british music history

7/27/2019 British Music History

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British Music History


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The man that has no music in himself,

(William Shakespeare - The Merchant of Venice, 5. 1. 83-88)

Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,

Let no such man be trusted.

Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. . .


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Music - the British tradition Music, of one kind or another, has been around for almost as long as people. In fact, the idea of music

pre-dates written history and many tunes have had to be 'carried on' by what is known as 'oral

tradition' or singing from memory songs which you have heard sung by another person. The first few

pages outline the roots of the earliest known British music and begin to explain where the UK's musical

traditions came from. Troubadors, travellers and even returning Crusaders all played their part in our

rich and exciting cultural evolution.

The composition of art song in England and English-speaking countries has a long history, beginningwith lute song in the late 16th century and continuing today.

Music from the United Kingdom has always enjoyed great popularity. In the 1960s, a wave of musicians

helped to popularise rock and roll. Since then, the United Kingdom has produced numerous popular in

far-ranging fields from heavy metal to folk rock and drum and bass, as well as undergoing a renaissance

in the ancient forms of folk music indigenous to England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The

United Kingdom has had an influence on modern music worldwide which is disproportionate to itspopulation.


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2. Music in England

2.1Medieval music

Early church music was monophonic. That is, the whole choir sang the

same melody in the form known as plainchant, where the tune follows the

rhythm of the words. It is also known as Gregorian chant. As its name

implies, it was simple, unadorned melody, solemn and ritualistic. Its

simplicity does not mean that it is lacking in interest; the smoothly

modulating lines of melody at times achieve a remarkable beauty, and

many of the more famous plainsong chants have been used by composers

as material for more complex works.


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2.3 Shakespeare and music

Shakespeare would have heard in the Court and in the houses of the educated the

sophisticated madrigals and instrumental music of Thomas Morley; in Westminster

Abbey or St. Paul's he would have heard the masses of William Byrd, and around

the streets of London he would have heard ageless folk music: the street cries, the

ballads, the love songs.

On the stage, music played an important role. There was a special musicians

gallery above the stage; sometimes the music was played on the stage itself; and

there were even occasions when it was played under the stage to achieve an eerieeffect. The comedies are full of song and the gentle twanging of the lute, while the

tragedies and histories echo with the ceremonial sound of trumpets and drums.

Only a few of the original settings of songs Shakespeare wrote have survived; those

that do illustrate the variety and melodic inventiveness of the music of the period.


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2.4 English church musicians

The strong (and continuing) tradition of English church choral

music produced masses, anthems, and motets from composerswho continued to write, despite upheavals in the official religion

of England. Many church composers also wrote music for the

Court.


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2.6 Still dancing

Street musicians, from the bass violist to the player of the tabor

and pipe, frequented markets and busy areas, much as streetbuskers do today. There were many broadside ballads and songs

published in the period, and there were of course traditional folk

songs, drinking songs, and dances.

The markets were alive

with music of a different kind,

the cries of all those

who had wares to sell.


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2.7 Some of the instrumentsMartial and stirring, folksy and entertaining, or suave and

courtly: there were instruments for every mood and occasion.

As is the case today, string instruments were either plucked or bowed. The ancestor of

the modern guitar was the cittern, or gittern, was favoured by street performers while

the lute was more courtly.

Bowed instruments were also subject to class distinctions.

The viol was considered more refined than the precursor

of the modern violin, the fiddle.

Like lutes and guitar, the viol was fitted with frets

(another word that gave rise to punning);

"da gamba" in the viol picured in the graphi

means that it was large enough

to be held between the legs.


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A Song and a Pint

3.1 The place where it all happened

British taverns had provided musical

entertainment since medieval times, and

outdoor musical "pleasure gardens" flourished

in the 1700s. The early 1800s brought

"saloons" offering variety acts and booze, withsome going so far as to add theatres to their

original structures. When the Theatre Act of

1843 declared that such establishments would

only be licensed if run as theatres, the first

music halls appeared in suburban London.Although the stress was on entertainment,

alcohol flowed, to the delight of customers

and the ongoing profit of proprietors.


