken seriously.
But while music-making in the home was thought of as, in
the main, a Oman's pastime, it could never receive serious attention.
In the
same decade as Haweis's "Music and Morals", a writer in "Macmillan's Magazine"
points out, in England no disgrace is attached to ignorance of music and
everything connected therewith.
This is in spite of the fact that a piano was
by then to be found in every respectable middle-class home, and that
cheap concerts had become available.
Fifteen years earlier the same magazine had
commented approvingly on the availability in London of so much good music which
could be heard 'at a cheap rate', claiming that times are changed for the better.
One of the earliest
effects of the widespread desire to play the piano was seen in the emergence of
publications catering to the demand for progressive lessons in piano technique,
such as Ferdinand Pelzer's "A Practical Guide to Modem Pianoforte Playing",
published in London in 1842.
MUSIC PRINTING
The biggest effect of the demand for music in
middle-class homes, however, was on the technology of the music-printing
industry.
Alternatives were soon being sought to the costly process of engraving
music.
Lithography seemed to be the most promising of these; it had been
invented in 1796 by Aloys Senefelder, who had patented the rights in Bavaria and
joined up with a music seller.
The first English examples, at the turn of the
century, were called 'polyautography'.
Between 1806 and 1807 Vollweiler.
Printed a small amount of music lithographically in London, but then returned to
Germany.
Ackerman, an ex-saddler made good in the printing trade, established a
lithographic press and pioneered the 'popular annual' (beginning with Forget-
Me-Not in 1825).
In 1837 Engelman took out a patent for chromolithography; the
first English examples belong to the early 1840s. Mezzotint engraving existed
before lithography but was a sophisticated process.
The Queen's Boudoir, a
musical annual published by Nelson & Jeffreys, took to colour lithography in
1841, and so too did D'Almaine's "The Musical Bijou".
Examples of music printing
by lithographic process were exhibited at the Great Exhibition. Augener began by
publishing lithographic editions only when the firm was founded in 1853.
Nevertheless, the engraved plate was still the favourite medium for music
printing well into the 1860s.
Lithography lacked the clear edges of engraving,
so tended to be used for pictorial title-pages rather than for the music itself.
There was also a problem with the heavy stones and their storage, not to mention
the heavy duty imposed by the government on their importation.
Lter in the
century, however, zinc and aluminium plates replaced the lithographic stone.
Some publishers looked elsewhere for the printing technology of the future
and reconsidered printing from music type, a process Dr Arnold had patented back
in 1784.
The music supplements to The Harmonicon, 1823—33, were printed
typographically.
"The Harmonicon" is important because, as a reasonably cheap
periodical, it provides the middle class with access to those songs which, in
turn, form the roots of the drawing-room ballad.
The various strands of the
latter genre are here gathered together in one collection.
Almost all the key
figures are represented.
For example:
Bayly -- author of "Long, long, ago"
Bishop -- author of "Home, home, sweet sweet home"
Braham -- author of "The death of Nelson"
Dibdin -- author of "Here a mere bulk lies poor Tom Bowling"
and Shield -- author of "The Wolf".
It only lacked a selection of Moore's "Irish
Melodies", although five of these had circulated in a previous periodical,
"Walker's Hibernian Magazine", in 1810.
The disadvantage of using movable types
was that they were expensive, took a long time to compose and were then unusable
for anything else until the edition for which they had been set up was
discontinued.
They are at their most advantageous when running off thousands of
copies rather than hundreds.
To attract large numbers of buyers, the product had
to be aimed at the middle-class market.
"The Musical Library" (1834-37) declares that before this work appeared, the exhorbitant sum demanded for engraved
music amounted to a prohibition of its free circulation among the middle
classes; at a time too when the most enlightened statesmen saw distinctly the
policy of promoting the cultivation of the art in almost every class of
society.
Like "The Harmonicon", "The Musical Library" was printed by William
Clowes.
Clowes claims to have purchased a secret process of printing music,
invented by Duverger of Paris
Clowes, however, obtains punches and matrices
from Germany in order to cast new musical type for The Harmonicon.
Another
series printed by Clowes is "Sacred Minstrelsy" (1834-35), but his most lasting
influence was on the firm of Novello.
Shortly after the first issue of "The
Musical Times" in 1844, Novello went into printing as well as publishing and took
over, with some modification, the same system of musical type used by Clowes.
Novello pioneers the concept of cheap music from the day the firm was
established in 1811 and makes further reductions in prices in 1849.
By 1854, a
vocal score of Handel's "Messiah" can be purchased for 4s., the price which in some cases
is paid for a single drawing-room ballad.
Of course, Novello relies on many
thousands of sales,23 and had no royalty arrangements to make with singers in
return for their promoting the work, nor any financial obligation to the
composer.
The only restriction on its cheapness other than production costs was
the excise duty payable on paper.
