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Journal of Victorian Culture

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Learning to Listen: audiences for

chamber music in early-Victorian
London
a
Christina Bashford
a
Oxford Brookes University
Published online: 19 Jan 2010.

To cite this article: Christina Bashford (1999) Learning to Listen: audiences for
chamber music in early-Victorian London, Journal of Victorian Culture, 4:1, 25-51, DOI:
10.1080/13555509909505978

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13555509909505978

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 Learning to Listen:
audiences for chamber music in
early-Victorian London
Christina Bashford
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Musicologists, who have in the past concentrated largely on the lives

of music’s creators (composers) and mediators (performers) or on the
technical analysis of the musical works thus created, are increasingly
turning their attention to the critical responses of the receivers of those
works (that is, the individuals, or groups of individuals, who consumed
a composer’s music during or after his/her lifetime). Interest in
listeners and their behaviour, a natural outgrowth of the sharpening of
focus on musical reception, constitutes a relatively new area of study,
and one with special pertinence to the nineteenth century, which
witnessed an unprecedented growth and diversification of listening
publics. The field has recently been opened up by the historian James
H. Johnson, whose Listening in Paris: a Cultural History, a broad exam-
ination of changing audience behaviour from 1750 to 1850, appeared
in 1995.lJohnson’s book, which attempts to answer the question of
why Parisian audiences fell silent during the nineteenth century, has
aroused considerable comment from both musicologists and historians,
some of whom have criticised Johnson’s broad-brush approach and
have pointed up the problematic nature of evaluating listening prac-
tices of the past? Certainly, one of the major difficulties of discussing
listening in historical terms arises from the fact that the term can be
defined and understood in many ways, with definitions dependent
on such variables as the type of music being listened to (vocal music,
for instance, is an essentially different experience for the listener than
instrumental music), the listener him/herself and the nature and
circumstances of the performance, as well as the social conventions
prevailing at a particular time. Even quiet listening may range from
passively receiving auditory stimuli to actively following the shape and
organisation of a piece of music through the recognition of structural
and tonal cues. The current essay contributes to the general historical
discussion by focusing on a particular type of quiet, attentive listening

25
 Christina Bushf m d

that was encouraged at concerts of chamber music in early-Victorian

London.

I
Between the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the
twentieth there was an observable shift in the social behaviour and
listening habits of audiences at concerts of high art music in London.
This change in behaviour may be illustrated by two contemporary,
albeit fictional, descriptions: Fanny Burney’s account of the Pantheon
Concerts in Cecilia (1782), and E.M. Forster’s well-known portrayal of
a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony at the Queen’s Hall in
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Howards End (1910). Burney describes a scenario in which the music

acts as background to conversation and social entertainment, and
where only the heroine is interested in listening to the pieces:
they entered the great room during the second act of the Concert, to
which as no one of the party but herself- had any desire to listen, no
sort of attention was paid; the ladies entertaining themselves as if no
Orchestra was in the room, and the gentlemen, with an equal disregard
to it, struggling for a place by the fire, about which they continued
hovering till the music was over.g
Forster, on the other hand, points to a general mood of reverence and
quiet the moment the music begins, and proceeds to depict the intense
concentration of some in the audience during the slow movement:
Here Beethoven started decorating his tune [the first variation of the
theme], so she [Helen] heard him through once more, and then she
smiled at her cousin Frieda. But Frieda, listening to Classical Music, could
not respond. Herr Liesecke, too, looked as ifwild horses could not make
him inattentive; there were lines across his forehead, his lips were parted,
his pince-nez at right angles to his nose, and he laid a thick, white hand
on either knee. And next to her was Aunt Juley, so British, and wanting to
tap.4
It would of course be naive to suggest that no eighteenth-century
concert-goers were prepared to listen, while all early twentiethcentury
ones did. Clearly, some of the former were attentive to the music
regardless of what else was going on in the concert room, and certain
performances are thought to have been met with totally rapt attention;
what is more, many eighteenth-century concert-goers may well have
had different modes of listening (i.e. some way of dividing their
attention between the music and the events of the concert room) from
the apparently absorbed, silent listening that developed during the
nineteenth c e n t ~ r y Equally,
.~ even silent listening could be of many

26
 Learning to Listen

types: among Forster’s ‘absorbed listeners’ are Helen, imagining

heroes and shipwrecks as she listens to Beethoven’s first movement,
and her brother, who follows a score and tries to signal important
musical features to his companions.6 In spite of such caveats, it surely
can be argued that during the nineteenth century there was a shift
towards a new mode of listening at English concerts: that audiences
quietened down, stayed sitting down, and that many started to listen in
the attentive and musically-informed ways that had become associated
with being a serious concert-goer by the early twentieth century.’
The shift was, of course, gradual - there was certainly no one
moment when all concert-goers began to listen in silence - and it did
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not take place at a consistent rate at every type of concert and in

all places. For instance, not all eighteenth-century audiences were as
overtly inattentive as the one ‘described’ by Burney. Quiet was expected
at some concerts long before it became a general principle: as Simon
McVeigh has shown, the Castle Society, a mid-eighteenth-century music
club that performed vocal and instrumental pieces in the City of
London, had strict rules and fined people who walked around or talked
during concerts.8 And even in the early twentieth century, when most
audiences appear to have quietened down, there were the talkers at the
Proms, whom the Musical Times described in 1918 as those ‘stupid and
selfish people who come to concerts to idle away time and to hatter'.^
The current study seeks to demonstrate how new modes of concert
behaviour and musically sophisticated listening practices were develo-
ping in London during the 1830s and 1840s, through the introduction
of a new type of concert which presented a new repertory (Classical
chamber music) to West End audiences. As such, it presents an early
example of the modernisation of listening practices observed above,
and one that was, in certain respects, driven by the repertory itself.
(Chamber music had, ever since its first flowering in the fifteenth
century, been a category of music written and played for its own sake in
the private sphere; a performance tradition involving small gatherings
of players and listeners had thus grown up with the genre.IO)While not
seeking to over-idealise the listening habits of the nineteenth century
(William Weber has recently warned of the dangers that may lurk
in such an approach),” the current essay does suggest that, through
exposure to the musically complex, non-vocal repertory of Classical
chamber music, particular groups of concert-goers were encouraged
to listen to it carefully, with some being shown ways of bringing an
intellectual understanding of that repertory to bear on their listening.
Such audiences were thus learning how to listen in a musically-
informed way.

27
 Christina Bashf‘d

Knowledge of listening practices at English concerts is developing

slowly, not only because, with the exception of some notable recent
studies of specific institutions,‘* nineteenth-century concert history
has yet to be written, but also because listening is hard to document.
Observations are spread thinly across letters, memoirs, novels, etiquette
books, concert programmes, newspapers and so on, are often anec-
dotal and at times inconsistent. Nevertheless, a preliminary picture
emerges from the detailed examination of the West End chamber-
l ~ picture is based on what I consider typical obser-
music ~ 0 n c e r t . This
vations, and on the understanding that whereas behavioural norms are
not often noted in contemporary sources simply because the status quo
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was rarely considered worthy of mention, when those norms start to

change - or behaviour starts to challenge established norms - copious
comment is made.

