Scott Derek B. Sounds of the Metropolis: The 19th Century Popular Music Revolution in London, New York, Paris and Vienna

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rope, despite Charles Hamm’s calling the minstrel song “the ﬁrst dis-

tinctly American genre.”

Europeans ﬁrst acquired knowledge of the

music making of African Americans through the distorting medium of

blackface minstrelsy. In Germany, for example, some minstrel songs

were published as genuine “Negro airs.” Reception could also differ sig-

niﬁcantly in the European cultural context. The Ethiopian Serenaders

were hugely successful in London in 1846, and performed before Queen

Victoria; yet, they were a ﬂop in Paris the following year. The argument

of chapter 7 is that the representation of the Cockney in music hall

went through three successive phases. It began as a parody of working-

class life; then it turned into a more complex stage type played by char-

acter actors. It ended, ﬁnally, with a confusion of the real and imagi-

nary in which the performer was seen as a “real” Cockney and no

longer acting. Once this ﬁnal phase had been reached, however, per-

formers began to derive their stage representation no longer from the

ﬂesh-and-blood Cockney but, instead, by replicating already-existing

representations. Chapter 8 investigates the music of the artistic cabarets

of Montmartre, especially the Chat Noir, and ﬁnds a contradictory char-

acter in its reception. Aristide Bruant’s chansons, for example, have

been regarded as a mouthpiece for the Parisian underclass, but evi-

dence shows they also served as entertainment for the afﬂuent who en-

joyed “slumming” in Montmartre. I argue for an interpretation of the

chansons modernes that locates their meaning and value in the context

of debates about the modern, the popular, and the avant-garde. They

need to be understood as part of a new type of artistic cabaret that en-

gaged with the contradictions and complexities of modernity, and spread

quickly throughout Europe (to the Quatre Gats, Barcelona, the Elf

Scharfrichter, Munich, the Schall und Rauch, Berlin, and Die Fleder-

maus, Vienna).

12 Sounds of the Metropolis

THE SOCIAL

CONTEXT OF THE

POPULAR MUSIC

REVOLUTION

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Professionalism and

Commercialism

The reasons the cities that are the focus of this study became important

musical centers are to be found in the social and economic conditions

that gave rise to an active concert life in each of them. William Weber

says that by 1848 a commercial concert world had emerged in London,

Paris, and Vienna, “over which the middle class exerted powerful, if not

dominant, control.”

Antagonisms provoked by commercial interests in

music began in the same period. Richard Leppert relates the “implicit

social antagonism in the ideological foundation of much nineteenth-

century aesthetics” to artists’ increased dependence on the cultural mar-

ket capitalism was creating.

Leonard Meyer has commented, “even as

they scorned and mocked the middle class, the artists of the nineteenth

century created for it.”

Some composers depended for their livelihood

on the wealthy bourgeoisie, and some musicians played low-status

music because they could not ﬁnd employment playing high-status

music. This was also the age of musical entrepreneurialism, when many

new opportunities for professionalism arose as new markets, such as

blackface minstrelsy, the café-concert, and music hall, were opened up

(see chapter 2).

The ﬁrst company of minstrels established in New

York was under the management of E. P. Christy at Palmo’s Opera

House, but “seeing a prospect of establishing themselves permanently

in the Metropolis,” they moved to Mechanic’s Hall. Their subsequent

and rapid ﬁnancial success is indicated by the following ﬁgures. In

1852, they gave 69 concerts and made $1,848; in 1853, they gave 312

concerts and made $47,972.

In Britain, the Era Almanack, an annual

publication related to the music hall periodical the Era, listed 862 mu-

sical acts in 1868; ten years on it listed 1,896.

Many of these music hall

performers migrated to pantomime at Christmas. In 1891, 1,010 artists

were performing in 85 theatres in London and the provinces during the

Christmas season.

While Britain’s population doubled in the sixty

years after 1870, the increase in musicians was sevenfold, a fact Cyril

Ehrlich puts down to expanded demand “derived, in large measure,

from an efﬂorescence of commercial entertainment.”