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3.2 Atmosphere

While everyone went for the music and comedy, there is no question that the availability

of liquor was part of the music hall's appeal. The temperance movement complained that

the halls encouraged heavy drinking among both men and women, particularly among the

lower classes. A few booze-free halls opened but soon faded. The British public went to themusic halls to kick back and have a good, rowdy time, not a subdued experience.

Instead of a proscenium stage, some of the earliest music halls looked like churches, with a

fenced-in sanctuary for the performance area and pipe organs to accompany the singers.

But the atmosphere was far from prayerful. Audiences were seated on benches surrounding

huge plank tables, where they could eat, drink, read, and settle in for hours. Performers

were often ignored as business deals, political debates, romantic assignations and a generalhubbub filled the air. Every act had to deliver solid entertainment or else!

The audience often joined in singing popular songs, and cheered-on favorite performers.

Mediocre acts were booed off the stage, but these rejections were more spirited than

vicious. Those who were not tough enough to take such treatment soon sought other

forms of employment. With women and children in the audience, the material was never more than mildly

risqu. Most music hall songs were sentimental and/or comic takes on everyday life, as

well as spoofs of the rich and famous.


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3.4 Popular Stars

Surviving recordings make it clear that few music hall stars had good

voices. Like their vaudeville counterparts in the U.S., their primary

qualifications were energy and personality. The best music hall performershad both in abundance. Marie Lloyd was one of the most beloved music

hall stars. Her stage humor ranged from the wholesome to the risqu.

One of her songs was "She Sits

Among Her Cabbages and Peas"

a title that sounds less innocent than it looks.

Lloyd always adapted her act to the audience

at hand, winning almost universal affection.Playwright and poet T. S. Eliot

explained her appeal this way


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3.5 Curtain

Music halls went into a gradual decline after the introduction of talking

films, but the British never did let a good habit die easily. They continued

in the interwar period, but no longer as the single dominant form ofpopular entertainment in Britain. The arrival of radio, and the cheapening

of the gramophone damaged it enormously. It now had to compete with

Jazz, Swing and Big Band dance music, as well as with cinema.Some halls

were still in operation after World War II, and the best music hall songsare still sung in some London pubs. The music halls gave the British

public a solid tradition of popular musical theatre. Stage stars Vesta Tilley,

Lupino Lane and Gracie Fields as well as film legends Stan Laurel and

Charlie Chaplin got their start in the music halls.


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5. Late 20th century Blues

&

RocknRoll 5.1 The aftermath of the World War 2

The roots of British popular music for the rest of the 20th century and into the next were set

during the 1950s. In the aftermath of World War 2, the economy was still performing poorly.

Many consumer goods were not available, and there was little high-wage labor. American

media was popular, and the British youth grew infatuated with the apparent wealth of theirAmerican counterparts. The economy of the United States was booming, and the images on

TV made it appear as though American teens were able to purchase much that the British

could not.

At the same time, a legion of American musical innovators, including Elvis Presley and Chuck

Berry, were adapting African American rock and roll for mainstream audiences, and American

folk bands like The Weavers were fomenting a roots revival of old time music. Indigenous

styles of music production and performance dominated the United Kingdom until the late

1950s, when imported American rock and roll, pop-folk and rockabilly gained fans among

British youth, while American roots music, especially the blues, found its own devoted fanbase.


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5.3RocknRoll

5.3.1The Beatles

The Beatles were a rock and pop band from Liverpool, England that formed in 1960. During their

career, the group primarily consisted of John Lennon (rhythm guitar, vocals), Paul McCartney (bass

guitar, vocals), George Harrison (lead guitar, vocals) and Ringo Starr (drums, vocals).

