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John Stainer
A Life in Music
JEREMY DIBBLE
One of the most important musicians of the Victorian
era, Stainer is known for his considerable influence as
a composer of Anglican liturgical music, and his corpus
of secular works – madrigals and songs – presents many
surprises. He was a brilliant organist, a fine scholar,
theorist, pedagogue and teacher – multifarious
attributes which this study seeks to elucidate and
understand as part of his wider musical personality.
Stainer’s life is a story of extraordinary social
mobility. From lowly origins he rose to become organist
of St Paul’s Cathedral and Professor of Music at Oxford.
Yet after his premature death in 1901 he suffered almost
immediate neglect except for the popularity of a handful
of works, among them I saw the Lord and The Crucifixion.
In attempting to rehabilitate Stainer and the crucial
contribution he made to musical life, this book examines
the breadth of his work as a composer, and the important
role he played in the regeneration of sacred and secular
musical institutions in Victorian Britain.
JEREMY DIBBLE is Professor of Music at Durham
University.
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The Pursuit
of High Culture
John Ella and Chamber Music in Victorian London
CHRISTINA BASHFORD
This monograph investigates the promotion and
consumption of high musical culture among leisured
society in Victorian
London, by focusing on the activities of the concert
manager John Ella and his Musical
Union (1845–81). The Musical Union was an eminent,
long-lived institution for chamber music, much fêted
across Europe in its day. Christina Bashford’s book
combines a biography of Ella with a social-economic
history of the Musical Union, its players, repertoire
and audiences, and sets them against the gradually
shifting contexts for London concerts, chamber music and
cultural life. Ella’s extraordinary
life story, which began in provincial,
artisan-class obscurity and ended in the
upper echelons of London society, shapes
the narrative. Themes of entrepreneurship,
concert management, taste shaping, music
appreciation and elite social networks
loom large throughout, as does the curious
interplay between the desire to ‘sacralize’
chamber music, especially Beethoven’s, on
the one hand, and the need to survive amid
the increasing commercial imperatives of
London concert life on the other.
CHRISTINA BASHFORD is Assistant Professor
of Musicology and Strings at the University
of Illinios at Urbana-Champaign.
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Lectures on Musical Life
William Sterndale Bennett
Edited with an introduction by
NICHOLAS TEMPERLEY
with the assistance of YUNCHUNG YANG
An annotated critical edition of twelve
lectures by William Sterndale Bennett (1816–
75), the foremost English musician of the
mid-Victorian period, principal of the Royal
Academy, and conductor of the Philharmonic
Society. Delivered at the London Institution
and Cambridge University between 1858 and
1871, they are valuable both as representative
of the Victorian understanding of musical
history, and for Bennett’s astute comments on
the state of music and musical life at the time.
They include admonishments to the British
government for failing to offer adequate
financial support to the art; interesting and
often surprising views on many composers of
the present and the recent past; and discourses
on his own experiences as a professional
musician. The lectures are presented with
ample annotations which identify the persons,
institutions and compositions referred to
in the text. An extensive introduction sets
the lectures in context and reflects on their
significance to English musical history and to
Bennett’s personal career.
NICHOLAS TEMPERLEY is Professor of Music
Emeritus at the University of Illinois.
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