the place of music in the history syllabus

T H E P L A C E OF M U S I C I N THE

H I S T O R Y SYLLABUS

J O H N D. S T A N D E N Kingsdale School, London

BOTH HISTORY AND MUSIC are generally accepted as necessary subjects for a school curriculum, and both subjects are recognized as having much to offer to the needs of the growing child. Yet history itself has by no means been accepted as an indispensable subject in the timetable of all children. In many modern schools boys following technical courses have no provision for history, and the situation for girls taking commercial courses is scarcely any better.’ Moreover, in grammar schools history and geography commonly become alternatives after the third year, and in approximately 42 per cent of the schools inspected by the Crowther Committee history ceased to be compulsory or became an option by the fourth year.2 However, compared with music, history has a fairly stable and almost satisfactory place in the curriculum.

One of the bad results of the use of express routes to the sixth form for instance, and of the subsequent intense specialization, is that such a subject as music usually becomes an option as early as the end of the third year and often disappears as a subject on the timetable except for those who particularly desire to take it as an examination subject. In fact, just when direct interest in such a subject as music becomes alive and when the need for it is increasing, it has either an optional place or no place at all in the timetable.8 Schools do make some effort to counter this by out-of-school activities, but this can never be an adequate sub- stitute, except perhaps in a boarding school. The whole situation is made worse by the pressure behind those children who stay at school for extra years in modern, comprehensive and grammar schools. The parents of such children-particularly the parents of first-generation grammar-school children-are, perhaps understandably, all too much concerned with vocational education at the expense of all else. Music is one of the first subjects to be dismissed from the timetable; but it is precisely these children, many of whom lack any cultural life in their homes, who need it most of all. The Crowther Report takes its stand quite clearly:

If we regard the development o f . . . some aesthetic sensibility as an Ministry of Education, 15-18: A report of tfie Central Advisory Council for Education (England),

Zbid. Table 29, p. 215. The superficially high figure given in this table for music reflects Vol. I . Report (~gsg) , Para. 130, p. 84.

the emphasis on the subject in girls’ schools, especially boarding schools.

Ibid. Para. 320, p. 214.

317

318 THE PLACE O F MUSIC IN THE HISTORY SYLLABUS

important part of general education, and one that is not finished by I 3 or 14, we clearly cannot be content to leave it in day schools to after-school voluntary ~ocieties.~

A study of the arts is indeed essential to develop the child’s powers of observation as well as to improve his taste-in other words, to refine the child’s perception. The very young child has the great advantage of looking upon the world ‘innocently’ so that he reacts naturally and strongly to the sensuous qualities of all arts. Later, in adolescence, when the child tries to look at the arts logically, he finds that he can no longer react ‘innocently’ as he did previously, whilst he still lacks the powers of appreciation and judgement of an adult. I t is at this stage in a child‘s development-in adolescence-that education in the arts is so important. This point of view can, in fact, be carried even further. Music is one of the essential manifestations of culture, and therefore it must be included in the curriculum.^

I t is against this background that the suggestion is made that music can and should be introduced into the history class, and that such a combination of subjects can be advantageous to each other as well as to the general education of the child.

History may be loosely defined as the record of mankind, and no record of mankind can be complete without considering cultural history, which must, of course, include music, To put it briefly music is important as historical fact, and cultural history as a whole is of prime importance as showing the way in which a civilization expresses itself. Until the cultural activities of any historical period are known, the history of that period cannot be said to be known, and cultural history embraces all expressions of the people-fine art, folk-art, science and music. Moreover it should be taught because not only does it constitute an integral part of history, but also it satisfies the needs of the child. By omitting cultural history the teacher harms both history and the child.

Recently some aspects of cultural history have been receiving a certain amount of recognition. Literature is increasingly used as contemporary source material, and the architecture of a period, especially of the Middle Ages, is commonly included in the history syllabus. Painting, drawing and sculpture too are finding their place in the history lesson, but the position of music is less happy. As far as children’s textbooks are concerned the subject is almost completely ignored, and most of the books of reference on English history likely to be used by teachers are little better. Three modem books on the Middle Agesa take none of the chances offered to discuss such topics as the close association of music and the Church, the history of the troubadours and the rise

Ministry ofEducation, 15-18: A report of the Central Advisory Councilfor Education (England), Vol. I. Report (~gsg), Para. 319, p. 214.

a Unesco, Music in Educution. International Conference on the Role and Place of Music in the Education of Youth and Adults. Brussels, zg June-g July 1953 (Unesco, Switzerland,

@ P. H. Blair, An Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England (1956); F. Barlow, T h Feudal Kingdom of England, r o p - 1 ~ 1 6 (1955); V. H. H. Green, T h Lahr Plantagenets, 1301-14&5 (1955).

