Music, urban renaissance and space in eighteenth-century England
p. 253-272
Texte intégral
1The present article seeks to relate music, towns and space in eighteenth-century England. Underpinning this agenda is the belief that the development of art forms cannot be understood simply in terms of their own internal dynamics, but have to be seen as part of a wider amalgam of phenomena and forces. For the purpose of my article, this amalgam is represented by the notion of an urban renaissance – an efflorescence of sophisticated, fashionable culture in English provincial towns and cities, which can be discerned from the late seventeenth century. The focus will therefore be on music as part and parcel of some larger process, and on the century before 1780. Because England at this stage was such a dynamic society, in the early throes of the “First Industrial Revolution”, many developments were underway – such as in the production, delivery, and social function of culture – which were to mature only in the nineteenth century. Eighteenth-century England was, in this sense, a laboratory of cultural change, pioneering developments of great long-term significance.
2The opening section will summarise the thesis of an urban renaissance. The following sections will then address specifically the issue of music and space, treating space in two senses. First, as a material, topographical phenomenon. This will lead to an exploration of the physical location of high-status music; of the type of towns which it was concentrated in, and, within towns, of the sort of venues it occupied. Second, space as a socio-cultural phenomenon. This will prompt, for example, an examination of the ways in which music reflected and articulated the social structure. Spaces on the ground often echo spaces in the mind, and it will be an aim of this paper to investigate the way in which the physical and the mental were interrelated.
I
3Following the pioneering work (published in the 1970s) of Peter Clark, Paul Slack, Charles Phythian-Adams and David Palliser, it has been common to see the early modern period in England as one of crisis for English towns1. Some historians have questioned the depth and universality of this crisis2, but it is clear that during the period many towns – including some of the leading centres – experienced serious economic and social problems. Partly as a consequence of these, partly as a result of the impact of the Reformation, it has been claimed that towns also underwent a cultural crisis, which affected not only individual cultural forms (such as architecture, drama, ritual and music), but also the image and status of the urban system as a whole. Though there was a tendency at first among historians to portray the whole of the early modern period in this pessimistic light, it is now generally recognised that, after c. 1660, towns entered a far more buoyant phase of development3. London led the way, but by 1700 the provinces were rapidly joining the bandwagon. Many of the social problems towns had faced eased, while a range of new opportunities emerged which turned the urban sector in general into a prosperous and dynamic part of the English economy. Parallel with this, went an expansion and major shake-up in the structure of the urban system – with the rapid growth of new industrial towns, ports and resorts – which preceded such changes in Europe, and foreshadowed the urban revolution of the nineteenth century. One of the most striking features of this transformation in the fortunes of towns was the revival in their cultural influence and status – what is here termed an urban renaissance4.
4Many aspects of the cultural life of towns were drawn into this process of renewal: architecture, planning, walks and gardens, assemblies, sport, printing and publishing, theatre and music. Underpinning the renaissance were a number of common features. First, an emphasis upon the provision of a high-status product, directed at the well-off and fashionable in society. A consequence of this was that towns acquired a new place in the social agenda of the élite; they became places which any gentleman concerned for his prestige and image needed and wanted to visit. Several urban propagandists, such as Richard Nash, at Bath, or Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, in the pages of the Spectator, reinforced this message by satirizing the lifestyle of the traditional rural gentry5. A highly structured annual cycle of short-term events (for example, race and assize weeks) and longer-term occasions (notably “the season”) was constructed to service this growing enthusiasm for urban living. Second, though the new urban culture was targeted at the élite, it was not intended that the successful middling orders (many of whom naturally resided in towns) should be excluded; indeed, town culture helped redefine the notion of a gentleman and the concept of the élite so that they could absorb, for example, members of the professions. It is arguable that it was the substantial middling sort, whose numbers were expanding so rapidly in later Stuart and Georgian Britain, who had the most dynamic social input into the urban renaissance. Third, the economic engine driving the cultural revival was commercialisation. Prestige culture became less and less a product directed at, and tailored for, a specified individual patron; and more and more something made for a market of multiple consumers, whose numbers and identity might only be intuited by the producer. On this road to a commercialised system of production, there were several half-way houses, especially the method of payment by subscription, which flourished in eighteenth-century England, dominating the provision of cultural services in the resorts. Fourth, the urban revival involved not only changes in the way culture was produced and delivered, but also in its character. Metropolitan and international influences came to the fore, at the expense of vernacular and local ones. English towns finally joined the mainstream of European high culture long after classicism, under the umbrella of the Renaissance, had transformed Continental cities. Fifth, although the English urban renaissance catered to a national demand for fashionable leisure and luxury (servicing gentlemen that might be of rural or urban origins), it also reflected the needs of an increasingly confident and ambitious civic constituency and consciousness. The ruling bodies and leading citizens of towns invested growing sums in prestigious public buildings, local-history publications and civic ritual, with the aim of boosting the image of their communities – and thereby of themselves.
