Musical Networks in Early VictorianManchester
2020
My dissertation demonstrates how a new and distinctive musical culture developed in
the industrialising society of early Victorian Manchester. It challenges a number of
existing narratives relating to the history of music in nineteenth-century Britain, and has
implications for the way we understand the place of music in other industrial societies
and cities. The project is located at the nexus between musicology, cultural history and
social history, and draws upon ideas current in urban studies, ethnomusicology and
anthropology. Contrary to the oft-repeated claim that it was Charles Halle who ‘brought
music to Manchester’ when he arrived in 1848, my archival research reveals a vast
quantity and variety of music-making and consumption in Manchester in the 1830s and
1840s. The interconnectedness of the many strands of this musical culture is
inescapable, and it results in my adoption of ‘networks’ as an organising principle.
Tracing how the networks were formed, developed and intertwined reveals just how
embedded music was in the region’s social and civic life. Ultimately, music emerges as
an agent of particular power in the negotiation and transformation of the concerns
inherent within the new industrial city. The dissertation is structured as a series of
interconnected case studies, exploring areas as diverse as the music profession, glee and
catch clubs, the Hargreaves Choral Society’s programme notes, Mechanics’ Institutions
and the early Victorian public music lecture. These chapters are framed by a Prelude and
a Postlude focusing respectively on Manchester’s Grand Musical Festival of 1836 and Art
Treasures Exhibition of 1857, which provide snapshots of musical life in Manchester at
the start and end of the period under review, inviting consideration of musical and
societal ‘progress’. A concluding chapter synthesises the findings of each case study,
drawing on related historiography and cultural theory, in particular the work of Jurgen
Habermas, Christopher Small and Thomas Turino, to explore how music contributed to
the formation of identity, community and a new way of living in the industrial city.
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