19551, P. 321.

JOHN D. STANDEN 3’9 of secular music. G. R. Elton in England under the Tudors (1955) does at least apologize for his totally inadequate treatment of Tudor music, but, since this was the time when English music was at its greatest and when it played an integral part in the life of the people, no apology can be accepted as satisfactory, His bibliography, excellent in other respects, is totally inadequate for music. He mentions one book and that one now out-dated, V. H. H. Green on the eighteenth century’ does at least manage to provide a fairly adequate book list, but otherwise he deals very summarily with music, and of the Oxford Histories, only R. C. K. Ensor* writes illuminatingly about music. More recently, in an article in Approaches to History Talbot Rice confines himself to the visual arts as he believes that music requires specialist knowledge; 9 but surely there is a certain proportion of every art that can be transmitted from teacher to pupil without specialist knowledge, though the latter will naturally be of great help. The teacher’s use of music, then, can help to correct this failing of history books.

As part of the record of mankind music shows how the cultures of each nationality differ. When music is used to introduce different national characteristics to children, the consequent verbal explanation becomes all the more lucid, for music is an admirable agency for conveying the culture of different nations to others and enabling them to understand and perhaps possess it. The qualities of folk-music have been conveniently summarized by Sir Steuart Wilson. Folk-music is, he maintains, the cumulative expression of many ages. I t is simple and direct and a true expression of the ideals of a community, whilst, being cultivated by its practice, that is its continual use, it represents an art form which can contribute a bond of union between people of all levels of culture. Sir Steuart goes on to suggest that folk-songs should be used in the teaching of foreign languages and social studies.1° I t is but one step further to use them in the teaching of history, although there are difficulties in their use. As Cecil Sharp has pointed out, folk-song is the product of a race and is transmitted orally. I t is always changing and is never completed; at every moment of its history it exists in many forms.11 I t cannot often be used, therefore, to give the flavour of a period, however vaguely medieval or Elizabethan the tune may sound. Yet the words of a folk-song often date a particular version fairly exactly, and, as already suggested, folk-songs can be illuminating in the appreciation of different racial characteristics. There is little that is more evocative of a country than its folk-songs. la

V. H. H. Green, The Hanoveriam, 1714-1815 (1948). R. C. K. Ensor, England, 1870-1914 (1936).

0 D. Talbot Rice, ‘The History of Art’ in H. P. R. Finberg (ed.), A p ~ r o a c h to History, A Symposium ( I 962), p. I 58.

11 C. J. Sharp, Engltsh Folk Song: Sonu Conclusions (2nd ed. 1936), p. 15. 18 One further problem may be noted: race, nation and culture represent different con-

ceptions; nor do they coincide with political boundaries. Care must therefore be taken to use the appropriate word when discussing folk music. See F. T. Wainwright, Archaeology and Place Names and Hidory (1962), Ch. 8, especially pp. 104-112.

lo Music in Education, pp. 48-50.

320 ’rim PLACE OF M U S I C IN THE HISTORY SYLIARUS

Folk-song can help children to understand their heritage for it often formed the basis of a nation’s art music; in the nineteenth century the rise of national music was closely linked with renewed interest in folk- music. In addition the decline of interest in folk-song in England and its subsequent re-emergence at the end of the ninetecnth century to form a basis for a national school of composers is an historical fact of some importance, showing one effect of industrialization. Yet perhaps the greatest use of folk-song in the teaching of history may occur when the song (which the class should learn to sing) can be related to a particular event or situation. No exhaustive list of such songs can be included here, but a few examples may be cited from a recent Penguin anthology.1S ‘All Things are Quite Silent’l4 records the work of press gangs in the early nineteenth century, whilst ‘The Cock Fight’ l5 indi- cates the pastimes of workers in early industrial towns. The unhappy fate of Jane Seymour is recorded in another song’6 and both nineteenth- century life in gaol” and the social conditions of the East End of London are given graphic descriptions.’*

I t may be suggested that the use of songs for the nineteenth century is particularly suitable for younger children, and this could help to overcome the problem of adapting that century for forms below General Certificate of Education standard-forms which might otherwise never study the nineteenth century at all, either because they do not choose history as an examination subject, or because the teacher feels that it is a period unsuitable for the junior forms of a secondary school.