II
5Music was an integral part of the urban renaissance. The remainder of this article will concentrate on what this movement meant for music, specifically in terms of space. It should be said, however, that it is invidious to peel off one aspect of culture from another. All forms interacted with each other; that was how contemporaries would have experienced them. For this reason regular allusions will be made to architecture, gardens, assemblies, theatre, and so on, as well as to music.
6Where was public commercialised music-making located? This question will be answered initially by examining the type of towns most likely to host the new forms of musical fashion, before proceeding to investigate the venues and sites within urban centres where performances occurred. London was by far and away the most important musical centre in England. This was hardly surprising given its extraordinary growth in the early modern period, to the point by 1700, that, it housed half a million people, or ten per cent, of the nation’s population, and was with Paris (which it was soon to overtake) the largest city in Western Europe. The three major innovations in public performance in England were pioneered and developed in the post-Restoration Metropolis; commercial concerts (introduced by John Banister and Thomas Britton in the 1670s), the musical festival (originating in the annual choral service of the Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy), and musical theatre (originally in the form of what Roger North called the “semi-opera” as seen in the works of Purcell, but later maturing into full-blown opera, with the import of Italian productions). London’s dominant position was reinforced by its role as the centre of musical publishing and instrument-making6.
7The Capital may have been pre-eminent, but during the eighteenth century, the new modes of public music spread widely through the urban system. County towns – the regional administrative, social and consumer capitals of the rural gentry – would often run regular subscription concerts (frequently organised by a music club or society) during the winter season, and mount one-off performances of instrumental and vocal works during race and assize weeks. York, for example, had a music assembly, founded by at least 1730, which occupied a weekly Friday slot during the winter season; the remaining days of the week were filled with a dancing assembly (Monday), a card assembly (Wednesday), and theatre performances (Tuesday and Thursday)7. In 1760–61 there were twenty concerts from mid-October to early March, for which a subscription ticket cost half a guinea, and tickets for individual performances half a crown8. During August Race Week, the high point in the city’s social calendar, daily morning concerts were mounted by the music assembly and visiting artists; in 1752 it was ordered by the directors of the Assembly Rooms that:
Signor Galli have the use of the Rooms for his concert on Wednesday morning in the Race Week, and that Signor Gardini have the use of the Rooms any other morning Thursday excepted, that day being appointed for the concert for the benefit of the Music Assembly. And that Signor Frasi have the use of them any other vacant morning in the said week after Signor Gardini hath fixed on his morning9.
8The York Musical Society, which may have been founded as early as 1676, was certainly in operation a century later, meeting on alternate weeks during the season10. Regular weekly concerts (organised from 1724 by a concert society) became a feature of Norwich’s musical life; the city also hosted opera and concerts during assize week, held an annual St Cecilia’s Day feast by at least 1714 and a full music festival from 1770, and in the last two decades of the century founded several singing societies. Sylas Neville, who settled permanently in Norwich from 1783 with the intention of practising as a physician, was a keen member of the music society; in September 1784 he attended
a very full concert at the Assembly-room & the best music performed in Norwich for many years in the opinion of the best judges. Two songs by Master Hague; The Soldier tired of War’s Alarms by Mr Leoni, his voice always feigned, is not so good as it was. Violoncello, Reeve; Oboe, Sharp; Violin, Manini, no mean performer11.
9Significantly, York and Norwich were not only county centres, but also cathedral towns. The long tradition of music-making in these places, and the presence of an in-built pool of singers based at the cathedral, not to mention the clergy’s inherent interest in music, ensured that diocesan capitals were especially important provincial locations for concert life. The diary of the physician, Claver Morris, shows how even a small cathedral town such as Wells in Somerset could support a thriving music club; from the beginning of the eighteenth century, this met on a weekly basis in the Vicar’s Hall. The high point in the club’s year came on St Cecilia’s Day, when special concerts were mounted; on 22 November 1709 Morris recorded, “It being the anniversary of St Cecilia, I was the greatest part of the day at Close-Hall with the Lovers of Musick [...] performing Purcel’s Cecilia Song & much other musick. We had of Half Crown Men 62”12. Salisbury was mounting regular St Cecilia Day celebrations by at least 1700, from which date – if not before – there also existed a “Society of Lovers of Musick”. The St Cecilia concerts appear to have evolved into a full-blown festival, which by 1748 had been extended to two days, and from 1768 to three13. Cathedral towns appear to have been particularly influential in developing the musical festival. One of the earliest and most important of this genre was the “Three Choirs Festival”, which was founded in the late 1710s and rotated annually between Worcester, Hereford and Gloucester. In 1756, when it was held at Hereford, there were three days of concerts, with religious choral works in the cathedral in the morning, and oratorios, opera and instrumental pieces in the College Hall in the evening. That the festival was as much a social as a musical event was indicated by the presence of special ordinaries or feasts at the leading local inns, and by “a ball each night in the College-Hall, for the gentlemen and ladies who favour the concerts with their company; no person will be admitted without a concert ticket14. Spa and seaside resorts, effectively a new category of town catering to the health and leisure needs of fashionable society15, were also important centres of provincial music-making. With large numbers of well-off visitors, desperately keen to fill the long hours of the day, concerts, recitals, and opera became part of the staple fare of recreations on offer. In the second half of the eighteenth century, Bath acquired a formidable reputation for its subscription concerts, guided by series of able and enterprising promoters. The most influential of these was the highly reputed Italian castrate singer and composer, Venanzio Rauzzini, who was appointed musical director in the 1780s, and – it was generally accepted – raised musical standards in the city to a level equal with anywhere in the kingdom, including London. One contributory factor to this was no doubt the rich musical infrastructure of teaching and consumer services which the spa supported. The Improved Bath Guide of 1812 was able to list almost forty “professors of music, teachers of the harp, piano-forte, flute, & c. and musicsellers”16.
