Exhibitions, Music and the British Empire

Exhibitions, Music and the British Empire PDF Author: Sarah Kirby
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1783276738
Category : Exhibitions
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
"International exhibitions were among the most significant cultural phenomena of the late nineteenth century. These vast events aimed to illustrate, through displays of physical objects, the full spectrum of the world's achievements, from industry and manufacturing, to art and design. But exhibitions were not just visual spaces. Music was ever present, as a fundamental part of these events' sonic landscape, and integral to the visitor experience. This book explores music at international exhibitions held in Australia, India, and the United Kingdom during the 1880s. At these exhibitions, music was codified, ordered, and all-round 'exhibited' in manifold ways. Displays of physical instruments from the past and present were accompanied by performances intended to educate or to entertain, while music was heard at exhibitors' stands, in concert halls, and in the pleasure gardens that surrounded the exhibition buildings. Music was depicted as a symbol of human artistic achievement, or employed for commercial ends. At times it was presented in nationalist terms, at others as a marker of universalism. This book argues, by interrogating the multiple ways that music was used, experienced, and represented, that exhibitions can demonstrate in microcosm many of the broader musical traditions, purposes, arguments, and anxieties of the day. Its nine chapters focus on sociocultural themes, covering issues of race, class, public education, economics, and entertainment in the context of music, trading these through the networks of communication that existed within the British Empire at the time. Combining approaches from reception studies and historical musicology, this book demonstrates how the representation of music at exhibitions drew the press and public into broader debates about music's role in society"--Page 4 of cover.

Exhibitions, Music and the British Empire

Exhibitions, Music and the British Empire PDF Author: Sarah Kirby
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1783276738
Category : Exhibitions
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Get Book

Book Description
"International exhibitions were among the most significant cultural phenomena of the late nineteenth century. These vast events aimed to illustrate, through displays of physical objects, the full spectrum of the world's achievements, from industry and manufacturing, to art and design. But exhibitions were not just visual spaces. Music was ever present, as a fundamental part of these events' sonic landscape, and integral to the visitor experience. This book explores music at international exhibitions held in Australia, India, and the United Kingdom during the 1880s. At these exhibitions, music was codified, ordered, and all-round 'exhibited' in manifold ways. Displays of physical instruments from the past and present were accompanied by performances intended to educate or to entertain, while music was heard at exhibitors' stands, in concert halls, and in the pleasure gardens that surrounded the exhibition buildings. Music was depicted as a symbol of human artistic achievement, or employed for commercial ends. At times it was presented in nationalist terms, at others as a marker of universalism. This book argues, by interrogating the multiple ways that music was used, experienced, and represented, that exhibitions can demonstrate in microcosm many of the broader musical traditions, purposes, arguments, and anxieties of the day. Its nine chapters focus on sociocultural themes, covering issues of race, class, public education, economics, and entertainment in the context of music, trading these through the networks of communication that existed within the British Empire at the time. Combining approaches from reception studies and historical musicology, this book demonstrates how the representation of music at exhibitions drew the press and public into broader debates about music's role in society"--Page 4 of cover.

Imperialism and music

Imperialism and music PDF Author: Jeffrey Richards
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526121379
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description


Exhibiting the Empire

Exhibiting the Empire PDF Author: John McAleer
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526118343
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Exhibiting the empire considers how a whole range of cultural products – from paintings, prints, photographs, panoramas and ‘popular’ texts to ephemera, newspapers and the press, theatre and music, exhibitions, institutions and architecture – were used to record, celebrate and question the development of the British Empire. It represents a significant and original contribution to our understanding of the relationship between culture and empire. Written by leading scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, individual chapters bring fresh perspectives to the interpretation of media, material culture and display, and their interaction with history. Taken together, this collection suggests that the history of empire needs to be, in part at least, a history of display and of reception. This book will be essential reading for scholars and students interested in British history, the history of empire, art history and the history of museums and collecting.

Europe, Empire, and Spectacle in Nineteenth-Century British Music

Europe, Empire, and Spectacle in Nineteenth-Century British Music PDF Author: Julian Rushton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351567640
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
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.

Tonic to the Nation: Making English Music in the Festival of Britain

Tonic to the Nation: Making English Music in the Festival of Britain PDF Author: Nathaniel G. Lew
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317009886
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Long remembered chiefly for its modernist exhibitions on the South Bank in London, the 1951 Festival of Britain also showcased British artistic creativity in all its forms. In Tonic to the Nation, Nathaniel G. Lew tells the story of the English classical music and opera composed and revived for the Festival, and explores how these long-overlooked components of the Festival helped define English music in the post-war period. Drawing on a wealth of archival material, Lew looks closely at the work of the newly chartered Arts Council of Great Britain, for whom the Festival of Britain provided the first chance to assert its authority over British culture. The Arts Council devised many musical programs for the Festival, including commissions of new concert works, a vast London Season of almost 200 concerts highlighting seven centuries of English musical creativity, and several schemes to commission and perform new operas. These projects were not merely directed at bringing audiences to hear new and old national music, but to share broader goals of framing the national repertory, negotiating between the conflicting demands of conservative and progressive tastes, and using music to forge new national definitions in a changed post-war world.