I1
Chamber-music concerts, centred around the string quartets, quintets
and piano trios of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, were introduced to
the fashionable West End of London in 1835 and thereafter increased
rapidly (in 1840 there were thirteen such concerts a season, by 1850
more than sixty). In highlighting chamber music these concerts
presented listeners with works in which ‘conversational’ textures and
tightly-wrought musical arguments were to the fore. Such musical
characteristics, allied to the cerebral qualities already ascribed to much
of the chamber-music repertory, meant that concentrated listening and
a general seriousness of purpose were inevitably high priorities for both
concert-givers and audiences. Promoters and press alike represented
chamber-music concerts as attracting the most serious-minded and
attentive audiences in London. In the following account from The Atlas
of 1841, the author explains what marked them out from most others:
There is neither flutter nor stareing [sic], brilliant light nor fine dresses,
to remind one of a huge concert-room filled merely with eyes and having
music as an accompaniment to the ‘see and be seen’ amusement of its
occupants. There is none of that eternal whispering, and feet-shuffling,
and nose-blowing, which it is impossible to repress in what are deemed
fashionable assemblages. ... Everything goes on with the most luxurious
quietude and propriety; - the performers seem as though, for the
pleasure of the thing, they had met to discuss musical beauty in the most
epicurean way imaginable, and the audience take their seats around
them, like some private party, determined to avail themselves to the
utmost of their invitation to 1i~ten.l~

28
 Learning to Listen

The discussion that follows will examine the listening habits and
seriousness of purpose among West End chamberconcert audiences in
the 1830s, 1840s and early 1850s, focusing on their apparently common
features, and drawing special attention to what went on at two notable
concert clubs: the Beethoven Quartett Society and the Musical Union.
After a brief chronology of the concerts, three themes will be explored:
the audiences themselves; the procedures by which an atmosphere of
intimacy, seriousness and concentrated listening was cultivated in the
concert-room;15 and social etiquette (in particular, what ‘quietness’
meant to contemporary audiences).
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I11
The first chamber-music concerts were given as series, and held in
dedicated concert halls. Among them were the Classical Chamber
Concerts at Willis’s Rooms in King Street, StJames’s, which were run by
Nicolas Mori and Robert Lindley, two seasoned London musicians, and
the Quartett Concerts at the Hanover Square Rooms, organised by
Henry Blagrove and Charles Lucas, two young instrumentalists busy
establishing themselves on the professional circuit;i6 both series began
in the mid-1830s (see Table 1, section 1). From the early 1840s they
were supplemented by a new type of series: that held in West End
houses. These were usually given in a performer’s lodgings (eg.
William Sterndale Bennett’s Classical Chamber Concerts in his rooms
in Upper Charlotte Street), though sometimes took place in rooms in
certain domestic dwellings that could be specially hired for concerts
(e.g. Banister’s Quartet Parties, some of which took place in Blagrove’s
Rooms in Mortimer Street; see Table 1,section 2). Both types of concert
presented instrumental chamber music interspersed with vocal items,
performed by groups of musicians from the large pool of London free-
lance players for whom appearing in concerts was part and parcel of
what Cyril Ehrlich has described as ‘piecing together a living’ as a
nineteenthcentury professional musician.”
In 1845,not long after the vogue for ‘house concerts’ had begun, two
specialist chamber-music clubs, the Beethoven Quartett Society and the
Musical Union, were established, giving concerts in rooms in Harley
Street and Mortimer Street respectively (see Table 1, section 3). Both
built up the ideals of intimate performances and concentrated listen-
ing that had been developing in the preceding decade. The Beethoven
Quartett Society was committed to the performance of a complete cycle
of Beethoven’s sixteen string quartets (excluding the Grosse Fuge,
op.133) each season; the Musical Union explored a broader repertory,

29
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Table 1. Chamber-MusicConcerts in the West End of London, 1835-50 (selective list)*

Concert Series/Society Dates VmUe(s) Aomoter/concertgiver

Phase 1: Concert series in public halls

Concerti da Camera 1835 Hanover Square Rooms Henry Blagrove & Charles Lucas
Classical Chamber Concerts 183&9 Willis’s Rooms; later at Hanover Square Rooms Nicolas Mori & Robert Lindley
Quartett Concerts 183M2 Hanover Square Rooms Henry Blagrove & Charles Lucas
Moscheles’ Pianoforte Soirees [Matinees] 1837-9 Hanover Square Rooms Ignaz Moscheles
Puzzi’s Classical Wind Concerts 1838 Hanover Square Rooms Giovanni Puzzi
Phase 2: Concert series in private room
n
a-
Society of British Musicians 1842-8 23 Berners St (Erat’s Rooms) Society of British Musicians g
Bennett’s Classical Chamber Concerts 18434 42 Upper Charlotte St W.S. Bennett
5’
R
0
Dulcken’s Soirees [Matinees] Musicales 18459 80 Harley St Louise Dulcken b
Banister’s Quartet Parties 1844 50 Burton Cres. & 71 Mortimer St H.J. Banister 5.
(Blagrove’s Rooms) b
Salaman’s Classical Chamber Concerts 1844 36 Baker St Charles Salaman
a
Lucas’s Musical Evenings 1845-54 54 Berners St Charles Lucas
Phase 3 The Beethoven Quartett Society and the Musical Union
Beethoven Quartett Society 1845-51 76 Harley St (Beethoven Rooms); later at Thomas Alsager; Scipion
26 Queen Anne St (New Beethoven Rooms) Rousselot
Musical Union 1845-81 71 Mortimer St (Blagrove’s Rooms); John Ella
later at Princess’s Theatre Concert Room;
Willis’s Rooms; StJames’s Hall
* For a full listing of concerts see Bashford, ‘Public Chamber-Music Concerts’, 401-536.
 Learning to Listen