Although their initial musical style wasrooted in

1950s rock and roll and skiffle,

the group worked with different musical genres,

ranging from Tin Pan Alley to psychedelic rock.

Their clothes, style and statements made the

trend-setters, while their growing social awareness saw

their influence extend into the social and cultural

revolutions of the 1960s. After the band broke up

in 1970, all four members embarked upon successful

solo careers.

The Beatles were one of the most commercially successful and critically


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The Beatles were one of the most commercially successful and criticallyacclaimed bands in the history of popular music, selling over one billion

records internationally. In the United Kingdom, The Beatles released more

than 40 different singles, albums, and EPs that reached number one,

earning more number one albums than any other group in UK charthistory. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked The Beatles number one

in its list of 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. According to that same

magazine,

The Beatles' innovative music and

cultural impact helped define the 1960s,

and their influence on pop culture

is still evident today. In 2008,

Billboard magazine released a list

of top-selling Hot 100 artists to

celebrate the chart's fiftieth anniversary;

The Beatles topped it.

The Beatles' influence on rock music and popular culture wasand remainsimmense They


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The Beatles influence on rock music and popular culture was and remains immense. Theyaffected attitudes to fashion worldwide when in the 1960s there was widespread imitation of

their haircuts and clothing. In the recording studio The Beatles took innovative approaches to

the use of technology, treating the studio as an instrument in itself and working closely with

recording engineers, urging experimentation and regularly demanding, "Just try it [] it might

just sound good". At the same time they constantly sought ways to put chance occurrences to

creative use, examples being accidental guitar feedback, a resonating glass bottle or a tapeloaded the wrong way round so that it played backwards, and incorporated the resulting

sounds into their music. They were also pioneers in the use of sampling, which along with

their other experimentation created techniques which were widely adopted by others.

The Beatles redefined the album as something more than just a small number of hits padded

out with "filler" tracks, and they were the originators in the United Kingdom of the now

common practice of releasing video clips to accompany singles. The Beatles became the first

entertainment act to stage a large stadium concert when they opened their 1965 North

American tour at Shea Stadium. A large number of artists have acknowledged The Beatles as a

musical influence or have had chart successes with covers of Beatles songs. References to The

Beatles, and parodies involving them, are commonplace as a feature of TV shows, films and

video games.


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The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones are an English

rock band formed in 1962 in London

when multi-instrumentalist Brian Jone

and pianist Ian Stewart were joined

by vocalist Mick Jagger and guitarist

Keith Richards. Bassist Bill

Wyman and drummer Charlie Wattscompleted the early lineup. Stewart,

deemed unsuitable as a teen idol, was removed from the official lineup in 1963 but

continued to work with the band as road manager and keyboardist until his death in

1985.


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First popular in the UK and Europe, The Rolling Stones came to the US during the early 1960s "British

Invasion". The Rolling Stones have released 22 studio albums in the UK (24 in the US), eight concert

albums (nine in the US) and numerous compilations; and have sold more than 200 million albums

worldwide. Sticky Fingers (1971) began a string of eight consecutive studio albums that charted at

number one in the United States. Their latest album, A Bigger Bang, was released in 2005. In 1989 The

Rolling Stones were inclucted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and in 2004 they were rankednumber 4 in Rolling Stone magazine's 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. Their image of unkempt and

surly youth is one that many musicians still emulate.

The Rolling Stones are notable in modern popular music

for assimilating various musical genres into

their recording and performance, ultimately making

the styles their very own. The band's career is markedby a continual reference and reliance on musical styles

like American blues, country, folk, reggae, dance;

world music exemplified by the Master Musicians of

Jajouka; as well as traditional English styles

that use stringed instrumentation like harps. The bandcut their musical teeth by covering early rock and roll

and blues songs, and have never stopped playing live or

recording cover songs.


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Other Bands:

The Who

Iron maiden

Led Zeppelin

Black SabbathThe Cure

Judas Priest

Deep Purple

Pink Floyd

The Sex Pistols

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