A Pretty Sweet Blog on Victorian Life

I forget how exactly I stumbled upon this blog, but it’s pretty sweet! “Victorian History: An idiosyncratic selection of short bits about elements of Victorian history,” is written by Bruce Rosen, a retired professor who has taught at a number of universities and colleges. His blog covers a wide range of topics, the railway, London fog, men’s clubs, the West End Club, the aristocracy, the middle class, etc…

Many of these posts are extremely interesting and offer little snippets of information about various aspects of Victorian life and culture. The two posts that brought me to this blog are from 2007; “Music Halls” and “Penny Gaffs.” I love stumbling across things that back up what we have already learned in class, it makes me feel like we’re all on the same page

. In regard to the Penny Gaffs, Rosen includes some scholarly sources including a quote by Mayhew. He describes who its target audience was, the types of entertainment, but what I found particularly interesting was his description of the inside of the Gaffs. They appeared dirty, smelled and were just kind of all around gross, and it doesn’t sound like that is only by today’s standards.

I also really enjoyed his post on the Music Halls. He mentions how they emerged from the Penny Gaffs, the target audience, and lists many of the performers of the day. He even includes a link to a You-tube video of a performer called Little Tich and his “famous shoe dance.” I had never heard about this performer before so I watched the clip which is from around 1900, and it was really pretty interesting. I can totally see the influence of this type of entertainment in a lot of the old Hollywood movies that portray Vaudeville or Broadway acts from around the turn of the century through the 1920’s and 30’s.

This blog is awesome because it offers such a wide array of topics; it’s a little random, but still interesting. I’m not exactly sure how reputable this blog is only because anyone can make a blog and say they’re a professor of something, but he does seem to include a number of scholarly sources in his blog so although I may not use this in any papers, it’s still cool to look through.

The Music Hall

I was pretty much brought up on musicals and old Hollywood movies that featured musical numbers. My dad has a soft spot for Lerner and Loewe, Rogers and Hammerstein, Andrew Lloyd Webber, etc…and it’s funny because he seems so serious and stereotypically male, but I totally caught him singing and dancing to Jesus Christ Super Star once upon a time. And as a family we were always watching movies starring Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, Donald O’Connor, Ethel Merman, and so on.

The whole point of this is that Ethel Merman and Donald O’Connor stared together in No Business Like Show Business, a movie about a family who makes a living doing Vaudeville shows and eventually Broadway. With all of the articles we’ve been reading for class I keep thinking of this movie as I try to trace the evolution of the Victorian Music Hall. And I think Vaudeville is probably the most direct link between the English Music Hall and America, but from there, its influence spreads out in so many different directions.

The Music Hall progressed to film, but it also remained a form of live entertainment with night clubs and dance clubs. Today we see comedy clubs; someone mentioned last class or two classes ago about the Cirque du Soleil. Having been to the Cirque du Soleil I can attest to that fact that it is live, there is often singing and other forms of music, acrobatics, a comedic portion to the show, it uses live animals and special effects; many of the same things included in the Victorian Music Hall shows. I don’t think there is really one performance venue that can be looked at as the final descendant of the Music Hall.

The more I read the more I realize what a huge cultural entity the Music Hall was to the English, and as such, I think it evolved in a multitude of different directions. But it is just so incredibly fascinating to me that I can look at these movies I have loved for so long and see a the influence of the Music Hall tradition. And it doesn’t end at movies, as I mentioned above, it’s theater, the circus, night clubs, comedy clubs, etc…I actually thought that this was more of an American art form, but I clearly stand corrected.

Oh the Woes of Writing a Paper.

I’ve been doing research for my paper, and now I feel like I have hit a wall. I’ve been able to find a great deal of information on Ethel Smyth, her early years, some of her better known compositions, how she learned to compose, who she studied with, etc… She is an extremely fascinating woman and a woman way ahead of her time. She was outspoken, independent, she worked, had affairs with other women; things no proper lady of the Victorian era should do.

However, my paper is going to discuss Ethel Smyth’s development, very general information just to give some background and set up who Ethel Smyth was. But the main focus is going to be on her part in the Women’s Suffrage movement and her Suffrage music. I have been able to find a lot of background information and a fair amount of information on her role in the Suffrage Movement, but I haven’t been able to find as much information as I would like to on her Suffrage music. I was hoping to find more, the woman devoted two years of her life to this movement and I find it hard to believe that she only composed a handful of pieces for this cause.