10It is hardly surprising that the fashionable musical activity should have been concentrated in fashionable towns. But we should not dismiss the significance of more workaday places, such as prosperous ports and industrial centres. Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and Yarmouth had all established music clubs and/or subscription concert series before the mid-eighteenth century. Newcastle, for example, held subscription concerts in the Assembly Rooms from at least 1735, with tickets costing one guinea for the season; and during the 1750s, a Marcello Society was founded devoted to the performance of choral music, and in particular Benedetto Marcello’s Psalms17. Nor should we assume that it was only the larger centres which hosted the new musical life. Music societies and concerts proliferated throughout the provinces, so that even small towns were swept up in the craze. In Norfolk and Suffolk, towns as small as Beccles, Fakenham, Saxmundham, and Swaffham (communities of under 3,000 inhabitants, and probably under 2,000) had mounted concert series by 176018.
11It was natural that commercialised, public music-making should be an urban phenomenon. But where exactly in towns were performances located? One answer might be, everywhere and nowhere. Music was very slow to develop dedicated venues. Scarcely more than a handful of specialized public music rooms appear to have been established in England by the late eighteenth century. In the provinces there was the Holywell Music Room (built c. 1742–48) in Oxford, Francis Christian’s new Music Room (opened 1770) in Norwich, and possibly a concert room advertised at Bath in 175519. London, despite its size, appears to have fared little better for dedicated establishments; there were Thomas Hickford’s rooms (opened 1713), the Hanover Square Rooms (opened 1775), and the concert room opened in 1794 alongside the new King’s Theatre. Overall, London was not short of musical venues, but these were generally all-purpose halls and premises, such as the rotundas at Vauxhall and Ranelagh pleasure gardens20. It seems then that, in the vast majority of cases in and outside the Metropolis, performances took place in locations which had been primarily constructed for purposes other than the delivery of music. Inns, taverns, town-and guildhalls, livery company halls, schoolrooms, dancing-masters’ premises, churches, and chapels were all very popular. The use of non-specialised buildings in this way was common to other forms of urban leisure, such as assemblies and drama, developing during the early phase of the urban renaissance. In these formative years, promoters had to make do with whatever suitable public spaces were available. However, in the cases of assemblies and plays, specially constructed venues were beginning to appear in substantial numbers by the mid-eighteenth century21. Music may have lagged behind because – unlike, say, drama- it was an adaptable and flexible form of entertainment that could be easily accommodated in existing spaces. This could not, of course, be said for opera – but then the new purpose-built theatres were often used to house this. It must also be added that it is a moot point to what extent contemporaries perceived spoken drama and musical drama as separate forms of entertainment. It was not uncommon for theatre companies to maintain their own band of musicians, and one of the ways used to bypass the terms of the Theatre Act of 1737 was to bill plays as concerts, with the drama confined to the so-called interludes22. One of the most favoured venues for instrumental and vocal concerts was the new breed of assembly rooms. It was the building of these often handsome establishments, seemingly dedicated to dancing but in practice acting as multi-purpose centres of polite leisure, that did most to obviate the need to construct specialised music rooms. The subscription concerts at Bath and York were both accommodated in the cities’ splendid assembly rooms, and were a vital part of the regime sustained by these institutions.