Not surprisingly Vincent Novello's son Alfred
is a tireless campaigner against what he called a tax on knowledge, the
payment of 3d. on every pound of paper.
It was finally lifted in 1861.
Novello
and Company Ltd targets the choral market, concentrating on sacred music and
standard works.
The octavo edition, which is the present norm for choral
works, has its origin in the size of "The Musical Times".
Previously, folio
editions had been the norm.
One Novello edition to be found in every drawing
room was of Mendelssohn's "Songs without words".
Being a collection of piano
pieces by a living composer, it is not the musical terrain usually associated
with Novello.
The explanation for this departure is that the firm manages
to buy the British copyright outright in 1837.
Musical type is rarely used
for drawing-room ballads, except for cheap collections.
The ballad is
not expected to be cheap.
Expense is linked in the mind to notions of quality.
Even the best type-printed octavo editions comesin for criticism such as that
made by W. H. Cummings later in the century:
Let us speak of the best type
printed music.
Here we find good paper, well-formed lines and notes, but all so
minute and crowded that it requires a serious effort to identify and grasp the
picture which has to be conveyed to the brain through the eye.
The notes are
small, but the words are smaller.
And when you come to a recitative in which,
of course, the words form the more important element you will find, for the
sake of saving a little space, that the type setter has used a smaller letter
than usual.
Musical typography remains the most common medium for hymn
books and psalters, where there was a lot of text, and for printing short
extracts of music in educational literature.
The advantage is that the music
type could be set at the same time as the text type.
On the other hand, the
plate, punched (for note heads) and engraved, is the most flexible
medium available.
It can cope with anything from piano music to full
orchestra, and with equal ease.
Lithography proves to be invaluable for the
packaging of music, as a means of lending additional desirability to the
commodity on offer.
A. H. King coins the term pictorial for title-pages which
are intended to give a visual representation of the music.
A few pictorial
title-pages were printed lithographically by Hawkes-Smith around 1821-22, but
engraved title-pages were the norm until the 1830s.
At this time, a full page
given over to the title is uncommon.
The pictorial element is most likely be
a vignette, the music beginning immediately beneath.
The first person to exploit
to the full the eye-catching qualities of lithography in the context of the
market for domestic music is the enterprising Louis Jullien, celebrated dance
composer, conductor, publisher, and popularizer of the cheap concert.
During
1844—45 Jullien has a series of polkas and quadrilles printed with enticing coloured
title-pages, and, later, a series of coloured albums.
In the 1840s and 50s,
arrangements of OPERATIC airs, particularly as dances, were favourite candidates
for the pictorial title-page.
In the 60s attention shifted to music-hall
songs.
The most distinguished colour lithographer working in this field was
Alfred Concanen (1835-86).
The appetite for pictorial title-pages for
drawing-room ballads was soon surfeited.
Critics scornful of them can be found
in the early 1850s.
The rage for pictorial ballads has, of course, given an
impetus to purchasers, which must prove highly beneficial to all concerned.
The
composer becomes a kind of lacquey to the artist, and they are thus enabled to
turn out of hand a very saleable sort of commodity - the picture itself being
well worth the money, and the song illustrating the illustration in such a
manner as almost to bring tears into the eyes of the susceptible.
In the
1860s, a coloured pictorial title-page comes to be considered too showy and vulgar
for the drawing-room ballad, and was associated with songs which lacked
seriousness.
Where seriousness is not in doubt - as in religious ballads, it
lasts longest.
However, there is no doubt that music-hall songs, gaily adorned
with colour lithographs, are bought by many a wealthy bourgeois.
Jane Traies
has shown how the pictorial covers were often slanted away from an accurate
representation of the song-text towards an interpretation which would allow an
up-market appeal to the drawing room.
Black-and-white lithographs were not
thought to vulgarize a ballad as much as colour.
Admired precedents had been
set, such as the lithographed song-title for the publication of Bayly's 'I'd Be
a Butterfly' in 1827.
Ballads in the catalogue of "The Musical Bouquet" (published
originally by Bingley and Strange), 1846?-89, only ever has black-and-white
illustrations, if they are illustrated at all.
In fact, the decorative
title-page, rather than the pictorial title-page, is more common for music
which was regarded as serious or of high quality.
Its design relies on
imaginative use of different type founts.
An American invention of 1838 enables
type to be made automatically at 100 letters a minute, in marked contrast to the
painstaking hand-made method using moulds, which yielded 400 letters an hour.
The consequence is a dramatic fall in the price of type, enabling printers to
stock up with a lot of unusual varieties of type fonts from which
attractive covers could be created.
Once a suitably appealing and tasteful
commodity is produced, an efficient means of dissemination is
required.
Since most of the music printing in nineteenth-century Britain
takes place in London, the market is restricted until the country had been
opened up by the networks of road and rail.