By the use of music history teaching does in fact gain an extra making the subject more lively and providing the best means

of obtaining the ‘flavour’ of a period. All aspects of cultural history help to recreate the factual and emotional past, for they have an historical nature and they form a connecting link between past and present. They provide subtle, precise and truthful material which is, moreover, capable of analysis in different ways.20 For the historian an analysis in social terms is perhaps the most rewarding, for one of the most difficult problems in studying any period of history is the obtaining of a sensc of the quality of life at a particular time and place, and it is apparent that one comes nearest to a contact with a past society in the study of its arts. Here, if anywhere, the characteristic ‘flavour’ of any individual period is expressed, for here there are the only examples of recorded communication that have outlived their creator. Music and the other

la R. Vaughan Williams and A. L. Lloyd (eds.), The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs (‘959) *

l4 Ibid. p. 13. Ibid. p. 3 I.

1.9 Ibid. p. 85. 10 Probably the most usual sourcc in history is the ‘narrative source’ written with the

intention of providing information. Music provides what can bc called a n ‘unintentional’ source. See M. Bloch, The Historian’s Craft (trans. P. Putnam, Manchester, I954), pp: GO-9; and G. L. Renier, What is History? (1950)~ pp. 96-105. Renier’s classification of different sources makes it possible to include music in each kind of source.

l6 Ibid. p. 27. 17 Ibid. p. 39.

90 R. Williams, The Lung Revolution (1961), pp. 44 ct scq.

321

arts express the life of their period in direct terms even when the living witnesses are silent, for they have survived the society which helped to shape them. I t is too easily assumed that the arts serve only on the frontiers of knowledge. I n reality they are a t the very centre of society, and it is often through the arts that the society expresses its sense of being a society; the artist becomes the mouthpiece of his society. Music is one of the best mediums for a sensitive understanding of the past, providing as it does a direct inheritance of and connection with the past -just as direct, for instance, as literature and painting.

Music throws light on history, while the historical knowledge of music shows music in its proper perspective. Every composition is the record of an experience which was largely affected by environmental pressures and tradition. By putting music in its historical setting its value and meaning are therefore increased. Such views were put for- ward by the eminent musicologist, Percy Scholes, and it was almost inevitable that there should be a reaction against them. I t was declared that music must be regarded as a work of art pure and simplc and as nothing else, but the trend now is for this view to be revised. Whilst it is agreed that a work of art has value of its own apart from any other consideration and that it must never be destroyed by historical or any other analysis, it is also maintained that complete understanding can only come through a knowledge of its historical nature. This view has been stated both forcibly and persuasively by Raymond Williamsz1 and Helen Gardner:

J O H N D. STANDEN

All works of art, whatever else they may be, are historical objects, and to approach them as such is, I believe, a fundamental necessity if they are to realize their power fully over us. . , . One of the main difficulties in coming to terms with contemporary art is the difficulty we have in thinking of ourselves and our own age as historical. We know both too much and too little of our own context to see the work in perspective. , . , Every work of art is the product of a point in space and time, in so far as it would certainly have been different if it had appeared in any other place and time. It could not have been what it is but for the art which went before it. We oursclves see it through our knowledge and experience of what has come after it. It is historical also as the product of a mind which grew through particular experiences and not through others; and each particular work has an historical relation to its author's other works.2a

Miss Gardner was thinking particularly of poetry, but her argument may be adopted for any kind of art. Even if the total meaning of a work of art cannot be wholly analysed or treated historically, i t can certainly be approached through history. A work of art may not be primarily a piece of historical evidence, but it is still an historical fact.

Every musical composition, as an emotional interpretation of life, is

*I Ibid. Part I , Ch. 2, particularly pp. 46-8 and 69-71. 9' H. Gardner, The Bucincss of Criticism (1959), pp. 17-18.