12The failure of music to generate large numbers of specialised establishments reinforces the impression of its omnipresent character in eighteenth-century English towns. Music permeated so many locations and aspects of polite urban living. In the case of several pastimes, it bathed participants in a wash of background sound, which they may have been barely conscious of, but which acted as a powerful social lubricant. In Bath and Tunbridge Wells, a small band of musicians was employed to play continuously at the drinking and bathing facilities. At Tunbridge “Musick [was] maintained by the Company to play in the morning so long while they drink the waters and in the afternoon for the danceing”, and it was “customary for the gentlemen [...] frequently to give a public breakfast to the whole company without exception: which in fine weather, is often given under the trees upon the open walk, and attended with music the whole time”23. Musicians at Bath and Tunbridge supplemented their earnings by serenading fashionable visitors on their arrival at the spa, a ritual designed to mark the entry of newcomers into the resort community. In 1766 the Cornish clergyman John Penrose reported
the City Music came to the Door of our Lodgings with a Welcome to Mr., Mrs. and Miss Penrose to Bath. Whether or no the Music was enchanting as that of Orpheus, in Poetic Story, I am not judge enough [...] but if he made Stones and Trees dance after his Lyre, the Bath Musicians made Silver dance out of Mamma’s Pocket. [...] We are credibly informed, their attempts are succeeded by a like effect on almost every Stranger that comes here24.
13The commercial pleasure gardens which were such a feature of London’s social life, and were also establishing a presence in the more important provincial towns, offered not only walks, trees, and shrubs, but also a wealth of musical activity – instrumental and vocal concerts, burletta and opera. As well as enclosed structures (such as the spectacular rotundas at Vauxhall and Ranelagh) for use on wet evenings, gardens like Marylebone and Vauxhall had open-air bandstands and orchestras. An account of the latter garden in 1739 described how, in the middle of the main concourse stood
a beautiful orchestra for the band of musick, which consists of the best hands upon every instrument in modern use: and from that a little bridge of four or five yards reaches to an elegant edifice, wherein is placed an excellent organ; which has lately been fitted to several new pieces of entertainment, particularly a symphony of singing birds, which never fails to meet with the loud applause of all present.
14Other novelties at Vauxhall included the Musical Bushes, where a subterranean band entranced passers by with fairy music25. An essential aspect of the assemblies, which were proliferating in English towns from the early eighteenth century, was the presence of a group of musicians to accompany the dancing and socialising. In some of the assembly rooms, an elevated minstrels gallery was built, from which a continuous stream of music could be broadcast to the company. Such structures varied from the tiny box, accessible only via a ladder, erected in the assembly room at the baroque Court House at Warwick (built c. 1730), to the elegant series of linked galleries in the Upper Rooms at Bath (opened in 1771), which serviced not only the ballroom, but also the adjacent Octagon (originally used for card playing) and Tea Room26. In addition to the places and pastimes described above, it should be remembered that music continued to be an important (and perhaps increasingly important) aspect of urban religious and church life, with a whole breed of organists – of high artistic and entrepreneurial calibre – emerging to provide musical leadership in their towns; men such as Thomas Chilcot and William Herschel in Bath, Capel Bond in Coventry, Charles Burney in King’s Lynn and Charles Avison in Newcastle-upon-Tyne27. Music was also an important feature of the expanding civic ritual which characterised post-Restoration towns. This brought music out on to the streets to accompany the frequent civic processions. In 1743, for example, the huge cavalcade assembled in Bristol to march through the city to open the new Exchange included “the City Musick, with the Addition of Two French Horns”; and as part of the annual mayoral inauguration ceremony in eighteenth-century Norwich, the corporation processed through the city “with trumpet sounding, the City music playing along the streets”28.
III
15Music was therefore – in a sense – everywhere in eighteenth-century towns. But space is not simply a physical phenomenon. It is also a state of mind. Treated as a mental formulation, it becomes part of social and cultural experience in general. In this context, and with special reference to music (though also keeping in mind the programme of an urban renaissance as a whole), three types of “mental” space will be examined: public, inclusive, and exclusive.
16Central to the English urban renaissance was the notion of public space. In this it paralleled the European Enlightenment’s emphasis, as Habermas has argued, on the public sphere29. For a gentleman this required him to think and act in a way that transcended his own private territory and vision; he should literally become a public animal, open to external influences, and willing to socialise with people beyond his own immediate circle. This was where the town came into its own. The traditional gateway for ideas, fashions and peoples from outside to enter local communities, and the natural venue for large-scale socialising, the town offered the country gentleman access to the public sphere. It now became incumbent on the rural aristocracy and gentry – if they were to conform to the ascendant norms of behaviour – to vacate their country estates annually and visit the town. Some might even go the whole hog and choose to reside there permanently. At the same time, there was a growing body of wealthy citizens who, given the new cultural kudos of towns, now had little incentive to disinvest in urban living in pursuit of the traditional prestige of a country estate. The precondition of all this was that towns had to offer a package of consumer and recreational facilities that together constituted a polite public sphere of viable dimensions. It was a challenge that the new commercialised music went a good way to meet. With production and performance orientated increasingly towards the market rather than individual patrons, there was the opportunity for music-making to become more and more a “mass” experience. This was so not only in the sense of larger audiences, but also in the composition of pieces of a more public character. Robbins Landon has argued of Haydn’s string quartets Op. 71 and 74, written in the 1790s for Salomon’s concerts in London’s Hanover Square rooms, that their public character is “entirely different from the leisurely, more ‘detailed’ and much more intimate works” which he “had previously written for the Austrian and Hungarian connoisseurs30 “. Haydn was one of a stream of European composers and performers drawn to England by the rich pickings to be made in its commercialised music industry. Their presence enormously widened the musical horizons of the English élite, and – through the mediating influence of towns – gave this élite direct access to the European Enlightenment and a public sphere of international dimensions.
