Overview

This voulme in the series A Musical Chronology of the British Isles covers a period of less than forty years, but during this period Britain and its music industry changed completely. In 1880 there was a healthy concert life in the capital and elsewhere, but few composers or musicians who could claim to be world figures. By 1918 the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan were performed throughout the English speaking world, and composers such as Elgar, Parry and, to a lesser degree, Stanford, Vaughan Williams, Coleridge-Taylor, Holst, Bax, Smyth and others had international reputations. Choral music had always cut across class boundaries, particularly in Wales and the north of England, but now the Proms and the Saturday concerts at Crystal Palace reached out to all. Music hall peaked during this period as the new cinema industry began to offer an increasingly sophisticated alternative. The biggest change in music in the home, however, was the introduction of the phonograph and the gramophone. Before the twentieth century music at home meant playing or singing it yourself, or, for the wealthy, hiring others to play. Now there was the possibility of music on demand. Radio, just around the corner in 1918, changed habits even further. This fourth book of seven takes up the story in the year when The Pirates of Penzance opened in London, and Benjamin Disraeli's Conservatives lost the election to William Gladstone's Liberals. It ends just seven weeks after the armistice that ended the First World War in a year when women over thirty had the vote for the first time, and four months before the Original Dixieland Jazz Band brought the jazz age to London. As with previous volumes, brief passages on events in the islands, events in the world of music away from these shores, and significant achievements in other art forms are followed by a chronological journey through the main musical events of each year, including important recordings. At the end of this are listed key publications of books, scores and songs.

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