though also dealt only in instrumental works.ls Both clubs hired

eminent players, often foreigners; but whereas the Beethoven Quartett
Society used one permanent ensemble, the Musical Union had a chang-
ing roster of artists. The Beethoven Quartett Society was the brainchild
of Thomas Alsager, a senior figure at The Times (its City writer and
occasional music critic) and an enthusiastic amateur musician with a
unique, near-obsessive devotion to Beeth~ven.’~ The Musical Union
was founded and directed by John Ella, a rank-and-file violinist turned
impresario and journalist who had a serious personal interest in
chamber music, and was extremely good at forging and exploiting
connections with members of the upper classes.20
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All the concert series discussed above were West End events, their
venues located in such fashionable districts as St James’s and Harley
Street, and their audiences drawn predominantly from those who had
residences in the area.*I Almost all operated by subscription - the
tried and tested method for ensuring support and, of course, social
exclusivity.22Subscriptions were expensive: a guinea typically bought
one subscription to a series of three of W.S. Bennett’s or Charles
Salaman’s house concerts; and tickets for single concerts were a costly
alternative (Salaman offered single tickets for 10s. 6d.). The high cost
of concert-going, allied to the location and inaccessibility of concert
venues on the one hand and social conventions such as formal dress on
the other, effectively prohibited most of the lower and middle ranks of
the middle classes from attending (a number of musicians and people
associated with the music trade would have been a notable exception),
and meant that the regular audience for chamber-music concerts was
largely confined to members of the aristocracy and upper middle
classes.23In addition, potential subscribers were sometimes vetted on
social and, more significantly, musical grounds. Tickets for Dulcken’s
house concerts could apparently be obtained only at music shops where
a concert-goer was and membership of Ella’s and Alsager’s
chamber-music clubs was even more tightly controlled. To belong to
the Musical Union one had to prove a serious interest in music, be
nominated by someone within the society, and have had a personal
introduction to Ella.25Similarly, the qualifications for membership of
the Beethoven Quartett Society were ‘not only a certain rank or station
in Society, but a certain knowledge and estimation of the compositions
of Beethoven’.26In other words, the sine qua non for a potential sub-
scriber appears to have been a combination of social status and serious
musical leanings. Moreover, many music critics of the time suggested
that because several of the new chamber-music series were held at
the beginning of the concert season (i.e. in the winter and even late

31
 Christina Bashford

autumn months, when only a handful of musical entertainments took

place and the bulk of more frivolous concert-goers were absent from
the metropolis), they attracted a particularly serious type of concert-
g~er.~’
Most of these earnest music-lovers would have developed their
enthusiasm for music through the acquisition of skills on an instrument
and through participation in home music-making. Men typically played
the violin, cello or flute, while women learned the piano and sang.2s
Practical musical ability was an important feminine social accomplish-
ment, and pianos, which in this period were still considered fashionable
luxury goods (a situation that did not change until later in the nine-
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teenth century), were purchased by aristocratic and wealthy middle-

class families.29Potential subscribers to chamber-music concerts would
have thus combined an interest in listening to music with an ability to
both read and play it.30
But who were these ardent music-lovers? Unfortunately, full lists of
subscribers do not survive for most of the concerts under discussion,
and a complete identification of audiences is in many cases simply not
possible (the Musical Union subscription lists, which were published
in the annual Record of the Musical Union, are a notable exception).
Newspaper reports of the initial concerts in public halls and the
house concerts of the 1840s, however, consistently suggest that these
audiences comprised a varying mix of serious music-lovers from the
aristocracy and wealthy middle classes, professional musicians and
journalists. Indeed, many reports name well-known people seen at
concerts, and so give some indication of the social profile of audiences
(though not, of course, the entire picture). There is repeated mention
of such aristocrats as the Earl of Falmouth, the Duke of Cambridge and
Sir William Curtis (all of whom possessed acknowledged musical
pedigrees), along with musical amateurs from the upper middle classes.
Professional musicians are also occasionally mentioned; most would
probably have gained admittance through the complimentary tickets
that it was customary for the givers of chamber-music concerts to send
out to their fellow musician^.^^ Those named include Thomas Attwood
and William Carnaby, both organists and composers, and Cipriani
Potter, pianist, composer and Principal of the Royal Academy of
Music.92Large numbers of musicians also seem to have attended the
chamber-music soirbes run by the Society of British Musicians, an organ-
isation established by British composers in 1834 to promote their own
works in the face of a concert repertory that was increasingly being built
around foreign (mainly Austro-German) music.
The Musical Union audience is, by contrast, relatively easy to identify,

32
 Learning to Listen

as full lists of subscribers were published each season. Indeed, this

audience has already been analysed by William Weber and shown to
have been drawn from the aristocratic and upper middle classes.33A
cross-section might include the Earl of Westmorland, Sir George Clerk,
Bt, MP, and his wife, Lady Clerk, Frederick Perkins (owner of a London
brewing firm, and keen bibliophile) and Mrs George Grote (wife of the
Greek historian and banker); significantly, all were known to be serious
music enthusiasts and amateur players. Many Musical Union members
(including several who sat on Ella’s committee) are known to have been
frequent attenders of the chamber-music concerts of the previous
decade.34Women formed a sizeable (c.60%) proportion of Musical
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Union subscribers, and may have been deliberately targeted by Ella,

who, sensing a potentially large audience of piano-playing, musically-
literate women, scheduled his concerts as mid-afternoon mutinies, at
the time of day when women tended to cultivate their own leisure
pursuits, independent of men.35For a number of reasons (most of
which are connected with Ella’s relation to his peers), few professional
musicians were paid-up members. Musicians who did attend the
Musical Union were usually notable figures, often foreign visitors - for
example, the composers Georges Onslow and Hector Berlioz - and
came as Ella’s personal guests.36
At the Beethoven Quartett Society, on the other hand, the member-
ship was dominated by musicians (albeit those who had enjoyed a
measure of financial success, such as the celebrated double bassist
Domenico Dragonetti, the Viennese pianist and Beethoven advocate
Ignaz Moscheles, and the busy conductor and epitome of upward social
mobility Sir George Smart), and had only a few high-ranking amateurs,
the Earl of Falmouth and Sir William Curtis the most n~table.~’Women
formed a much smaller proportion of the subscribers than at the
Musical Union (precise numbers are not known, but it seems unlikely
that women constituted more than 20% of the membership). Those of
whom particular mention is made were professional musicians, among
them the pianist Caroline Orger and the singer Charlotte Dolby (both,
incidentally, composers and members of families of musicians).38 Essen-
tially, then, the two clubs had similar aims but maintained relatively
separate audiences: an important reminder that, although to talk
of one audience for these chamber-music concerts can be somewhat
misleading if we concentrate only on social groups, chamber-music
audiences seem to have shared similar musical tastes and values.
The size of audiences is also worth comment, especially as it leads
naturally into the second theme: the intimacy of the concert room, and
the cultivation of serious listening. Numbers attending the first ‘round’

33
 Christina Bashford

of chamber-music concerts in public halls in the late 1830s are difficult

to determine, though newspaper estimates suggest audiences often
numbered between 400 and 600.3yAs one would expect, house concert
audiences were much smaller, probably averaging between 150 and
200. The Beethoven Quartett Society was likewise limited in size (fifty
members, all of whom could bring one guest), and operated in an
intimate environment. The Musical Union, by way of contrast, saw its
membership quickly grow (by 1846 there were more than 300 sub-
scribers), a development that forced Ella to hold concerts in larger,
more public venues than he had originally intended (see Table 1,
section 3).
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The need to create an atmosphere of intimacy inevitably loomed

large at chamber-music concerts, as the performance space clearly
needed to be appropriate, acoustically, to the music performed. Large
halls, by definition, were not ideal, as those at the back could neither
hear nor see satisfactorily. Concertgivers whose large subscription lists
required them to use large halls met the challenge in imaginative ways.
At the Quartett Concerts at the Hanover Square Rooms, Blagrove
introduced an inventive seating arrangement by:
erecting a small orchestral platform at one side of its centre, half round
which the seats of the audience were placed semicircularly. By this means
all were enabled to hear as well as only one fourth could under the usual
plan, and such a result could not be priz’d too highly where music so
nicely delicate in all its parts was to be listened to and appreciated.40
Moscheles came up with a similar plan at his Pianoforte Soirees (also at
the Hanover Square Rooms): he performed on a piano placed in the
centre of the room, in what The Times described as a sort of ‘magic
circle, with his audience all spread around him’.41Ella did something
of the same at the Musical Union, where performances were likewise
given in the round; the critic in the Illustrated London News was particu-
larly impressed:
There is a great charm in these morning rknions. The players are seated
in the centre of a circle, and there is a social feeling displayed, which frees
the performance from all formality and stiffness.42
Much thought was thus devoted to getting the seating right, the em-
phasis being on enabling the listener to hear the detail of the music,
and recreating the appropriate intimacy of the drawing-room - an
important indication that listening was considered the all-important
goal.
Those musicians who gave house concerts in the 1840s - Dulcken,
Salaman and others - had few worries of this order, since their venues