In a broad sense,

professionalization means that specialists arise with role-speciﬁc knowl-

edge. It is driven by a division of labor in music that demands the pos-

session of standardized skills suited to speciﬁc tasks.

When Strauss Jr.

gave his promenade concerts at Covent Garden during August–October

1867, he had no need to bring an orchestra with him, as his father had

done. An art world was now in place that allowed him to recruit British

players who could cope adequately with the task at hand, many of

them drawn from the ranks of those who usually played at the Royal

Italian Opera House.

In the ﬁrst half of the century, music in Britain was seen as no bet-

ter than sport as a career, and even the most talented musician was

thought to rank “scarcely above an ordinary artisan.”

It would be

more accurate, perhaps, to ascribe a liminal status to musicians: they ex-

isted in the undeﬁned margins of society and might, at different times,

be regarded with admiration or contempt, fond regard or fear. The great

wealth amassed by certain singers, as well as instrumental virtuosos like

Nicolai Paganini, had an impact on perceptions, and the increased pro-

fessionalism and formation of societies also helped to establish higher

social status for musicians. The Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde was

formed in Vienna in 1813, for example, and the Society of British Mu-

sicians was founded in 1834 to campaign for and protect musicians’ pro-

fessional interests.

The second half of the century witnessed a massive

increase in the numbers of professional musicians; Ehrlich estimates

the ﬁgure in England and Wales in 1840 as around 7,000 (in a popula-

tion of about 27 million) and in 1930 as 50,000 (in a Britain and Ire-

land population of 50 million).

Many of the professionals would have

been music teachers, whose numbers multiplied in the 1870s. Cheap

music lessons were being advertised in abundance, and in the opinion

of the Musical Standard, the art was now “being ‘professed’ by persons

totally incapable.”

Professional performers for the larger part of the

nineteenth century acquired their training through private lessons, de-

spite the presence of conservatoires in Paris (from 1795) and Vienna

(from 1836) and the Royal Academy of Music in London (from 1823).

There was no permanent symphony orchestra in London before

the founding of the Philharmonic Society in 1813. The orchestra of the

Concert of Ancient Music had a restricted membership policy and per-

formed nothing composed within the preceding twenty-ﬁve years.

The Philharmonic Society was interested in new music as well as old,

16 Sounds of the Metropolis

and famously commissioned Beethoven to compose his Ninth Sym-

phony (though it was ﬁrst performed in Vienna). It would be incorrect

to imagine that the Society was launched to ﬁght the cause of high cul-

ture against the incursions of the popular. This attitude did not develop

for some time (see chapter 4). Indeed, among the Society’s founders

were William Shield and Henry Bishop; the former was already known

for popular ballads like “The Wolf,” and the latter would, in the next

decade, compose the biggest hit of the age, “Home, Sweet Home.” The

orchestra moved to St James’s Hall, Piccadilly, when it opened in 1858,

occupying the larger hall, while the Moore and Burgess Minstrels (Lon-

don’s ﬁrst permanent blackface minstrel troupe) took the smaller. Un-

fortunately, the Philharmonic’s audience could sometimes hear the

minstrels, whose hall was underneath the concert platform. Since the

larger hall had a capacity of 2,000, subscription rates were reduced, and

unreserved tickets could be obtained for 5 shillings and 2 shillings and

sixpence.

These are still high prices, but they show that the Phil-

harmonic Society had to compete with cheaper concerts given at the

Crystal Palace.

The Société des concerts du conservatoire presented Paris’s main

high-status concerts of classical music; they began under Habaneck’s di-

rection in 1828 and were attended by subscribers drawn from the city’s

nobility and haute bourgeoisie. Jules Pasdeloup offered seats at a cheap

price for his “Concerts populaires de musique classique” at the Cirque

Napoléon, which started in 1861 and lasted into the 1880s (by which

time the Cirque Napoléon had been renamed the Cirque d’Hiver). Pas-

deloup regularly attracted a mixed-class audience of thousands.

