Consuming Passions: Leisure And Pleasure In Victorian Britain - Plot & Excerpts
While he was actually discussing the lack of indigenous composers, had he been discussing concert life in Britain for much of its history he might very well have had a point, because until the late seventeenth century there were simply no public concerts at all as we understand them, and little court-based music-making such as could be found in the palaces of many of Europe’s rulers and aristocracy. Instead, music was a side effect of theatre, or of sociability, of clubs and taverns. In Britain, the earliest concert that charged for admission probably dates to 1672, when a man named John Banister ‘opened an obscure room in a publick house in White fryars; filled it with tables and seats, and made a side box with curtaines for the musick, 1 shilling a piece…Here came…much company to hear; and divers musicall curiositys were presented.’1 Soon after that Tom Britton, the ‘Musical Small Coal Man’, began to hold popular and successful concerts in a room above his coal store.* Not much is known of Britton’s concerts, although Handel may once have played there, and the harpsichordist J.
What do You think about Consuming Passions: Leisure And Pleasure In Victorian Britain?