17One consequence of the growth of the public sphere was a new opportunity to develop the notion of inclusive space. This involved the gathering together of the élite in contexts which were overtly sociable, integrative, and to a degree egalitarian. The idea was not simply that people met and interacted publicly, but that, in the process of their social intercourse, they developed a sense of corporate identity. This evolved to its most sophisticated level in the spa and seaside resorts that sprang up all over Britain between the late seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries. At these locations, the corporate ideal was embodied in the contemporary term “the company”, a notional community to which all fashionable visitors owed allegiance, and from which they derived the security and social pleasures of a collective life-style. Inclusive space was physically represented by the various public venues in the resort – pump room, assembly room, theatre, walks, etc.; intellectually and psychologically it was embodied in the pastimes that filled these locations. The subscription system, in which an advance payment was made to cover the costs of a given number of performances, was widely used to fund concerts, and involved a collective commitment to music-making on the part of the body of visitors. Moreover, once payment had been made, there was a strong incentive for subscribers to attend all the series (so as to obtain value for money), thereby encouraging an ongoing programme of social interaction. The music itself, with its emphasis on the mellifluous blending of sounds and instruments, demonstrated the potential of the whole to create something more than its discrete parts, and therefore symbolised and stimulated the wider notions of personal and social harmony. When Thomas Naish delivered a sermon to the Society of Lovers of Music at Salisbury in 1700, he reminded his audience that “as the true pleasure of life consists in the due and regular obedience of our passions, so music serves to bring them into harmony and order”, an opinion echoed by the Newcastle-upon-Tyne composer Charles Avison, when he argued in 1752 that “every species of sound must tend to dispel the malevolent passions [...] it is the peculiar quality of music to raise the sociable and happy passions, and to subdue the contrary ones”31. On the practical level, the integration of individual performers into a single musical team provided both an exercise in, and a model of, corporate behaviour. This sense of involvement in a common activity was strengthened by the custom, on occasions, of permitting gentleman musicians to join the professional performers. At the prestigious subscription concert breakfasts in mid-eighteenth-century Bath, “such People of Rank and Fortune as were skilled in Musick, took a Pleasure in joining [...] with the common Band of Performers”, and this practice would have been widespread in the music societies of non-resort towns32. Another factor which contributed to the sense of music as inclusive space was the frequent association of concerts with charitable activity. The Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy’s annual concert, the Three Choirs Festival and the Birmingham Festival (inaugurated in 1768) all raised money for worthy causes, and between 1750 and 1777 London’s Foundling Hospital hosted annual charity performances of Handel’s Messiah33. Giving, while enjoying the pleasures of music, highlighted the apparent ties between the benefactor and the wider community.
18Yet the community as a whole was not what the audience had in mind when they attended a fashionable concert. Indeed, quite the opposite. Musical clubs and societies, festivals and subscription concerts were perceived as exclusive organisations and occasions. The inclusive ideal applied only to those eligible to enter the charmed circle; it was not intended to embrace society as a whole. In this context inclusive space reinforced the sense of identity within the élite, but thereby generated – paradoxically – a contrary notion of exclusive space. Commercialised, polite music became one of the avenues through which certain groups in society – the traditional gentry and the wealthy middling orders – attempted to differentiate and separate themselves from the common mass of society. The most overt mechanism of exclusion was pricing. However, an even more effective barrier was probably that imposed by the informal costs – in terms of clothing and education – that concert-goers would necessarily incur if they were to be able to realise the occasion’s potential for the acquisition of status. Many early subscription concerts appear to have operated a single pricing system, with little apparent attempt to zone the audience by cost. However, as Simon McVeigh has demonstrated, access to the prestigious concerts mounted in late-eighteenth-century London was highly controlled, with a single expensive subscription ticket (ideally, no tickets would be issued for individual performances) and aristocratic oversight of enrolment and artistic policy. William Weber has argued that a sharply differentiated pricing system operated in London in the 1840s – certainly in comparison with Vienna – supporting a musical world of more socially stratified concerts and “more isolated publics”34. These trends were a response to the great expansion both in the quantity and the social character of demand for commercialised fashionable music that is evident by the later eighteenth century. More and more people – including now the lower middle class and even the upper stratum of the working class – aspired to enter the world of social prestige. Consequently, there was growing pressure to differentiate space within this world. It was a trend distinguishable across the entire spectrum of polite leisure. The rise of private clubs and parties is detectable in Bath from the late eighteenth century, in the resorts of South Devon from about the 1820s, and in Cheltenham and Leamington in the 1830s and 1840s; and the last years of the eighteenth century saw in London the growth in formal private concerts at aristocratic town houses35. The eighteenth-century notion of the undivided company., and the ideal of inclusive space, were increasingly difficult to sustain in the social transformation induced by the Industrial Revolution.
