ABSTRACT
The formula that Hallé, with the help of his supporters, had finally arrived at for his Manchester concerts – a series of 20, eight of them fully choral, with subscriptions as well as single-ticket sales, and Thursday as concert night – was to last, with little change, for the rest of his life. The financial success of the 1861–62 season was repeated, to some extent, in every subsequent series. But in the two immediately following seasons the proceeds were not as great, primarily because of the economic state of Manchester. The years of the ‘cotton famine’ were a time of severe hardship for the north-west textile industry and its workers, as a refusal to trade with the Confederate states in America – a principled stand in favour of the North in the Civil War – was followed by a desperate shortage of raw cotton, long after the end of hostilities.
