ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the conference 'Concert, lieux et espaces musicaux en Europe, 1700-1920; approche architecturale, culturelle et sociale', Brussels, November 2001, as part of a project sponsored by the European Science Foundation, on 'Musical life in Europe 1600-1900; circulation, institutions, representation'. Research by musicologists and historians has established the broad contours of this development, including the principal vehicles through which change was delivered: the subscription concert, the musical club and the festival. Moreover, with quantitative demographic and economic growth came qualitative change, so that the efflorescence of provincial musical life was part of a broader urban cultural renaissance that affected high-status leisure as a whole. Eighteenth-century Britain, particularly England, saw a remarkable growth in fashionable, high-status music making. The construction of high-status residential accommodation on Lansdown Hill prompted the building of the Upper Assembly Rooms adjacent to the Circus to provide a prestigious base for leisure activities, including concerts, in the area.