19Physical space and socio-cultural space should not be perceived as separate entities. The assembly rooms at Bath, for example, which accommodated the subscription concerts, clearly had a hard topographical identity and location. They could be pinpointed on a tourist map of the spa (surrounded by leisure facilities and residential buildings of similarly high social prestige), and possessed a unique architectural form. And yet they were also a symbolic institution, and constituted a form of mental space. Through the activities which they housed, they came to embody and represent the public sphere, the inclusive community of polite society, and the exclusive character of the élite. The assembly rooms were therefore both a space on the ground and a space in the mind. In this sense the urban renaissance described in this article, which included the rise of a new world of commercialised music, can be seen as both a material and a mental process: one that not only transformed the appearance and cultural life of towns, but also reshaped the social mentality of England’s ruling orders.
Annexe
Résumé/Zusammenfassung
Musique, renaissance urbaine et espace dans l’Angleterre du XVIIIe siècle
Le secteur urbain jouissait depuis la fin du XVIIe siècle d’un essor économique qui contribua au renouveau de la vie culturelle dans les villes, se traduisantpar un vaste choix deproduits à la mode et de formes de loisir. L’un des aspects de ce renouveau fut l’apparition d’une musique à caractère public et commercial. Londres, de loin le centre le plus important, joua un rôle moteur dans ces évolutions. En province, les lieuxprépondérants étaient les chefs-lieux, les villes épiscopales et les cités balnéaires, où s’établirent des sociétés de musique, des séries régulières de concerts à souscription etparfois même desfestivals. Au-delà de ces lieux où se concentrait l’essentiel de la vie musicale publique, cette nouvelle évolution culturelle envahit peu à peu le tissu urbain jusqu’à atteindre les villes industrielles et portuaires en pleine expansion, voire les marchés régionaux de taille plus modeste. Dans les villes, la musiquefut relativement lente à occuper des lieux propres; elle utilisait des bâtiments publics, adaptés pour l’occasion. Le nombre réduit de lieux spécifiques reflète toutefois l’une des principales forces de la musique, à savoir son caractère extraordinairement polyvalent, qui lui permet de s’adapter à diverses formes de loisirs et de rituels de la société bourgeoise.
L’espace n’est pas seulement un phénomène physique; considéré du point de vue de l’histoire des mentalités, il fait aussi partie de l’expérience sociale et culturelle en général. L’essor urbain et les nouvelles formes de musique à caractère public et commercial donnèrent naissance à trois types d’espace: l’espace public, l’espace qui fédère et l’espace qui exclut. Les sociétés de musique et les clubs, les concerts réguliers à souscription, les festivals annuels ainsi que les compositions s’adressant à un public plus large contribuèrent chacun à créer une sphèrepublique. Ces phénomènes, à leur tour, incitèrent les membres de la gentry traditionnelle à quitter chaque année leurs domaines ruraux pour consacrer une partie de leur temps aux relations sociales en ville. Ainsi naquit l’idée d’un espace fédérateur, exprimépar le terme contemporain d’«association», dans lequel les couches sociales cultivées formaient une communauté relativement égalitaire, unies par des activités culturelles et des normes communes: le système de souscription, impliquant un engagement collectif de l’association dans l’organisation de la vie musicale; le type de musiquejouée, qui insistait sur l’harmonie des sons; enfin, la manière dont les exécutants s’assemblaient pour jouer en créant un corps unifié de musiciens, tout concourait à favoriser l’intégration. Par ailleurs, ilallait de soi que l’association était réservée à ceux qui étaient considérés comme des gentlemen ou leur équivalent féminin. Paradoxalement, non seulement l’espace fédérateur créait le concept opposé d’espace exclusif, mais il dépendait également de lui. En effet, la plupart des loisirs urbains du XVIIIe siècle répondaient à ces deux conceptions de l’espace. Mais, avec la montée rapide des classes moyennes à lafin du siècle (et leur aspiration croissante au statut de gentleman), il devint difficile de concilier les deux notions, et l’influence de l’espace fédérateur déclina au profit de formes d’espace de plus en plus différenciées, hiérarchiques et exclusives. Cela explique sans doute la privatisation et la stratification croissantes de la vie musicale publique.