34
 Learning to Listen

had an inbuilt intimacy and informality. Indeed, there is good reason

to think that house concerts were partly set up as a reaction against
chamber-music concerts in public halls. Houses were preferable venues
in many ways. For a start, the seats were arranged informally, and many
people sat on sofas: this was in contrast to the long, formal rows of
uncomfortable wooden chairs in the concert hall. Moreover, refresh-
ments were often served during the interval, which also provided a time
for conversation. Informality and comfort were also much in demand
at the Beethoven Quartett Society and the Musical Union. At the
former, which operated much like house concerts, tea and coffee were
served during the interval; and when Ella moved the Musical Union
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concerts to Willis’s Rooms in 1846 he found himself continually having

to address the question of the comfort of the upholstery. Above all,
social discourse was becoming an important part of proceedings at
both house concerts and chamber-music clubs, and a particularly
English, formalised salon culture was emerging within these concerts.
Right from the start Ella, for instance, claimed the Musical Union
aimed to ‘promote Social Intercourse between ... Practical, Theoretical,
and Literary Members of the Profession, and Amateurs of cultivated
and refined taste’.49Newspapers give myriad descriptions. The follow-
ing is an account of Dulcken’s concerts from the Morning Chronicle:
There is no stiffness nor formality in these classical entertainments. It is
like the enjoyment of a social circle. The artists mix with the amateurs,
and all the frequenters are more or less known to each other. The
programmes are given in an elegant salon, and between the parts
the company descend to take tea, or other refreshments, and discuss
amicably the beauties of the compositionsjust heard, the merits of the
executants, and the prospects of the all engrossing question - the two
rival Italian Operas.44
Although the idea that audiences talked about nothing but music, or
that they discussed it only in intellectual terms is surely far-fetched -
even the Chronicle’s critic hints that gossip about music was the most
enjoyable conversation piece - it is clear, from contemporary accounts,
that these concerts nevertheless had an intellectual focus and image.
They are more than once described in contemporary sources as con-
versa~irrni.~~
The term had been imported to England in the late eigh-
teenth century, and used for gatherings of an artisticcum-intellectual
character;* by the 1830s and 1840s it commonly denoted soiries, given
in private houses in the West End (sometimes under the auspices of
learned bodies), at which specimens of fine art, scientific inventions
and other interesting objects were exhibited on tables, and intellectual
conversation promoted. One such conuersmionewas held by the Marquis

35
 Christina Bashfmd

of Northampton, President of the Royal Society, at his house in Picca-

dilly in March 1845; a vast array of items was displayed, including a cast
of a Portland vase, a portrait in mosaic of George IV, specimens of
tessellated pavement, and models. Conversazioni, like chamber-music
concerts, attracted those who combined wealth and social status with
(at least a show of) artistic and intellectual interests.
Discourse, then, began to be encouraged at chamber-music concerts,
though only when or where music was not in the act of being per-
formed. For hand in hand with the cultivation of an intellectual
atmosphere in the concert room went the fostering of concentrated
listening, the quality most keenly encouraged at the Beethoven
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Quartett Society and Musical Union. Insistence on quietness was a high

priority for both societies, as was the question of how long one could
reasonably expect listeners to concentrate and how one could en-
courage them to engage in active, rather than passive, listening. All
the chamber-music concerts of the preceding decade had adopted
the standard two-part programme of six or more instrumental items
interspersed with songs: an undertaking that could last three or four
hours, and one that few would sit through in its entirety. Both Ella and
Alsager tackled this problem by introducing shorter programmes of
three (occasionally four) chamber works, removing the vocal items
altogether. Instantly their concerts gave out a new signal: these were
events focused wholly on the music. The Beethoven Quartett Society
went one stage further: by distinguishing the (now familiar) three
periods in Beethoven’s quartet output, and by structuring each concert
programme to include one relatively short, ‘early’ quartet from op.18,
one thicker-textured, rhetorical work from Beethoven’s ‘middle’
period (e.g. one of the Razumovsky quartets op.59) and one of the
long, introspective and challenging works from the composer’s ‘late’
period (from op.127 to op.135), it deliberately encouraged its mem-
bers to make comparisons between Beethoven’sdifferent compositional
styles.47
The desire for audiences to listen attentively - in order either to
gain an informed understanding of the musical argument, or to make
connections between pieces of music - was integral to the respective
visions of Ella and Alsager. To this end both societies published detailed
programme notes, complete with musical quotations from the works
to be performed, for their members. This was a new departure for
London concerts. Up till then, audiences had normally been given
a small leaflet announcing only the running order, the names of
the performers and the texts of the songs for the concert; details of
instrumental items had been limited to opus numbers, keys, and order

36
 Learning to Listen

of m ~ v e r n e n t sElla
. ~ ~ produced what he styled a ‘Synopsis Analytique’
for each concert, had it printed and sent out in advance to all Musical
Union members, who were advised to read it before the concert.49The
synopses, effectively analytical programme notes, mark the beginning
of the nineteenthcentury English tradition of programme-note writing
that embraced G.A. Macfarren’s analytical programmes for the
Philharmonic Society and J.W. Davison’s notes for Chappell’s Popular
Concerts, and led to the famous and extensive accounts of Beethoven’s
symphonies written by Sir George Grove, editor of the famous music
dictionary that still bears his name, for concerts at the Crystal Palace.50
Ella’s essays always bore as a catchline the words of the French violinist
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Pierre Baillot: ‘it is not enough for the artist to be well prepared for the
public, the public must also be well prepared for what it is going to
hear’.51Although the notes often provided historical background to
the work, their main purpose was to identify the principal thematic
material in each movement, and to give some description of the way the
thematic material had been used and/or transformed by the composer.
By providing a series of thematic incipits printed in musical type, Ella
enhanced the means by which the musical listener could identify
aurally with the structure of each movement (see Fig. 1).When read
from a present-day standpoint, the notes can seem unsystematic and
dilettante (they certainly have none of the rigour of later contributions
to the programme-note genre) ; nevertheless, the vocabulary is tech-
nical, big structural moments such as unusual transitions and modu-
lations are invariably pointed out, and there is a clear sense of Ella
trying to give his musically-literate audience aural signposts through
each movement, and of his encouraging them to listen in a musically-
informed way. The notes drew admiration from many, including
Berlioz, who, having visited the Musical Union, wrote in a Paris
periodical:
Mr. Ella does not confine his attention to the performance of the master-
pieces which figure in the programmes of these concerts; he also wants
the public to understand them. Accordingly, the programme of each
matinee, sent in advance to the subscribers, contains an analysis or
synopsis of the trios, quartets and quintets which they are to hear; in
general it is a good analysis, appealing to the eye as well as the mind, by
adding to the critical text musical extracts, the theme of each piece, the
most important musical figure or the most striking harmonies or modu-
lations. One could not do more.52
For the Beethoven Quartett Society, which repeated the same works
each season, a permanent set of programmes was compiled by the viola
player Henry Hill and issued to members, who were expected to bring

37
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Fig. 1. Excerpt from Ella’s programme notes for the Musical Union, 19 May 1846;
published in the Recwd of th.e Musical Union (1846), no. 4.