I have found one song, “The March of the Women,” which is great, it actually became something of a theme song for the movement, but I have had trouble finding scores, lyrics, analysis of any of her other suffrage pieces. I would like very much to be able to interweave her life before her involvement in this movement and her life during this movement, with her suffrage music. Why was each piece specifically written, the words/message of the piece, how/why was it performed, what was its reception like? It is the answers to these questions that I am struggling to find.

I am continuing to do research through the databases and journal holdings through the rider web site and finding a lot of useful information, it’s just not exactly what I had hoped for. Unfortunately it seems as though on Monday I may have to make an emergency meeting with one of the reference librarians. However I have to say that although the annotated bibliography is not my favorite assignment, it is forcing me to make sure I have useable sources for this paper before it’s too late, so I appreciate that.

A Cool Web Site

I was looking for the list of websites we had discussed earlier in the semester and I couldn’t find it, so I began looking for some sites myself. I found this one that is a little ridiculous, it’s just incredibly frilly, but it does have a great deal of information about the Victorian era. It tends to be more focused around America during the Victorian era but it does have some information on England as well and some cross over facts.

The site is: http://www.victoriaspast.com/

It has tons of links to different aspects of Victorian living. There are descriptions and pictures of different rooms a house may have, including the ‘music room,’ it has links to music of the time, a song book, some Gilbert and Sullivan operas, a commentary on Jenny Lind, etc… The site even includes some midi files.
I spent probably around 45 minutes looking through this site. Each link you click on gives you a variety of other links related to that topic. For example, by clicking on the link for the ‘ball room,’ you are given links about dancing, etiquette, dress, when to arrive, reasons not to dance and so on.

I’m not sure if this site is particularly reputable, it does include a number of citations and quotes but I’m guessing this particular site shouldn’t be featured in anyone’s bibliography for their research paper. However, it is an extremely well organized web site with lovely pictures and great basic information on life in the Victorian era. Whoever put this site together took a great deal of pride in what they were doing.

I think I’ve been doing so much research on Victorian music I forgot to think about the culture, although the two really are related. I think Victorian music reflects the culture of the time in which it is written, and music often influences culture. This is even true today, I think part of the reason opera isn’t particularly ‘main-stream’ is because people have a hard time relating to it; Mozart, Rossini, Verdi, and Puccini operas don’t necessarily represent our current culture, but they were popular back when they were originally produced. But in looking a ‘Pop’ music of today, Britney Spears for example, was able to set trends in music and fashion and influence tons of middle schoolers, myself included, when she appeared on the scene.

Anyways…it’s a cool site to check out.

Holst

Gustav Holst is one of my favorite people to have read about thus far in class. At least from what I was able to gather from the essay by Vaughn Williams, Holst had no ulterior motives in regard to composition or teaching, he did what he did because he loved it and he wanted to.

In regard to Holst as a teacher I’m really quite inspired by him. He took only those students who shared his passion to learn and express, and had little patience for those who were lazy or indifferent. He demanded excellence of himself and of his students, and it sounds as though he was very devoted and almost took on a roll as a mentor to many of his students. So often we hear of people whose performing careers failed to really takeoff, and so they were ‘reduced’ to teaching, but Holst enjoyed teaching and actually revamped the music program at Morely College.

In regard to his life, I loved the quote on page 133, “Life and art to Holst are not enemies but the complements of each other; and as time goes on and his life gets busier and more varied, his artistic production becomes larger and finer, his style more mature, pronounced, and individual.” I just love that music was so much a part of him and such a source of joy, that life never hindered what he was able to accomplish as a composer, it simply inspired him.

I also thought the different musical inspirations were interesting and quite eclectic, that’s probably why I found them so interesting. But Holst’s modernity wasn’t random or modern for the sake of being modern, there is a clear progression of the past in his present ‘modern’ state. For example, he was a great lover of Bach, and Bach’s influence appears in his music. He also employs the use of folk song which Vaughn Williams I’m sure was very happy about when writing this essay, and Holst was inspired by mysticism which can be heard in his choral music from the Rig Veda.

Clearly, Vaughn Williams very much respected Holst and admired his style as a composer, teacher, and it sounded to me like he even admired the man.

Reflecting

I was feeling very stumped as to what to write my second blog on. Sooooo I started thinking about all of the things we've discussed in class since the semester began, and how the various readings and new information I’ve received compare to any preconceived notions I had about Victorian Music. I think I had Victorian music pegged as something out of a Jane Austin book, just very sweet, refined and contained. In my opinion there is some truth to that. The readings on 'girling at the piano' and the ideas in regard what is appropriate in upper class Victorian society certainly seem to be more restrictive; women should not perform in public, men shouldn't play the piano, no one performed music professionally unless they had to, ect...