Musik, Renaissance der Stadt und Raum in England im 18. Jahrhundert
Seit dem späten 17. Jahrhundert erlebten die englischen Städte einen neuen okonomischen Aufschwung. Ein wichtiges Element dieser Entwicklung war die Entfaltung des kulturellen Lebens in den Stàdten mit zahlreichen modischen Produkten und neuen Formen der Muẞe. Ein Aspekt dieser kulturellen Entwicklungen war das Entstehen eines kommerzialisierten Musiklebens in den Städten. London, zweifellos das wichtigste Zentrum dieses kulturellen Aufschwungs, wirkte dabei als Motor. Auch in den wichtigsten Orten der Provinz, den Kreisstàdten, Bischofssitzen und Seebädern entstanden zahlreiche Musikgesellschaften, die regelmässige Subskriptionskonzerte und mitunter sogar Festivals veranstalteten. Wenngleich sich die öffentlichen Musikdarbietungen in diesen Orten konzentrierten, erreichte die kulturelle Erneuerung bald auch die aufstrebenden Industriestàdte undHäfen undselbst die kleinen lokalen Marktzentren. In den Stàdten entstanden erst allmählich eigene Veranstaltungsräumefur die Musik; man nutzte anfangs vielmehr weiterhin eine Reihe von geeigneten öffentlichen Gebäuden. Der Mangel an eigens der Musik gewidmeten Räumen spiegeltjedoch diegrundsätzliche Stärke der Musik und ihren ausserοrdentlich allgegenwärtigen Charakter in den englischen Städten des 18. Jahrhunderts, der es ihr ermöglichte, sich vielen Dimensionen der geselligen Freizeit und des bürgerlichen Rituals anzupassen.
Raum ist nicht nur ein physikalisches Phänomen; in einer mentalitätshistorischen Perspektive ist der Raum Teil der sozialen und kulturellen Erfahrung. Im Aufschwung der Städte und der Entwicklung neuer Formen eines kommerzialisierten Musikpublikums entstanden drei Typen von sozio-kulturellen Rdumen: öffentliche, inklusive und exklusive Räume. Die Musikgesellschaften und Clubs mit ihren regelmässigen Subskriptionskonzerten, die jdhrlichen Festivals sowie Kompositionen für ein grösseres Publikum schufen eine Ojfentlichkeit. Diese zwang die traditionale gentry, alljährlich ihre Landsitze zu verlassen und einen Teil ihres sozialen Kalenders einer urbanen Geselligkeit zu öffnen. Das wiederum führte zur Entstehung des Konzepts als eines inklusiven soziokulturellen Raumes, das der zeitgenössische Terminus «die Gesellschaft» treffendauf den Begriff brachte. In ihr verband sich die gebildete Gesellschaftsschichtzu einer relativ egalitären Gemeinschaft mit gemeinsamen kulturellen Praktiken und Normen. Diese Inklusivitdt wurde durch das Subskriptionssystem getragen, das das gemeinschaftliche Engagement der Gesellschaft in der Organisation des Musiklebens implizierte; dann durch die gespielte Musik mit ihrer Betonung der harmonischen Verbindung der Tone, und schliesslich durch ihre Aufführungspraktiken, die die Musizierenden zu einem einheitlichen Korper verschmolzen. Gleichwohl verstand es sich von selbst, dass die Aufnahme in diese Gesellschaft sich auf diejenigen beschränkte, die den A nspruchen des gentleman bzw. seines weiblichen Äquivalents genugten. Die Vorstellung eines inklusiven sozio-kulturellen Raumes schuf paradoxerweise nicht nur das Gegenkonzept des exklusiven sozio-kulturellen Raumes, sondern beide Konzepte bedingten einander. Zahlreiche Formen der urbanen Geselligkeit des 18. Jahrhunderts genugten durchaus beiden Raumvorstellungen. Mit dem explosiven Wachstum der «Mittelklassen» seit Ausgangdes 18. jahrhunderts und dem wachsenden Anspruch aufden Status des gentleman wurde es schwieriger, die inhärenten Spannungen zwischen beiden Raumvorstellungen zu versohnen. Der Einfluss des ständisch organisierten Raumes schwand durch zunehmend dijferenziertere, hierarchische und exklusive Formen des sozio-kulturellen Raumes. Eine der Konsequenzen dieser Entwicklung war sicherlich eine verstärkte Privatisierung und Stratifizierung des öffentlichen Musiklebens.
