ABSTRACT
Of all the major arts, music has been the least studied within the humanities and social sciences. Yet its enormous popularity, capacity for emotional stimulation and power to evoke an almost tangible sense of time and place, make music a vital element in the construction of social identities of all types, and not least those under consideration in this volume. This essay considers the role played by a broad range of musical activity in the construction and expression of 'northern' identity in a period witnessing a significant advance in the political, economic and social power of the south. Although not ignoring repertoire and musical language, it is essentially concerned with analysis of various discourses that surrounded musicians and musical institutions and organizations. 1 In essence, it suggests that while various aspects of musical culture generated positive images of the North both 'locally' and within the national culture, the dominant position of the South (and especially London) ultimately operated to undermine or counterbalance these images and to hold the north at the margin of the national cultural terrain. 2
This piece is decidedly exploratory, designed to raise issues and debate rather than provide anything resembling a definitive study. Such a purpose partly justifies the rather eclectic choice of subject matter. However, such initially unlikely bedfellows as Frederick Deli us, the Beatles, the Huddersfield Choral Society, Gracie Fields and Kathleen Ferrier, who, with varying degrees of centrality, form the main dramatis personae here, perhaps reveal a rather more consistent and informative collective biography than might at first have been expected. Any disadvantages that may flow from this cavalier aggregation (or indeed, from the exclusion of other significant northern musical figures) should be balanced by the emergence of a clearer picture of North-South cultural relationships. In terms of geographical focus, the 'north' examined here is that encased within the convenient but overly neat lines drawn by the boundaries of the seven historic counties of Cheshire, Cumberland, Durham,
Lancashire, Northumberland, Westmorland and Yorkshire. The problematic issue of definition is thus left for other contributors, but it may be hoped that such related issues as the role music played in mapping and defining tensions within 'the North' or in establishing a northern identity for those on the margins of its variously imagined boundaries, will be the subject of future study. 3 At the same time, the essay pays by far and away the most attention to Yorkshire and Lancashire which, for all their centrality in terms of physical size, population and, indeed, musical reputation, are too often seen as co-terminous with the north to the detriment of the analytical treatment of other areas. Other 'norths' deserve their musical scribes. Attention is given, however, to the way in which 'northern' identities overlap with and/or collapse into a whole series of other imagined territorial communities including the local, the county and the provincial, thus allowing for some critical consideration of the concept of northern identity.