In Vienna, subscription concerts began in the Hofburg Redouten-

saal in 1833, given by the Kärntnertor Theater’s chorus and orchestra.

In the next decade, Karl Otto Nicolai formed the Vienna Philharmonic

Society, and the ﬁrst concert was on 28 March 1842.

Yet no profes-

sionalization of classical music, such as that found in London and Paris,

occurred in Vienna before midcentury (popular music was a different

matter); a major reason was the lack of mingling between the upper

middle class and aristocracy, and the latter’s fondness for salon con-

certs.

The founding of the Vienna Philharmonic helped to set change

in motion in the second half of the century.

Before then, it was pop-

ular music that became a professional world, and so quickly that Weber

maintains that it “just blew the classical scene off the map.”

In addi-

tion to the waltz orchestras, there were the virtuosos who drew enthu-

siastic audiences.

The professionalization of classical music was also late developing

in New York. On 7 December 1842, the Philharmonic Society of New

York gave its ﬁrst concert, at the Apollo Rooms.

In the 1840s, virtu-

osos, especially pianists, were appearing in America. There was such an

appetite for visiting celebrities that the great showman P. T. Barnum

took on the promotion of Jenny Lind in America in the 1850s. New

Professionalism and Commercialism 17

Orleans–born Louis Moreau Gottschalk returned from Paris to New

York in 1853 and became a popular pianist and composer. His piano

piece The Dying Poet remained a favorite for the rest of the century, and

he enjoyed many other commercial successes. It was in this decade that

New York established itself as the center of American professional mu-

sical life, even though in 1800 it had only ﬁfty musicians.

The popu-

lation during the intervening years had risen from 60,000 to over

500,000.

Ticket prices were used in London, New York, Paris, and Vienna to

produce a class hierarchy of concerts. A cheap price meant much the

same in each city, and did not indicate a “bargain basement” price: the

norm was 1 shilling in London, 25 cents in New York, 1 franc in Paris,

and 10 Kreuzer in Vienna. An innovation that spread rapidly in the

1830s was the offering of reserved seats, which were available only in

the higher price range. These succeeded, partly because, as Weber re-

marks, they “afforded people a strong sense of social distinction.”

They ensured a socially exclusive audience at London’s Philharmonic

Concerts. Cheap concerts were plentiful in the 1850s. In London, Jul-

lien (real name Louis-Antoine Julien [sic]) had always kept a close eye

on prices, ensuring that there were usually tickets available for 1 shil-

ling. In order for August Manns to ﬁll the large hall at the Crystal Palace

for the Saturday Concerts, which began in 1855, popular programming

and a small admission charge was necessary. In an endeavor to obtain

the largest audience, they were held on Saturday evenings, that day

being a half-day holiday for manual and clerical workers. Unfortu-

nately, this had a bad impact on Philharmonic rehearsals, which were

held on Saturdays, although eighteen members of the orchestra also

played for Manns;

the constant deputizing that resulted from this clash

became a cause of declining standards for the Philharmonic, which

faced further competition when the Popular Concerts (the Monday

“Pops”) started at St James’s Hall in 1859.

Saturday afternoon “Pops”

began there in 1865.

Such ever-increasing professional activity may have persuaded

some amateur musicians to stay out of the public arena, but that did

not apply to all musical genres. Participation in choral societies and

parish choirs actually increased, and public concerts were given often.

However, amateur activity in areas such as chamber music, which was

substantial, tended to take place in private spaces, such as drawing

rooms. As the middle-class audience grew, so did middle-class domes-

tic music making. The result of this growth together with the profes-

sionalization of music performance was that amateur music making

lost status. The drawing room was never to acquire any status as a site

of high-quality performance. There also developed new forms of ama-

teur music making: for instance, the playing of instruments like the

ﬂageolet, concertina, or Northumbrian pipes, and, outside of the home,

performing in brass and military bands (often in a park).