Once this is achieved, and
pianos and ballads are travelling side-by-side along those networks, the only
problem is how the consumer was going to choose which ballads to purchase.
Notices were given in women's journals of elegant soirées where professional
singers could be heard.
Ideas for songs to sing at home could be picked up
there.
Ballads were also reviewed in the press outside London.
Fr example, the
following comments on songs by Miss Lindsay were made by Scottish journals in
the 1850s.
So simple that singers of very moderate attainments will find
little difficulty in singing it at first sight. -- The Aberdeen Journal, reviewing
the ballad, "Speak Gently".
It is easy, graceful, and pleasing.
Miss Lindsay's compositions are for
the quiet family circle - the domestic concert - the home circle. -- 'The Glasgow
Times", reviewing Lindsay's ballad "Jacob"]
In the case of ballads published by
Robert Cocks
& Co.,
who proclaim themselves music publishers to her most gracious
majesty Queen Victoria, his royal highness the Prince of Wales, and his imperial
majesty the Emperor Napoleon III, one might assume that buying them means
singing the same songs as royalty.
Wedgwood is also aware of snob value when he
issues his "Queensware" set, which exploits the desire of the middle class to eat
their dinner from the same plates as The Queen of England.
A recipe listing the
essential ingredients which go to make a popular ballad is given in an
advertisement printed on the back cover of one of Cocks' publications
What a
lyrical composition intended to be popular ought to be - it has no unnecessary
difficulties, and lies within a moderate range-being thus available for all who
sing to amuse themselves or their friends, as well as of those who sing for the
public.
The same sort of opinion is obviously held by a reviewer of John
Abel's setting of Felicia Hemans' poem 'The Better Land' (published by Chappell
in 1844).
The fault we should find with the composition is not that it has
too little learning, but too much.
It has great originality and beauty but not
the originality and beauty of simplicity.
The accompaniment is of difficult
execution, and with its innumerable accidentals not very easily read.
A great
part of the composition is in G flat, which might have been written in the more
familiar key of F natural.
It was not just the musical side of a ballad
which had to be tailored to the technique of the domestic musician.
It was
equally important that the song had easily singable words.
This points to one of
the main reasons Walter Scott was not able to rival Burns' popularity as a
songwriter.
In certain cases the tunes Scott selects were, and still are,
well-known.
But it is more common to hear the tune announced by Scott's title
and then played instrumentally rather than sung.
'Blue Bonnets', for example,
can easily sound garbled as a result of what may be a well-intentioned attempt
on Scott's part to capture the effect of bagpipe embellishments known as
doublings.
Scott seems unappreciative of the
handicapping effect of dipthongs on an amateur singer's crispness of rhythm and
accuracy of intonation.
Witness the 'Pibroch of Donuil
Dhuibh'.
On the
subject of words, it is a pity so many drawing-room ballads are concerned with
dreams.
It is a difficult word to sing with a classically trilled 'r' without
disrupting the kind of smooth flowing melody to which it is almost always set.
It is common practice to build a
collection of ballads suited to one's individual taste and technique and have
them privately stitched together and leather bound.
THE BALLAD OF THE YEAR.
This practice declines in
the 1890s when ballads can only be guaranteed to be in vogue FOR ONE CONCERT SEASON, rather than for years.
Various reasons can be put forward for what
amounted to a lack of serious musical effort in the drawing rooms of the
majority of middle-class establishments.
It may be said that music is simply
thought of as a diverting and wholesome entertainment.
For some, music is merely
regarded as a means of displaying their respectability (concern for spiritual
improvement) and status (ownership of a piano).
For others, music isa woman's
subject, and therefore, almost by definition, lacking seriousness.
At the same
time, there can be no doubt that there were those among the middle class who
genuinely love music, while resisting the application and discipline demanded
by the art.
Perhaps another reason for lack of concentrated effort lay in the
physical conditions of the room itself.
Such is the opinion expressed by
Alexander Wood in "The Physics of Music".
The drawing room, with its
heavy curtains and carpet and its upholstered furniture, has a very short time
of reverberation and is acoustically "dead".
It never encourages musical
effort.
Furthermore, the effect of a hot drawing room on the strings of a
harp or guitar would have been to create frustrating tuning problems.
The piano,
however, did not suffer to the same extent.
This is another reason why it rose to pre-eminence.
Finally, a
few words must be appended concerning the situation in America, since the ballad
market linked Britain and America from its earliest days.
Besides the steady
flow of London publications across the Atlantic, there are the pirated copies
of British ballads printed by American publishers who are taking advantage of
the absence of international copyright.
Music publishing started in the east, in
Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.
It then expands westward
during the years before the Civil War.
Makers of musical instruments kept pace
with these developments, so that the two businesses fed each other in a kind of
symbiotic cycle.
The opening up of the country by railroad was as
important in America as in Britain.