38
 Learning to Listen

them to concerts. The programmes, entitled ‘Honor [sic] to Beet-

hoven’, provided a mixture of poetic quotations from the works of
Shakespeare, Milton, Coleridge and other English writers, biographical
notes and historical information on the quartets (much of it taken
from Moscheles’ recently published translation of Anton Schindler’s
biography of Beethoven) ,53 as well as musical incipits of the movements
of every quartet (see Fig. 2). In spite of giving over so much space in
the programme to musical quotations, the programme notes do not
attempt technical description; instead the emphasis is on a quasi-
religious reverence for Beethoven and his music. It is worth recalling at
this point that membership of the society required some knowledge
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of Beethoven’s music: in terms of chamber music this probably meant,

first and foremost, those of Beethoven’s early and middle-period works
that had become mainstays of the repertory, though may also have
included less frequently performed pieces. There had, for instance,
been a handful of performances of the abstruse ‘late’ quartets during
the previous decade, and it seems reasonable to suppose that many
of the avid Beethovenites who joined the society had witnessed some, if
not all, of these earlier performance^.^^ Perhaps because of this, the
society seems to have felt no pressing need to describe the quartets in
words, still less to embark upon Ella’s particular brand of musical
appreciation. More significant is the inference, made by the society,
that devotion to Beethoven’s music implied comprehension, or even
transcended it.55
Fostering of intelligent listening did not stop at programme notes.
Audiences at both societies were encouraged to follow miniature scores
during performances; again this was a new step, and it provoked com-
ment not only in the press, but also from foreign visitors, notably
Onslow and Berlioz. The latter, after visiting the Beethoven Quartett
Society, noted that ‘[y]ou see there English people following the
fanciful flight of the composer’s thought in little pocket scores printed
in London for this purpose’.56Those ‘little pocket scores’ were almost
certainly the miniature scores that were published by K.F. Heckel of
Mannheim in the 1840s and 1850s and distributed in London through
agents, including the music publishers J.J. Ewer and G.A. A~gener.~’
These scores were truly pocket-size, measuring about 14.5cm x 9.5cm
(i.e. much smaller than modern miniature scores, which on average
measure 19cm x 13.5cm), and covered a remarkably large slice of the
Viennese classical repertory, including Haydn’s complete quartets (83
in all), Mozart’s celebrated quartets and quintets, and virtually all of
Beethoven’s chamber music for strings. Several association volumes are
still in existence, many with different contents and bindings, which

39
 Christina Bashford
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Fig. 2. Excerpt from Hill's programme for the third concert of the Beethoven Quartett
Society's season; published in The Five Programmes of the Beethoven Qunr?.ett Society
(London: R. Cocks & Go., 1846).

40
 Learning to Listen

suggests that music-lovers could, to some extent, dictate the collation

and appearance of their own sets.58
Both the reading of programme notes and the perusal of miniature
scores were important methods of encouraging attentive listening and
promoting an intellectual understanding of music. For this to happen
effectively, though, one further pre-condition was needed: an atmos-
phere of quiet during performances. At the chamber-music concerts
of the 1830s and early 1840s such concert-givers as Moscheles and
Blagrove went to great lengths to organise seating so that people could
hear, but evidence strongly suggests that a certain amount of audience
noise was still an acceptable part of the proceedings. In effect, some
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codes of concert etiquette more commonly associated with the eigh-

teenth century were still in operation, even if they were being
increasingly questioned by the mainstream critics. Long programmes
meant it was acceptable for people to arrive and leave at any point. The
doors did not close, as they usually do today,just before the concert was
about to start; and people did not necessarily expect to wait until a gap
between pieces before moving into or out of the room. Moreover, few
were present for the first or last work in a programme. Time and again
one finds newspaper critics railing against the noise of latecomers and
early goers. Thus The Atlas in 1839 remarks on the commotion that
began once the penultimate work of Mori’s Classical Chamber Concert
had ended:
The last chord of HAYDN’S charming quartett was the signal for a pretty
general scramble for hats and cloaks, and as the shuffling of feet and
other noises attending fashionable departures precluded any positive
knowledge of the fact, we were left to conjecture that the performance of
BEETHOVEN’S superb terzetto concluded the concert?’

It was customary at this period for audiences to applaud between move-

ments, and for a particularly liked movement to be repeated before
moving on to the next; respect for the unity of a musical composition
was still some way off. More to the point, though, some people indulged
in an old-fashioned manner of behaviour which was increasingly
identified with the fashionable aristocracy; that is, of making audible
interjections of approval or disapproval during the music.60The Duke
of Cambridge, although a great musical enthusiast, was a frequent
culprit. The daily press reported his antics in a neutral way; only the
Musical World was brave enough to censure his behaviour, saying: ‘we,
however, wish he would not be quite sofbrtein his admiration, especially
during piano passages’.61
Such habits were not changed overnight, though one gets the

41
 Christina Bashford

decided impression that by, say, the early 1840s the tide was turning,
and that the old ways (in chamber-music concerts at least) were
becoming intolerable. The Musical Union, in particular, was able to
build on this foundation. Its motto was: ‘The greatest homage to music
is in silence’,62and over the years Ella developed quite a reputation for
his insistence on quiet. In his Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music W.W.
Cobbett remembered affectionately how:
It was a sight for the gods when Ella rose from his gilded seat, held aloft
his large, capable hands, clapped them, and called for SILENCE in
a stentorian voice. After this, no lord or lady present, however dis-
tinguished, dared to interrupt the music by fashionable or any other kind
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of chatter.63