322 THE PLACE OF MUSIC IN THE HISTORY SYLLABUS

the utterance of a personality reacting to circumstances. A recent series23 of books on the history of music elaborates this view of it:

This attempt to present music as an integral part of western civilization is essential, we believe, because all creative artists are influcnced by the spiritual and intellectual environment in which they live, and so it follows that the more we know about a particular period, the more we can enter into the creative minds of that period and hence appreciate more fully their aims and achievements. They may appear . . . obvious enough, but it is all too often forgotten, because each of us can enjoy and even be profoundly moved by a work of art knowing little or nothing about its creator or general background. Nevertheless it remains true that every creative artist gains in significance when his work is related to the conditions in which it was created.24

I n his introduction to the third volume Wilfred Mellers makes even greater claims. I t is not, he maintains,

adequate to write about music as though it could exist apart from the context of human life. One has to experience music ‘from within’; and in so doing to see it as historical evidence of a more inward kind than the documents with which historians usually have to deal. . . . Every artist self-evidently ‘reflects’ the values and beliefs of his time. . . . It is true that we cannot fully understand Beethoven without understanding the im- pulses behind the French Revolution. It is equally true that we cannot fully understand the French Revolution without some insight into Beethoven’s music.a6

By listening historically it becomes possible to understand the significance which past music had when it was still present. One must look a t it historically because one listens to virtually nothing but music of the past.

Further arguments along these lines have been advanced in a recent book on music education by Noel Long.26 His argument maintains that the teaching of music history a t all levels is singularly bad owing to the neglect of historical background and to the isolation of music from other subjects. The inclusion of some music in the history syllabus could go some way to correcting this defect, whilst another deficiency in music teaching today might also be tackled by the combination of music and history: the lack of general musical education. At secondary school level there is a need for a minimum learning of the fine arts. I n some schools, especially in America, this need is met by what is known as the general music class, which aims to develop in the child a 1;:tter understanding and fuller appreciation of music, no matter what skill the child

I* The series originally consisted of four volumcs: A. Harman, Medieval and Early Renais- sance Music (1958), A. Harman and A. Milner, Late Renaissance and Baroque Music (1959), W. Mellers, Tlw Sonata Principle (1957)~ and Ronuudicism and ihe Twentieth Century (1957). It has recently (1962) been reissued and revised in one volume.

84 A. Harrnan, op. cit. p. x. e6 W. Mellers, The Sonah Principle (1957)~ pp. ix and xiii.

N. Long, Music in English Educalion (1959).

J O H N D . STANDEN 323 possesses. In England the general music class is less used and there is concentration on the training of music specialists in musical technique. This has usurped the paramount aim of music education: ‘the aim of turning out informed, perceptive and responsible music-lovers.’27 I t also seems plausible to suggest that the use of music in the history syllabus can do much to help one of the main problems in music education today-the split between ‘classical’ and ‘pop’ music. The ‘pops’ of today are after all just as significant for the society of today as was The Beggar’s Opera for the society of its own day. The history lesson can be the place where ‘classical’ and ‘pop’ music can meet naturally, where ‘pops’ can be accepted in the mere course of things, whilst the difference between modern (i.e. post-IgI8) popular music and that of other ages can be shown, especially the growth of popularity by commercial exploitation of a particular part of society and by the manipulation of business interests.

Finally there are the purely practical reasons for linking music and history. At a more mundane level the use of music in the history lesson can make a fact more memorable and rewarding by putting it in a larger context. Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow is more likely to be made memorable by reference to and by hearing Tchaikovsky’s Over- ture than by the learning of the bare fact. Indeed the teacher has made the fact more significant by the mere mention of Tchaikovsky’s com- memoration of it in music. There is moreover tremendous scope for teaching history through opera-the operas of Verdi and their connection with Italian unification spring immediately to mind. Something of value can always be gained by the correlation of history with another subject that will vary a lesson; and the linking of subjects i s useful because there is always a tendency for each subject on the timetable to be viewed in isolation by both teachers and children. As such an auxiliary subject, music is of great value, and its inclusion in the history syllabus could help to produce students of wider general culture.