Notes de bas de page
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3 McInnes, A. [n.d.], The English Town 1660–1760 London, Historical Association; Jones, E.L. and M.E. Falkus 1979, “Urban Improvement and the English Economy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries”, in: Uselding, P.J. (ed.), Research in Economic History. Greenwich, Conn., Jai Press, T. 4: 193–233; Clark, P. (ed.) 1981, Country Towns in Pre-industrial England. Leicester, Leicester University Press; Id. 1984, The Transformation of English Provincial Towns 1600–1800. London, Hutchinson; Corfield, P. 1982, The Impact of English Towns 1700–1800 Oxford, Oxford University Press; Borsay, P. 1990, The Eighteenth-Century Town: A Reader in English Urban History 1688–1820. Harlow, Longman.
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7 York City Archives (YCA), M. 23/1, Assembly Rooms: Directors’ Minute Book 1730–58, 24 March 1732/3, 7 November 1737, 6 February 1744/5; YCA, M. 23/3, “Proposals for Building by Subscription, Assembly-Rooms, in the City of York”, clause IV; Rosenfeld, S. 1939, Strolling Players and Drama in the Provinces 1660–1765. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 106–167.
8 Looney, J.J. 1983, “Advertising and Society in England, 1720–1820: A Statistical Analysis of Yorkshire Newspaper Advertisements”, Doctoral dissertation, Princeton University: 167.
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10 Sadie, S. (ed.). 1980, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. London, Macmillan, T. XX: 575; Looney, J.J. 1983 [note 8]: 174f
11 Cozens-Hardy, B. (ed.) 1950, The Diary of Sylas Neville 1767–1788. London, Oxford University Press: 323; see also Fawcett, T. 1979, Music in Eighteenth-Century Norwich and Norfolk. Norwich, Centre of East Anglian Studies; Tilmouth, M. 1983, “The Beginnings of Provincial Concert Life in England”, in: Hogwood, C. and R. Luckert, (eds), Music in Eighteenth-Century England. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: II; Sadie, S. 1980 [note 10], T. VI: 175.
12 Hobhouse, E. (ed.) 1934, The Diary of a West Country Physician A.D. 1684–17261 Rochester, Stanhope Press: 39–43, 58, et passim.
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14 Shaw, W. 1954, The Three Choirs Festival. Worcester and London, Ebenezer Baylis: 1–29; The GloucesterJournal25, 7 September 1756.
15 Hembry, P. 1990, The English Spa 1560–1815: A Social History. London, Athlone; Walton, J.K. 1983, The English Seaside Resort: A Social History 1750–1914. Leicester, Leicester University Press.
16 Sadie, S. 1980 [note 10], T. II: 285f; Turner, A.J. 1977, Science and Music in Eighteenth Century Bath. Bath, University of Bath; Black, C. 1911, The Linleys of Bath. London, Martin Secker; James, K. 1990, “Venanzio Rauzzini and the Search for Musical Perfection”, Bath History 3: 90–113; The Improved Bath Guide: Or Picture of Bath and its Environs [1812]. Bath, Wood and Co: 130.
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18 Sadie, S. 1958–1959, “Concert Life in Eighteenth-century England”, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 85: 22; Fawcett, T. 1979 [note 11]: 36; Clark, P. and J. Hosking 1993, Population Estimates of Small English Towns 1550–1851. Revised edition. Leicester, Centre for Urban History, University of Leicester: 105108,137f., 141f.
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27 Barry, J. 1993, “Cultural Patronage and the Anglican Crisis: Bristol c. 1689 1775”, in: J. Walsh, C. Hayoun and S. Taylor (eds), The Church of England c. 1689–c. 1833: From Toleration to Tractarianism. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 194– 198; Sadie, S. 1980 [note 10], T. I.: 748751, T. II: 286, T. IV: 227, T. XVIII: 793; Smith, J.S. 1945 [note 17]: 10f., 14,19, 21, 24; Fawcett, T. 1979 [note 11]: 33–37; Stephens, W.B. (ed.) 1969, Victoria County History: A History of Warwickshire. 8 vols. London, Oxford University Press: 224; Sadie, S. 1958–1959 [note 18]: 23.
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29 Castiglione, D. and L. Sharpe (eds) 1995, Shifting the Boundaries: Transformation of the Languages of Public and Private in the Eighteenth Century. Exeter, University of Exeter Press.
30 Robbins Landon, H.C. 1973, “The’ Salomon’ String Quartets Op. 71 and 74”, in: Haydn String Quartets. London, Decca Recording Company, T. 9: 8.
31 Naish, T. 1701, A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of Sarum, Novemb. 22, 1700, before a Society of Lovers of Music. London: 12f.; Avison, C. 1752, An Essay on Musical Expression. London: 5, 8.
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