Europe, Empire, and Spectacle in Nineteenth-Century British Music

by Cowgill,Rachel

• ISBN13: 9780754652083
• ISBN10: 0754652084
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2006-12-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

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

List of Figures	vii
List of Tables, Appendices, and Musical Examples	ix
Notes on Contributors	xii
List of Abbreviations Used in Notes and Contributor Biographies	xvi
Introduction
The Editors	1
Part I Europe: Continental Connections
1 'Hence, base intruder, hence': Rejection and Assimilation in the Early English Reception of Mozart's Requiem
Rachel Cowgill	9
2 William Sterndale Bennett and the Bach Revival in Nineteenth-Century England
Isabel Parrott	29
3 'Le roi est mort, vive le roi': Languages and Leadership in Niecks's Liszt Obituary
Anne Widén	45
4 Promotion through Performance: Liszt's Symphonic Poems in the London Concerts of Walter Bache
Michael Allis	55
5 Henry Hugo Pierson and Shakespearean Tragedy
Julian Rushton	77
6 'The Italians are Coming': Opera in Mid-Victorian Dublin
Paul Rodmell	97
Part II Empire: Britain, Ireland, and Beyond
7 Sir Frederick Bridge and the Musical Furtherance of the 1902 Imperial Project
David Wright	115
8 Attwood's St David's Day: Music, Wales, and War in 1800
Meirion Hughes	131
9 Hamish MacCunn: A Scottish National Composer?
Jennifer Oates	145
10 For the Sake of the Union: The Nation in Stanford's Fourth Irish Rhapsody
Christopher Scheer	159
11 'From ocean to ocean...': How Harriss and Mackenzie Toured British Music Across Canada in 1903
Duncan Barker	171
12 From 'incomprehensibility' to 'meaning': Transcription and Representation of Non-Western Music in Nineteenth-Century British Musicology and Ethnomusicology
Bennett Zon	185
Part III Spectacle: Theatre, Opera, and Internationalism
13 'Behind thy veil close-drawn': Elgar, The Crown of India, and the Feminine 'Other'
Corissa Gould	203
14 Empire and 'Orient' in Opera Libretti set by Sir Henry Bishop and Edward Solomon
Claire Mabilat	221
15 Acting with Music: Henry Irving's Use of the Musical Score in his Production of The Belly
Stephen Cockett	235
16 Handel's Ads awl Galatea: A Victorian View
Roberta Montemorra Marvin	249
17 Blackface Minstrels. Black Minstrels, and their Reception in England
Derek B. Scott	265
Index	281