More than a pastime

ANN VAN ALLEN-RUSSELL & MEREDITH McFARLANE

Concert life in 18th-century Britain Wadham College Oxford, 3-5 July To celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Holywell Music Room, the Faculty of Music, University of Oxford organised a symposium at Wadham College bringing together leading scholars to focus on concert life in 18th-century Britain. The theme of the conference was the way in which British concert life has contributed to the broader current interest in the social perspective of 18th-century British cultural life, in which music is not merely a form of pastime but is rather intertwined with the political and literary life of the time. This approach has attracted not only musicologists but also social and cultural historians such as William Weber, Paul Langford and John Brewer.

The symposium began with the thought-provoking keynote address by Professor Simon McVeigh (Goldsmiths College London) entitled `The art of networking: mobility and advancement in the concert profession'. McVeigh examined the precarious nature of the so-called concert profession in the 18th century in the light of the many varied activities in which a musician would typically have been involved, including music selling, copying, publishing, teaching and private concerts. Indeed, the aspirations of most musicians would have centred around the latter two activities: public concert-giving would have provided a means for advertising their skills to the fashionable elite. Career advancement relied on two systems of patronage: the traditional, in which aristocratic sponsors provided vital organisational support for musicians, and professional, in which influential musicians provided useful introductions and personal contacts for others, including institutionalised networks such as the musical lodges of the Freemasons and the Royal Society of Musicians. Another key development, and an important area for further research, is the effect of increased travel across Britain of individual musicians, particularly in the summer months. This movement along the 'musicians' trade route', fuelled by improved communications and the evolution of music societies in cultural centres in the late 18th century, led to an increase in the circulation of music and news of London's musical life to provincial areas.

Several papers particularly focused on musical life in Oxford, including discussions concerning sources, concert activity and the key figures involved therein. Professor Donald Burrows (Open University) and Peter Ward Jones (Bodleian Library) explored the contribution of some lesser-known figures in their paper on `Musicians and music copyists in mid-18th-century Oxford'. The musicians discussed, Richard Fawcett and John Awbery, were among those whose hands have been identified in extant manuscripts of the time. Discussion of the complexities involved in the identification of the numerous copyists represented, particularly in the surviving performance parts of the odes and other works of William and Philip Hayes, included comparison of some of the different hands among Oxford copyists and the identification of connections within the Hayes circle.

As a tribute to the Holywell Music Room, Dr Susan Wollenberg (University of Oxford) spoke on `... so much rational and elegant Amusement at an Expence comparatively inconsiderable: the Holywell concerts in the 18thcentury', surveying not only the history of the Music Room but also `the history of the Music Room's history' (the latter area owing much to the work of JH Mee (1911)). The Music Room was built to promote music as an integral part of Oxford life, and the long-term commitment to composers and repertoire (e.g. Handel's Messiah and Haydn's symphonies), and of performers (e.g. JB Malchair and the Hayeses) contributed to its stability and continuity in the latter half of the 18th century. However, upheavals did occasionally strike this close community, including one incident in which a `tumult of young men' targeted Malchair's Cremona violin with an orange.

Another of the more well-documented upheavals in Oxford's musical life provided the focus for a paper by Dr Michael Burden (New College Oxford) on Madame Mara's flouting of concert etiquette. While the prima donna was universally praised for her brilliant and agile vocal technique, her imprudence in failing to observe performance conventions during a series of Oxford concerts in 1785, including her persistent refusals to sing encores or remain standing during the choruses, culminated in a hostile audience reaction. This enmity was effectively formalised by an edict from the Vice-Chancellor of the University forbidding her from ever performing in the town again an affair that was to haunt the rest of her performing career.

Shedding further light on provincial musical life in East Anglia, Dr Peter Holman (Colchester Institute) focused on the 18th-century Colchester partbooks, describing their provenance and publishing history, and the repertoire contained in the five extant volumes. The striking mixture of ancient and modern repertory, representing both English and Continental composers, spans a publishing history in mid-18thcentury London of over forty years. Documentary evidence links the part-books to the performances of the largely amateur-based musical society in Colchester, among whom the clergy (including Thomas Twining) were prominent. This linkage suggests that the repertoire was specifically selected for the use of these musicians, possibly by the lawyer George Wegg, at whose house the meetings were held fortnightly until his death in 1777.