There are many such anecdotes about Ella’s intolerance of noise,

including one that suggests he even taught the Duke of Cambridge how
to behave.64Ella provided an interval of ten minutes between items to
allow people to come and go, and he printed stern reminders in every
programme that members should leave only at these junctures, and
refrain from disturbing either the artists or fellow-listeners. He also
refused to introduce reserved seats, for the very reason that people who
came late camed more disruption looking for a numbered chair than
if they sat down on the nearest available one. In spite of all this, Ella’s
reminders continued to be printed (and, presumably, necessary) right
up to the 1870s, suggesting that a few would always try to come and go
during the music.
There is little information about social etiquette at the Beethoven
Quartett Society.Quietness was clearly important to the group, for their
concert-room in Harley Street was deliberatelypositioned at the back of
the house so that no noise from the street could penetrate; but there
are no directives in programmes and handbills about behaviour, and no
unacceptable digressions were reported, suggesting that this group,
primarily musicians, needed no such reminders about how to behave.
Although there seems little doubt that by nineteenth-century stan-
dards these chamber-music concerts were quiet occasions, it is quite
likely that the concept of concert-room silence was still some way from
modern expectations. Even at the Musical Union and Beethoven
Quartett Society, where concentrated listening was & ~ p atten-~ ,
tiveness could be equated with occasional quiet murmurings and
whisperings of approval during performance. This account is typical:
Profound silence is observed, except that indescribable murmur of
applause at some delicate trait in the execution, which never interrupts,
but encourages, the e ~ e c u t a n t s . ~ ~

42
 Learning to Listen

In other words, a quiet and attentive audience would nevertheless have

been highly involved in the performance, and would have participated
in the musical event rather like a modern jazz audience.
Ultimately, though, exactly how much ‘noise’was allowed is not really
the issue. What is, is the fact that chamber-music audiences were being
encouraged to listen in a concentrated and active way, and that
chamber-music concerts were developing powerful connotations of
intellectualism. This image of highbrow values is reinforced by the
engraving of a concert at the Musical Union in the Illustrated London
News of 1846 (see Fig. 3). Its messages are strongly suggestive: first,
that chamber-music appreciation is a sophisticated musical taste that
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has to be worked at through careful listening (several earnest-looking

listeners are reading Ella’s programme notes; miniature scores and
other items of literature lie, ready to be consulted, on the table); and
second, that musical elitism is somehow linked to social elitism (the
accompanying article in the newspaper identifies important members
of the nobility in the front row, and we see them clearly engaged in
serious appreciation).

This case-study of listening practices at one type of concert in one part

of London has attempted to give some insights into the way concert
behaviour and listening were developing in mid-nineteenthcentury
London. Probably such chamber-music concerts were ahead of the
game in terms of serious listening, but comparisons are needed
between different types of West End concert (orchestral concerts,
oratorios etc.), or chamber-music concerts in other parts of London, at
the same (or later) periods. Furthermore, although several provincial
cities (among them Leeds, Exeter, Brighton, Manchester and Liver-
pool), apparently following London’s example, set up chamber-music
concerts during the late 1830s and the 1840s, they did not sustain
anything like the number of concerts that London did, and it may well
be that formal encouragement of attentive listening outside London
followed on from developments in the metropolis;66again, comparative
studies are lacking.
In spite of this, some preliminary general points may be made in
conclusion. It is clear that the new type of listening developing in
London was bound up with a number of changing values, both musical
and social. First and foremost was the fact that the emphasis at concerts
was now more on the musical event (and the music itself), and less on
the social experience. (That is not to deny the fact that at chamber-

43
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44
Christina Bashford

4
=p:
$ h3
 Learning to Listen

music concerts the encouragement of intellectual discourse added an

important, complementary social dimension; but rather to show that
music was increasingly coming to the fore.) As the philosopher Lydia
Goehr has observed, attitudes towards the musical work began to
change in the early nineteenth century, and a new-found reverence
towards music In particular, there was a new notion that
going to concerts of serious instrumental music and developing skills
in music appreciation constituted a worthwhile intellectual activity.
Enmeshed in this was the emergence of a cohering core repertory of
masterworks (in terms of chamber music this meant Haydn’s op.76
quartets, Mozart’s set of six quartets dedicated to Haydn, and the
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Beethoven quartets), which were performed time and time again.

There was also a new feeling that these were works one needed to get
to know through repeated hearings. In tandem with these changing
musical values went changes in concert etiquette. At chamber-music
concerts, with the spotlight so intensely on the music, social behaviour
seems to have adapted relatively quickly: intimate environments
stressed listening and quiet; people stopped making loud interjections
during performance; they began to enter and leave the room quietly,
even to stay for the whole performance; and eventually some came to
indulge in active listening through the use of programme notes and
miniature scores.
It is worth remembering, too, that the backdrop to such behavioural
changes was a developing code of social etiquette in general, including
modes of behaviour that emphasised the importance of consideration
to others and modest decorum in all that one did.6*Etiquette books,
those pocket companions of ‘dos’ and ‘do nots’ for the upwardly-
mobile middle classes that were published in their tens of thousands
from the 1830s, included advice about concert behaviour. Although
they almost certainly reflected, rather than led, norms of social be-
haviour, and although in terms of concert etiquette they addressed far
more general audiences than the musically motivated ones considered
here, these books do explain some of the social values that had fused
with the developing code of concert etiquette. Moreover they give a
sense of the general aesthetic values that underpinned the way concerts
and music were perceived culturally in the mid-nineteenth century.
They repeatedly advise silence during concerts, mainly because one
should always consider those who want to listen, and because to talk or
make noise would show signs of ill-breeding. As Etiquette for All (1861)
reminded the novice concertgoer:
It is exceedingly vulgar to annoy your neighbours by beating time,
humming the tunes, or making unseemly and ridiculous gestures of

45
 Christina Bashfn-d

admiration. Should you unfortunately not feel interested in the per-

formance, endeavour to conceal your disappointment as philosophically
as possible. There may be people beside you, who are charmed and
delighted: your uneasy attitudes and wry faces might spoil their whole
enjoyment. Think of their feelings toward you: would they be friendly, or
the reverse?69
In etiquette books the emphasis, when it comes to appreciating music,
is firmly on consideration towards others; there is rarely advice that one
should be quiet out of artistic respect for the music. It is a different
story, though, when it comes to learning how to behave in art galleries;
in sharp contrast with its advice for behaviour at concerts, one book
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insists that in an art gallery (here described as a temple of art), quiet

and reverence should be the order of the day, because to do otherwise
‘seemslike profanation in such a place’.’O
The implication made by such writers, that music does not require
the same artistic respect as the fine arts, sits uneasily with what we know
of the West End chamber-music concerts of the 1830s and 1840s: these
were events that focused intensely on the music, emphasised the intel-
lectual over and above the social, encouraged critical discourse, and -
most importantly - promoted the idea that silence and reverential
listening were behavioural imperatives for music. To this extent, music
was founding its own temples of art in the West End, and chamber
music was leading the way.
(Oxford Brookes University)

