ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the concert promoted by an individual for profit, traditionally a one-off annual benefit for the capital’s leading instrumentalists and singers. The history of concert life in nineteenth-century London has to a large extent been mapped as the history of musical organizations. The study of London’s concert life during the nineteenth century needs to address trends in its institutional structure at all levels. Two principal mechanisms of transformation can be identified. The first is the radical break: either the invention or import of a new concert-type or, conversely, the death of an old one. The second mechanism involves modification and transformation, a gradual process of adaptation resulting in seemingly new types of concert promotion in response to both social and musical pressures. The benefit concept was therefore one of the pillars of London’s concert structure during the eighteenth century, standing alongside the regular subscription concerts, the ancient concerts and Lenten oratorios.