Public per-

18 Sounds of the Metropolis

formances by amateurs were frequently competitive affairs—especially

those of brass bands, which remained amateur ensembles.

The railways gave a boost to the music business: they facilitated

touring, they enabled people to travel to events (especially when train

travel became cheaper in the 1860s and 1870s), and they transported

pianos. Trade between Britain and America increased in the 1840s with

the establishment of the regular Cunard steamship crossings from Liv-

erpool to Boston. This was also the decade in which American afﬂu-

ence increased as a consequence of the annexation of Texas, the discov-

ery of gold in California, and the railroad boom.

The music hall in London provides an example of the sort of entre-

preneurial initiatives, business decisions, and dealings that new forms

of musical activity brought about. Music hall was without doubt by

1860 the most popular form of musical entertainment in London. The

back rooms of taverns and public houses that were used for “free and

easy” entertainments, in which any customer could contribute a song,

had gradually become concert rooms or singing saloons in the 1840s,

and some landlords had begun employing professional singers. These

spaces were then developed further: for instance, the Mogul Saloon be-

came the Middlesex Music Hall in 1851. Charles Morton is credited

with having created the ﬁrst music hall when he built a large extension

to the Canterbury Arms in Lambeth (1850–51). The Surrey Music Hall

predated it, but was really for concerts (Jullien performed there with

his orchestra). Morton’s initiative changed the meaning of the term

“music hall,” so that it now increasingly suggested a venue for a partic-

ular new type of popular entertainment. The Canterbury, as it became

known, took off with such success that it was further enlarged in 1856,

the same year the enormous new Surrey Music Hall opened. The Sur-

rey could hold 10,000, and had tiers of balconies and galleries. It was

destroyed by ﬁre on 11 June 1861, but the appetite for building new

halls meant that attention that year was focused on the rivalry between

Weston’s music hall in Holborn and Morton’s grand new property the

Oxford (it was in London’s Oxford Street).

What the Musical Standard

described as the “race for music halls” continued in this decade.

In the

mid-1860s, there were more than thirty large music halls in London,

having an average seating capacity of 1,500, and employing bands of

between ﬁve and ten players.

By the 1890s, these bands had in-

creased a little in size: the Metropolitan (Edgware Road) employed ﬁf-

teen players; the Oxford and the Cambridge both had twelve.

The

ﬁnal expansion of the music hall business was accomplished by syndi-

cates building chains of halls and organizing nationwide touring cir-

cuits.

This removed the last vestiges of the community-based aspects

of music hall and replaced it with a national model.

Most of the early proprietors had been publicans, but others soon

became involved, especially if they had a background in the retail and

service trades.

The availability of alcoholic drinks remained a feature

Professionalism and Commercialism 19

of music halls. The cheapest seats in West End halls cost sixpence, but

as soon as you walked east, prices began to fall. Wilton’s in Stepney, for

example, had seats for fourpence, and there were plenty cheaper than

that further aﬁeld. The music hall, as part of the entertainment indus-

try, was driven by business imperatives: these included the need to

maximize proﬁt (for example, raising ticket prices with the hope of en-

couraging a wealthier clientele); the need to stay within the bounds of

the law (for example, obeying the London County Council’s demand

for ﬁre curtains in 1878); and the need to avoid moral outrage and crit-

ical censure. Sometimes events were beyond management control:

business was booming in the 1860s, but competition became ﬁerce in

the 1870s, and then business slowed as the effects of national economic

depression registered in the 1880s. On top of that, the economic inter-

ests of proprietors were prone to clash with the leisure interests of the

audience, which in itself was not homogeneous as a social class (espe-

cially in the West End), and friction could develop between clerks put-

ting on airs, manual laborers, and bohemian “toffs.”

In music hall performer Bessie Bellwood’s song “What Cheer

’Ria,”

a girl who has been making good money selling vegetables

dresses up and pays a shilling (a “bob”) to sit in the stalls, only to be

mocked by her pals in the gallery.