Endnotes
1. James H. Johnson, Listening in Paris: a Cultural HiTtwy (Berkeley and London:
University of California Press, 1995).
2. See in particular James Parakilas’ review of Listening in Park in TheJournal of Modern
Histwy 68.1 (1996): 1935, and William Weber, ‘Did People Listen in the 18th
Century?’,Ear4 Music 25.4 (1997):67891.
3. Fanny Burney, Cecilia, ed. Peter Sabor and Margaret Anne Doody (Oxford and New
York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 274.
4. E.M. Forster, Hovardr End, ed. Oliver Stallybrass (London: Penguin, 1975), 456.
5. For an informative discussion of eighteenthcentury London audiences and behav-
iour see Simon McVeigh, Concert Life in London from Mozart to Haydn (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993), 647. O n the question of ‘divided attention’ or
‘half-listening’ by eighteenth-century audiences, and its parallels in modern
culture, see Parakilas, review, 194.
6. See Forster, Howa7ds End, 447.
7. For discussion of the development of absorbed listening in the nineteenth century,
and of music as an introspective experience born of romanticism, see Peter Gay, The
Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud, vol. 4: The Naked Heart (London: Harper Collins,
1995), 11-35. The period also saw many developments in the teaching of musically-

46
 Learning to Listen

informed listening, through programme notes, music-appreciation lectures and

repertory guides.
8. McVeigh, Concert Lfe, 34,62.
9. Musical Times 59 (1918): 402; quoted in Percy A. Scholes, The Mirror of Music, 1844-
1944: a Century of Musical Lqe in Britain as reflected in the Pages of the Musical Times
(London: Novello; Oxford University Press, 1947), 224.
10. For an overview of the history and function of chamber music see Michael
Tilmouth, ‘Chamber music’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed.
Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1980).
11. Weber, ‘Did People Listen’, 67880.
12. Namely Cyril Ehrlich, First Philharmonic: a History of the Royal Philharmonic Society
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), and Michael Musgrave, The Musical L f e of the
Crystal P a h e (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
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13. This was the focus of my unpublished PhD dissertation, ‘Public Chamber-Music
Concerts in London, 183550: Aspects of History, Repertory and Reception’ (King’s
College, University of London, 1996), which was based on a wide reading of nine-
teenthcentury newspapers,journals and archival materials.
14. T h Atlas 27 February 1841,140.
15. The terms ‘intimacy’and ‘intimate’ can have many meanings, but are used in this
discussion in two senses: (1) to denote the relatively small size and quasidomestic
arrangement of the performance spaces under discussion; (2) to connote the group
audience feeling that can be engendered by listening to music under such con-
ditions. Such group feelings are particularly appropriate to chamber music, which
when listened to closely can make the listener feel not only in some sort of com-
munion with the other members of the audience, but also directly connected with
the music-making itself. Used in the latter context, ‘intimacy’does not necessarily
presuppose a preexisting social framework, though in the case of the concerts
under discussion (especiallythe Musical Union and Beethoven Quartett Society),it
seems clear that some of the regular concert-goerswere known to one another.
16. For a discussion of the lifestyle and status of the professional musician in the early
nineteenth century see Cyril Ehrlich, The Music Profession in Britain since the Eigh-
teenth Century: a Social History (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1985), 30-50.
17. See Ehrlich, The Music Profission, 266.
18. An exception was the Director’sannual benefit concert, which included vocal items.
19. For a detailed account of the establishment of the Beethoven Quartett Society see
David B. Levy,‘ThomasMassa Alsager, Esq.: a Beethoven Advocate in London’, 19th
Century Music 9.2 (1985): 119-27.
20. T h e first modern assessment of Ella’s life is in John Ravell, l o h n Ella, 1802-1888’,
Music and Letters 34 (1953): 93105. For a reexamination of Ella’s early career and
his role in establishing the Musical Union see Bashford, ‘Public Chamber-Music
Concerts’, 5&9,77-82,152-80.
21. Chamber-music concerts also operated in the mercantile City district at this period,
drawing audiences principally from the area east of Temple Bar; they remain
outside the scope of the present study.
22. For a discussion of the nature and use of subscription systems for eighteenth-
century concerts see McVeigh, Concert Lije, 1322.
23. Similar codes of social exclusivity can be observed at the orchestral concerts given
by the Philharmonic Society, which also operated by subscription; for an informa-
tive discussion see Ehrlich, First Philharmonic, 17-19.
24. Morning Herald 7 December 1843.

47
 Christina Bashford

25. Initially, the Musical Union Committee, a non-executive group of hand-picked

members of the aristocracyand wealthy middle classes possessing a practical interest
in good music, nominated members; later on, nomination could be made by any
member of the society.
26. British Library, Add. MS 52347, f.5 (prospectus for the Beethoven Quartett Society);
cited in Pamela J. Willetts, Beethoven and Englund: an Account of Sources in the British
Museum (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1970), 56.
27. See, for instance, the analysis of audience profiles in the Musical World 31 January
1839,712 ‘[wle quite agree with the MmningHerald, in attributingmore of interest
and attraction for the sound musician to the opening, than to the close of the
London concert seasons; for although the latter is far more brilliant in its audiences,
the former is usually more remarkable for the excellence and high character of its
performances. ... If the reader only call to mind the character of an audience at a
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benefit morning concert, late in July, where all the prodigious people go, and
compare it with that of one of our serial concerts which begin at this period of the
season Uanuary], and which are often but slenderly attended, he will be struck with
the difference; -the one all fashion, noise, astonishment, and exhaustion- the other
comparatively scanty in its numbers, but attentive, and full of freshness and enjoy-
ment’.
28. On the strong associations between gender and instruments in domestic music-
making see Richard Leppert, Music and Image: Domesticity, Z&ology and SocieCultural
Formation in Ezghteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1988), 107-75.
29. For an account of the piano in domestic music-making in the early nineteenth
century and an examination of the domestic repertory see Dorothy DeVal, ‘Gradus
ad Parnassum: the Pianoforte in London, 1770-1820’ (unpublished PhD, King’s
College, University of London, 1991). Later in the century the piano (as ‘household
orchestra and god’) was to become the ubiquitous domestic instrument, at the
centre of home entertainment, as more and more people spent their disposable
incomes on pianos, music and lessons: see Cyril Ehrlich, The Piano: a Social History
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990),88107.
30. For a general discussion of the implications, for modes of listening, of the growth of
musical literacy in the nineteenth century and the shift towards a musical culture
centred around the piano see Leon Botstein, ‘Listening through Reading: Musical
Literacy and the Concert Audience’, 19th Century Music 16.2 (1992): 12945.
31. See J.R. Sterndale Bennett, The Life of William S h d a I e Bennett (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1907), 209.
32. For further biographical information see the articles on Attwood (by Nicholas
Temperley) and Potter (by/Philip H. Peter) in Stanley Sadie, ed., The New Grove
Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London: Macmillan, 1980) and the article on
Carnaby in James D. Brown and Stephen S. Stratton, British Musical Biography
(London: William Reeves, 1897).
33. William Weber, Music and the Middle Class: the Social Structure of Concert Life in London,
Paris and Vienna (London: Croom Helm, 1975), 653,1645 (tables 15-16).
34. They include the Duke of Cambridge (President of the Musical Union), the Earl of
Falmouth, Sir Andrew Barnard (both committee members) and Sir Giffin Wilson.
Precise numbers cannot be determined, due to the absence of subscription lists for
the earlier concerts, but it seems likely there was a good deal of crossover between
audiences.
35. On the typical daily activities of respectable women of the time see Michael Curtin,