Pianofortes were in great demand, but the
square was preferred to the upright in American parlours.
Alpheus Babcock
constructs a square piano with an iron frame in 1825, and it is this invention
which lay behind the successful series of square pianos made by Jonas Chickering
in Boston from 1840 onwards.
An alternative keyboard instrument to the piano is
the "Melodeon", a small reed organ with single bellows.
The "Melodeon" is available in the early nineteenth century but becomes more widely so when Abraham
Prescott set up in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1836.
Small portable varieties
are made which could be played on the lap and pumped by the elbow.
The
instrument is often confused with the "Harmonium", a reed organ developed from the
orgue expressif and patented in Paris in 1842 by Alexandre Debain.
Further
confusion arises between the "Harmonium" and the American organ.
Put simply, the
European harmonium has reeds sounded by compressed air, while the American
organ's reeds are sounded by suction.
Perhaps the melodeon's suction bellows
are the inspiration behind the cottage organs produced by the firm of Estey
& Co., which set up in Brattleboro, Vermont, in 1856.
Suction seems to give
a more balanced sound, and they are able to export great numbers to Britain,
where little making of reed organs took place.
There are 247 firms making these
instruments in America in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Though
Julius and Paul Schiedmayer began mass-producing harmoniums in Germany in 1853,
it is the American organ (often incorrectly called the harmonium) which caught
on in Britain.
What the cottage piano does for the concert grand, the cottage
organ did for the king of instruments: it domesticated it.
Moreover, it
becomes a serious rival to the piano in lower middle-class homes during the later
century, because it was cheaper and it stayed in tune.
The wealthy middle class
acquires both instruments.
In America, as in Britain, the flute and violin are
favourite instruments for male amateurs.
The guitar sustained its popularity
among the American middle class longer than it did among their British
counterparts.
Even in the late 1850s, this fact prevented the American ballad
from becoming standardized as a song with keyboard accompaniment: many of
Stephen Foster's songs, for example, were published in alternative versions for
voice and guitar.
The success of Foster further illustrates the similarity
between the British and American markets for domestic music.
Foster's music, in the
words of H. Wiley Hitchcock, is aimed at the home — at the typical American
parlour, with its little square piano or reed organ, its horsehair-stuffed sofa,
its kerosene lanterns and candlelight.
Simple enough for amateurs to perform,
the music of these songs is pitched at a modest level of artistic
sophistication.
The language of the texts is generally one step removed from
ordinary American speech, with a slightly rarefied atmosphere of cultivated
gentility.
The appearance of several of his songs in an anthology of the
1850s entitled "Household Melodies"lends further emphasis to their domestic
qualities.
REFERENCES
Price lists given in Harding.
H. F. C., 'The pianoforte', Westminster
Review 1838
Samuel Smiles, 'Music in the house', Eliw
Cook's Journal 1851.
Quoted in S. S. Stratton, 'Women in relation to musical
art', Royal Musical Association Proceedings 1882-
M., 'Classical music and British musical taste', Macmilian's Magazine 1859
E. Lake, 'Some thoughts on the social appreciation of
music', RMA Proceedings 1891
E. C., 'Our musical corner', Eliza Cook's
Journal 1852
E.G., 'Our musical corner', Eliza Cook's
Journal 1852
H. Sutherland Edwards, 'The literary maltreatment of
music', Macmilian's Magazine 1875
Quoted in H. E. Poole, 'Printing and publishing of music'
In 1849 the Morning Herald
reported that over 20,000 copies had been sold.
M. Hurd, Vincent Novello and Company
W. H. Cummings, 'Music printing', RMA
Proceedings 1884.
A. H. King, 'English pictorial music title-pages
1820-1885', The Library, 5th. series, Oxford, Oxford
University Press. 4 (1949-50): 263.
H. C Lunn, 'Music of society' (Lunn, 1854).
J. Traies, 'Jones and the working girl: class
marginality in music-hall song 1860-1900', in Bratton 1986: 23-48.
These comments are reprinted on the back page of Mrs
Streatfeild's 'The Golden Gate', a religious ballad published by Robert Cocks
& Co., London, 1864.
Ibid., advertising 'The Bridge', a setting of Longfellow's
poem by Miss Lindsay.
30 Westminster Review 42 (1844): 263.
31 31 Wood, A., 1964 The Physics of Music, London: Methuen:
237.
33. Confusingly 'melodeon' is also the name given to the
button accordion.
An instrument which differs from the ordinary accordion in
that it produces different notes from the same button, depending on whether the
bellows are drawn or squeezed.
This particular melodeon became a favourite
instrument in Germany from the mid-nineteenth century onwards.
H. Wiley Hitchcock, notes accompanying the recording Songs by Stephen Foster, Nonesuch Records, H-71268, 1972.
Monday, December 24, 2012
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