I am a girl what’s a-doing wery well in the weagetable line,

And as I’d saved a bob or two, I thought I’d cut a shine,

So I goes and buys some toggery, there ere wery clothes you

see,

And with the money I had left, I thought I’d have a spree:

So I goes into a Music Hall, where I’d often been afore,

I don’t go in the gallery, but on the bottom ﬂoor;

I sits down by the Chairman, and calls for a pot of stout,

My pals in the gallery spotted me, and they all commenced to

shout—

Chorus

What cheer Ria! Ria’s on the job,

What cheer Ria! did you speculate a bob?

Oh Ria she’s a toff and she looks immensikoff,

And they all shouted “What Cheer Ria!”

Inevitably, a disturbance ensues, and she is thrown out. In her pat-

ter before the ﬁnal chorus, she declares, “You don’t catch me going

chucking my money away trying to be a toff anymore.” (I discuss the

meanings of “what cheer” and “immensikoff” in chapter 7.)

The use of the regulating and order-keeping chairman in music hall

lasted until late in the century, when he was replaced frequently by a

board at the side of the stage that contained a numbered list of “turns.”

Performers were all now professionalized and were hired to perform

20 Sounds of the Metropolis

their turns at various halls, sometimes on the same evening. Indeed,

performers expected to have the freedom to perform at different halls

rather than be restricted to one. They were also open to propositions

that they advertise products. George Leybourne recommended “Moët’s

vintage only” in “Champagne Charlie,” while the Great Vance pro-

moted Cliquot in a song of that name.

Music hall performers began to

become more organized in defense of and promotion of their careers,

the most signiﬁcant development being the founding of the Music Hall

Artistes Association in 1885.

Songwriting for the halls was profes-

sionalized, too, and composers and lyricists would be familiar with dif-

ferent types of character song (the swell song, the coster song) and the

skills of particular performers. The male stars of the halls, often termed

the lions comiques (a phrase invented by music hall manager J. J. Pole),

came to prominence in the 1860s.

Professionalism for women performers was, at ﬁrst, mainly re-

stricted to singing and dancing, and singing continued to be important

for women looking for employment opportunities in music halls and

concert halls. An article in the Woman’s World in 1889 discusses careers

for singers, and notes the importance of London’s various weekly con-

certs in this regard.

In addition, women were ﬁnding professional

employment as piano teachers, and women pianists, like Arabella God-

dard, were also coming to prominence in the 1860s. Opinions about

the unsuitability of the violin for women were much changed by

Wilma Neruda’s performances at the Monday Popular Concerts in the

1870s, though it should be stressed that the perception of violin play-

ing as “unladylike” was not shared in Vienna or Paris.

A novel professional concert development was the Ladies’ Orches-

tra. English ensembles, amateur at ﬁrst, arose swiftly following the ac-

claimed visit by the “Viennese Lady Orchestra,” which performed at the

Albert Palace in Battersea, London, in 1885.

Bernard Shaw was

among the admirers, calling them “an attraction which eclipses the late

Strauss concerts at South Kensington.”

The orchestra did contain a

few men playing brass, and the timpanist was male, although women

played other percussion instruments. Shaw waxes lyrical in his review,

describing them as “a string of nearly sixty instrumentalists, all more or

less charming, and all in crimson tunics and white skirts.” Continuing

in similarly gendered terms, he proclaims:

The effect of the “lady orchestra” as a whole is novel and very pleasant.

They are inferior to the Strauss band in precision and perfection of detail;

but the Strauss impetuosity was forced, false, and often misplaced and vul-

gar: these Viennese ladies seem inspired by a feminine delight in dancing

that makes them play dance music in a far more captivating fashion than

their male rivals. They have grace, tenderness and moderation: qualities

which are very refreshing after two months of the alternate sentimental-

ity and self-assertion of Eduard Strauss, than whom, by the by, Madame

Marie Schipek, the conductor, is a much more dashing violinist. Like him,

Professionalism and Commercialism 21