48
 Learning to Listen

Pmpnety and Position: a Study of Victm’anManners (New York and London: Garland,
1987), 215-38.
36. For general biographical information on these musicians see the entries in Sadie,
The New Grove Dictionary.
37. On Dragonetti see Fiona M. Palmer, Dommico Lhagonetti in England, 1794-1846: the
Career of a Double Bass Virtuoso (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1997); an account of
Moscheles’ life is in Emil F. Smidak, Isaak-Zpaz Moscheles: the Lye of the Composer and
his Encounters with Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin and Mendahohn (Aldershot: Scolar Press,
1989); for an account of Smart’s career see Ehrlich, The Music Profession, 3742. The
Earl of Falmouth was President of the society; Sir William Curtis was treasurer. No
subscription lists survive, but the names of some subscribers were published in The
Times (25 March 1846), indicating some overlap with chamber-music audiences of
the previous decade.
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38. For further biographical information see the entries by Nigel Burton in The New
Grove Dictionary of Womm Composers, ed. Julie Anne Sadie and Rhian Samuel
(London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994).
39. The halls under discussion had approximate seating capacities of 800 to 900; see
Alec Hyatt King, ‘The London Tavern: a Forgotten Concert Hall’, Musical Times 127
(1986): 382-5, for information on the Hanover Square Rooms and Willis’s Rooms
(there listed as Almack’s larger room).
40. Morning Herald8 February 1839.
41. The Times31 March 1837.
42. Illustrated London News 27 June 1846, 419; see also Fig. 3.
43. Prospectus for the Musical Union (1845; private collection).
44. Morning Chronicle 28 January 1847.
45. See the account of Madame Dulcken’s concerts in the CourtJournal of 24 January
1846,77. The Societyof British Musicians initially styled their soiries ‘Conversazioni’.
46. The role of conversation in eighteenth-century culture is discussed by John Brewer
in his The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Lon-
don: Harper Collins, 1997), 510-12.
47. This tripartite classification of Beethoven’s music was, incidentally, not widely
perceived at the time, though it was of course particularly well illustrated by the
quartet repertory.
48. One exception should be singled out. Blagrove, a few years earlier, had included in
the handbills for his Quartett Concerts details of the tempo indications and keys of
the individual movements of each work performed.
49. The synopsis formed part of a four-page pamphlet containing information about
the society, biographies of the performers, general musical news etc. At the end of
the season the individual numbers were bound up and published as the &cord of the
Musical Union.
50. Grove’s analyses of Beethoven symphonies became widely known through their
separate publication, as Beethoven and his Nine Symphonies (London and New York:
Noveilo, Ewer & Co., 1896). His four-volume Dictionary of Music and Musicians
(London: Macmillan, 1879-89) gave rise to a number of expanded subsequent
editions, of which the twenty-volumeNew GrmeDictionary is the latest. For a history
of the programme note see George Grove and H.C. Colles, ‘Programme Notes’,
Grove’sDictionary ofMusic and Musicians, 5th ed., ed. Eric Blom (London: Macmillan,
1954); on the notes for the Philharmonic see Ehrlich, FirstPhilhamic, 121-2, and
on the programmes for the Crystal Palace concerts see Musgrave, The Musical Lye,
113-16.

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 Christina Bashford

51. My translation. The quotation was printed in French.

52. A.W. Ganz, BerZioz in London (London: Quality Press, 1950), 92. The passage comes
from an article originally published in the Journal des &ats (31 May 1851); it was
reprinted (in French) in the Recard of the Musical Union (1851), no. 4,36.
53. Ignaz Moscheles, trans. and ed. The Lqe of Beethoven ... and Remarks on his Musical
Works (London: Henry Colburn, 1841).
54. The critical reception of these performances is traced in Bashford, ‘Public Cham-
ber-Music Concerts’, 288341.
55. On the deification of Beethoven and his music in the nineteenth century, and
its role in fostering an introspective style of listening see Gay, The Naked Heart,
23-31.
56. Ganz, Berlioz in London, 92. Berlioz, however, cast doubt on whether some concert-
goers were able to follow a score properly.
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57. T h e title pages of some extant volumes are engraved with the name of Ewer & Go.
of London; volumes in the library of the Royal College of Music, London, carry the
stamp of the music importer and publisher G.k Augener. The cost of the miniature
scores is not known. For a detailed bibliographic description of the Heckel scores
and an assessment of the role of Ewer & Co. in their dissemination see Cecil
Hopkinson, ‘The Earliest Miniature Scores’, Music h i m 33 (1972), 138-44.
58. Copies belonging to the musician and educator John Hullah and to Sir George
Grove are in the library of the Royal College of Music, London.
59. The Atlas 2 February 1839,75.
60. Private condemnations of the aristocracy for such behaviour were becoming
common, especially by professional musicians and music critics. Ella, for example,
recorded his personal annoyance at a general’s daughter talking at a private con-
cert: ‘[she] exhibited the bad taste of a Fashionable Aristocrat by talking loud when
good music was played’ (diary, 19 February 1836; private collection). In print,
criticism tended to be less severe, though critics clearly played an important part in
shaping changes in audience behaviour, not only at concerts but also at the opera.
For a discussion of the role of journalists in changing modes of fashionable
behaviour in London opera houses, see Jennifer Lee Hall, ‘The Re-fashioning of
Fashionable Society: Opera-going and Sociability in Britain, 1821-1861’ (PhD, Yale
University, 1996; UMI no. 9632502).
61. Musical World 5 March 1840, 143. The idea that quiet listening became strongly
associated with the middle classes has been essayed by a number of scholars (among
them Johnson in Listening in Paris and Gay in The Naked Heart).
62. My translation. T h e motto was printed in programmes in Italian.
63. Walter Willson Cobbett, ‘Musical Union’, Cobbett’s CyclopedicSum? of ChamberMusic,
2nd ed., vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), 185; the survey was first
published in 1929.
64. ‘“Ah,” he [the Duke of Cambridge] once remarked at a musical party where every
one was talking; “youshould get Ella here; he’d soon stop that.”’ Recounted in H.R.
Haweis,John Ellar a Sketchfi-omLqe ([London: s.n.1, 18851,1.
65. ZUustrated London News 27June 1846,419.
66. On the role of London in the modernisation of English concerts and the develop
ment of concert life in other large cities see Ehrlich, TheMusicpmfcssim, 60-65. One
notable example of the English provinces apparently followingLondon’s lead is the
establishment in 1847 of the Brighton Musical Union, along the lines of Ella’s
model, by the violinist Antonio Oury and his pianist wife; this society capitalised on
the seasonal availability of London audiences and players.

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 Learning to Listen

67. Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: an h a y in the Philosophy of
Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 23M2.
68. For a discussion of social behaviour in public places see Curtin, Propmly andPosition,
155-71.
69. Etiquette for All, or Rules of Conduct for euery Circumstance in Life (Glasgow: George
Watson, 1861), 32-3.
70. How to Behave: a Pocket Manual of Etiquette, and Gui& to Correct Personal Habits
(Glasgow:John S. Marr; London: Houlston &Wright, [1867]), 101.
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