Imperialism And Music

Imperialism And Music PDF Author: Jeffrey Richards
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719045066
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 552

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Book Description
This is the first book to consider the relationship between British imperialism and music. With its unique ability to stimulate the emotions and to create mental images, music was used to dramatize, illustrate, and reinforce the components of the ideological cluster that constituted British imperialism in its heyday: patriotism, monarchism, hero-worship, Protestantism, racialism, and chivalry. It was also used to emphasize the inclusiveness of Britain by stressing the contributions of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland to the imperial project.

Music in Edwardian London

Music in Edwardian London PDF Author: Simon McVeigh
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1837651345
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Traversing London's musical culture, this book boldly illuminates the emergence of Edwardian London as a beacon of musical innovation. The dawning of a new century saw London emerge as a hub in a fast-developing global music industry, mirroring Britain's pivotal position between the continent, the Americas and the British Empire. It was a period of expansion, experiment and entrepreneurial energy. Rather than conservative and inward-looking, London was invigorated by new ideas, from pioneering musical comedy and revue to the modernist departures of Debussy and Stravinsky. Meanwhile, Elgar, Holst, Vaughan Williams, and a host of ambitious younger composers sought to reposition British music in a rapidly evolving soundscape. Music was central to society at every level. Just as opulent theatres proliferated in the West End, concert life was revitalised by new symphony orchestras, by the Queen's Hall promenade concerts, and by Sunday concerts at the vast Albert Hall. Through innumerable band and gramophone concerts in the parks, music from Wagner to Irving Berlin became available as never before. The book envisions a burgeoning urban culture through a series of snapshots - daily musical life in all its messy diversity. While tackling themes of cosmopolitanism and nationalism, high and low brows, centres and peripheries, it evokes contemporary voices and characterful individuals to illuminate the period. Challenging issues include the barriers faced by women and people of colour, and attitudes inhibiting the new generation of British composers - not to mention embedded imperialist ideologies reflecting London's precarious position at the centre of Empire. Engagingly written, Simon McVeigh's groundbreaking book reveals the exhilarating transformation of music in Edwardian London, which laid the foundations for the century to come.

Empire and Popular Culture

Empire and Popular Culture PDF Author: John Griffiths
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351024760
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 447

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Book Description
From 1830, if not before, the Empire began to permeate the domestic culture of Empire nations in many ways. From consumables, to the excitement of colonial wars, celebrations relating to events in the history of Empire, and the construction of Empire Day in the early Edwardian period, most citizens were encouraged to think of themselves not only as citizens of a nation but of an Empire. Much of the popular culture of the period presented Empire as a force for ‘civilisation’ but it was often far from the truth and rather, Empire was a repressive mechanism designed ultimately to benefit white settlers and the metropolitan economy. This four volume collection on Empire and Popular Culture contains a wide array of primary sources, complimented by editorial narratives which help the reader to understand the significance of the documents contained therein. It is informed by the recent advocacy of a ‘four-nation’ approach to Empire containing documents which view Empire from the perspective of England, Scotland Ireland and Wales and will also contain material produced for Empire audiences, as well as indigenous perspectives. The sources reveal both the celebratory and the notorious sides of Empire. This volume considers the ways in which ‘Empire’ permeated the British public sphere, exploring exhibitions, spectacle and entertainment.

Pursuit of the New: Louise Hanson-Dyer, Publisher and Collector

Pursuit of the New: Louise Hanson-Dyer, Publisher and Collector PDF Author: Kerry Murphy
Publisher: Lyrebird Press lyrebirdpress.music.unimelb.edu.au
ISBN: 0734038011
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
This book on the Australian music publisher and patron Louise Hanson-Dyer brings together, for the first time, an international group of scholars with expertise in the history of early French musicology and sound recording; fine art and design; and critical editions and music publishing in France. With a focus on the interwar period, it aims to synchronise Hanson-Dyer’s Melbourne and Paris ventures, seeing her work in a global perspective and showing how she played a significant role in the transnational cultural relationship between Australia and France. Hanson-Dyer had vision and objectives and the drive to realise them; this volume situates the consolidation of her role as cultural activist in early twentieth-century Europe and Australia and presents new light on her publication of critical musical editions, her art collections and early sound recordings.

The Life and Music of Elizabeth Maconchy

The Life and Music of Elizabeth Maconchy PDF Author: Erica Siegel
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1837650519
Category : Composers
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
The first full-length biographical study of Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994). The British-born Irish composer (Dame) Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994) is best known today for her cycle of thirteen string quartets, composed over five decades. And yet, her oeuvre ranges from large scale choral works, to ballets, operas, and symphonic scores. Having studied with Charles Wood and Ralph Vaughan Williams at the Royal College of Music, many of her compositions also garnered accolades from peers and established musical figures such as Gustav Holst, Donald Francis Tovey, and Henry Wood, among others. With access to a wealth of documentation previously unavailable, this book explores Maconchy's life and music within a greater consideration of the social and political context of the world in which she lived. While the influence of Bartók has been well documented, this book reveals the equally potent influence of Vaughan Williams on Maconchy's musical idiom. This book also discusses Maconchy's foray into administration and her advocacy of young composers through her work as the first woman to be elected Chairman of the Composers' Guild of Great Britain in 1959 and President of the Society for the Promotion of New Music following the death of Benjamin Britten in 1976. It will be required reading for those interested in the lives of women composers, twentieth-century British music, and musical modernism.