However, there is this whole other side to Victorian Music that I overlooked, and over the last few weeks I even forgot we were discussing the same time period as mentioned above. The music of Vaughn Williams, Elgar and now Holst is not at all what I expected from Victorian England. It really sounds, for lack of a better word, modern. I can absolutely hear the influence of Wagner in the music of Elgar, and Vaughn Williams with his use of folk song makes me think of Copland. However, maybe it is Copland who should make me think of Elgar, and at the same time it is the use of folk song that seems to give his music a sense of English landscape and atmosphere. Then there is Holst who is inspired by Bach, Purcell, folk song, and mysticism. This mixture of different influences along with all the stimulation Holst gathered from life made his music so incredibly unique.

There truly was innovation going on musically during the Victorian period in England. We’ve focused on three composers thus far, with the exception of Wagner (because he was German and that’s the only reason I’m not including him), all of whom have vastly different compositional styles and reasons for composing. Edgar was criticized for “selling out,” I don’t agree with that but it sounds as though there were times when his heart wasn’t in what he was doing. And on the other end of the spectrum is Holst who seemed to have loved everything he was doing, he accepted life, allowed it to inspire him, and gave all that inspiration to his music.

I feel so incredibly naïve to have not been familiar with this music, but very glad to have been exposed to these composers.

Another Paper Blog

Ok, yet another research paper update! So I think I am going to focus on the suffrage music of Ethel Smyth. I still want to examine her early life and look at what exactly influenced her involvement in the women’s suffrage movement in England.

I’m excited because I’ve already found some helpful articles as well as a copy of her memoirs from the library. Within those articles I also found some of the songs that Ethel Smyth wrote for the women’s suffrage movement, mostly songs for various events and protests. I think these would make for a very interesting part of the presentation part of my project. I’m not exactly sure how yet, maybe I can find recordings of them or record them myself, but I find them really interesting and hope other people will as well.

From the research I have done thus far, Ethel Smyth was really a woman ahead of her time, extremely strong willed and defiant. She completely disobeyed her father and continued to protest until she was allowed to go to Leipzig to study music. Finally he gave in and she was allowed to go. She was also an acquaintance of Brahms, he referred to her as das Kind, and later in her life fell in love with Virginia Wolf.

I have a lot of information to sort through, but I am actually very interested in this topic and that is exciting to me. Imagine writing a paper that is actually intriguing! I’m really hoping there’s enough information out there as to how this woman, born in the Victorian era, became such an outspoken and rebellious individual. I think I came across something when I was exploring paper topics about Smyth having been arrested at some point due to her involvement with the women’s suffrage movement.

These sorts of topics are always fascinating to me, why or how people become what they become; looking back in history and retracing the events and steps taken in an individual’s life to make them who they were. And for someone as bold as Ethel Smyth I’m sure this is going to be especially interesting.

The Songs of Vaughn Williams

The past week’s readings on Vaughan Williams were for one, extremely enlightening, and two, rather comical. I got the biggest kick out of his writing style. I thought he was very direct in his thoughts, but had this very entertaining way of throwing in little sarcastic jabs here and there. I feel like so often when learning about composers I think of them as stiff and lacking any sort of sense of humor, it’s just rare that I’ve read anything by a composer that I feel really shows light hearted aspects of their personalities.

With that said, I also found the readings themselves fascinating. Up until this point much of the readings for class have discussed the lack music in England, or rather, the lack of English music in England. But here we have Vaughn Williams who revived what he felt was England’s national sound, the sound of English folk song. I absolutely loved this about the Sir John in Love and clips of Hugh the Drover.

It’s difficult to really have an opinion about Hugh the Drover because like I said, I could only find little clips of the work. But I thought Sir John in Love was beautiful! Even though his use of folk song was at times rather subtle, it added so much to work. I felt like I could really see where these characters were, it added so much to the setting and over all atmosphere of the opera. I agree with Vaughn Williams’ belief that there is an elegance to their simplicity.

When listening to this music I was reminded a great deal of American folk songs, which are probably inspired by the folk songs Vaughn Williams sought to preserve and incorporated into his works. I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if he hadn’t been so driven to locate and compose music that either uses or was influenced by folk song. What would the music of Aaron Copland sound like, would Rodeo and Appalachian Spring have the folk like quality, that American sound that is so closely associated with his compositions, or would they have never been written at all? It would be interesting to explore and trace the influence Vaughn Williams had on composers that followed him.