ABSTRACT
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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|106 pages
Europe: Continental Connections
chapter Chapter 1|19 pages
‘Hence, base intruder, hence’
chapter Chapter 2|15 pages
William Sterndale Bennett and the Bach Revival in Nineteenth-Century England
chapter Chapter 3|9 pages
‘Le roi est mort, vive le roi’
chapter Chapter 4|21 pages
Promotion through Performance
part II|87 pages
Empire: Britain, Ireland, and Beyond
chapter Chapter 7|15 pages
Sir Frederick Bridge and the Musical Furtherance of the 1902 Imperial Project
chapter Chapter 11|13 pages
‘From ocean to ocean …’ 1
chapter Chapter 12|15 pages
From ‘incomprehensibility’ to ‘meaning’
part III|80 pages
Spectacle: Theatre, Opera, and Internationalism