In practice the use of music in the history lesson is not without its difficulties and two factors must be borne in mind. Firstly, care must be taken never to use a work of art so that it is harmed or ruined as a work of art and never to spend time asserting value judgements. The latter are in fact generally unnecessary-a great work of art speaks for itself-though it is naturally permissible, and probably advisable, to help a child to understand a work of art. There is obviously a great difference between helping a child to develop his powers of appreciation and stating one’s own opinions or prejudices so that the child is denied the choice of accepting or rejecting a work of art. That there is no such thing as history free from prejudice of some kind is abundantly clear. What the teacher should do is to ensure that statements concerning

N. Long, op. cit. p. 164. It is significant that at the Music Teachers’ Association Con- ference on Music leaching in Schools held at the Royal Academy of Music, London, on Saturday, g .January 1960, the question of teaching music history and class appreciation was almost totally ignored.

324. THE PLACE OF MUSIC IN THE HISTORY SYLLABUS

a work of art are helpful to the child in some positive way without being propaganda.28 Secondly-and this should help to solve the problem just posed-music should be so combined with history that it becomes integrated with the subject. I t should be discussed when it arises naturally out of the lesson. There is therefore little to be said in favour of a potted history of music for the whole of civilization, dealt with separately and probably at the end of a course of lessons almost as an afterthought. Nor is there much to be said for a potted history of music for any long historical period except, perhaps, when it is closely related to lessons which have gone before and when it falls into a natural place in a series of lessons. Moreover, when incorporating music into the history syllabus one must arrange the proportion of music used with great care. A large part of any syllabus will most probably follow traditional lines, but in some cases an approach through music can be particularly helpful. I t should not be used so often that it becomes a gimmick or that the children tire of it, but so that it adds interest, helps an understanding of both history and music and, in the end, forms, together with lessons on the other arts, a reasonably complete picture of the culture of the period being studied.

To make the point clear it will be best to consider one particular period, and various eighteenth-century topics have been chosen,29 which would almost certainly be included in some way when teaching that period and for which music can be especially helpful and enlightening.

Firstly, music can help an understanding of the structure of society, for eighteenth-century music mirrors the society of its day no less certainly than that of other ages. High society was welded together by a complex system of family relationships and of patronage, and the country was to a great extent governed on the same basis. This pattern of patronage can be seen clearly in the position of the artist in society. Without a wealthy patron or suitable connections one who wished to enter the game of politics was more than handicapped. The same is true of composers. Haydn flourished with the help of the Esterhazys; Mozart, who left his patron, the Archbishop of Salzburg, though he triumphed artistically, died in poverty and was buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave. Moreover, the society that bought the services of composcrs left its mark on the kind of music that was composed. The music must match the civilized quality shown by high society. At its worst the results were the highly finished and formal (but often empty) compositions of such composers as Paisiello. There was complete mastery, but a lack of inspiration and a prevailing monotony in harmonic idiom -much of the music could be, and often was, harmonized with two or three chords. On the other hand there were the towering geniuses of

‘The historian’s difficulty in this respect is discussed by W. H. Walsh in An Introduction

For brevity only English history will be considered, though composers of other countrics to the Philosoplty of History (Revised ed. 1958), pp., 19-22 and 94-1 18.

will be included.

JOHN D. STANDEN 325 Haydn and Mozart, who were able to bring their music to great heights whilst remaining within the accepted formal framework.

The sonata and symphony were to some extent the response to the demand for a formal framework-the formality which was so near and dear to eighteenth-century society:

Thus knowing something of the rationalism, the sophisticated senti- mentality, the polished elegance of society in the latter half of the eighteenth century, of the delicate sensuousness and exquisite refinement of Watteau’s and Boucher’s paintings, we marvel more than if we know nothing of all this, not so much at the utter perfection of Mozart’s style and sense of structure as at the undercurrents of emotion that pervade his work and which at times amount almost to romantic passi~n.~O

When Handel arrived in England he soon found aristocratic patrons who demanded Italian operas, which he provided until the fashion changed. Indeed, the writing of opera could become a political matter. For a time there were two Italian opera houses in London: the one patronized by the Whigs in charge of the government, the other set up in opposition by the group surrounding the heir to the throne. The reversionary interest had in fact entered the artistic world, and rival composers and singers competed for popularity.

The seventeenth century had seen the arrival of the first female singers, who were now f&d and idolized with ‘all the unhealthy characteristics of the star system that we associate with the theatre and cinema of today’.g1 The castrati were an even more typical phenomenon of the age:

The desire for stylization, which forced the natural growth of tree and shrub by means of artificial trimming in geometrical patterns, was so extreme that one did not shrink from imposing a similar procedure on the natural growth of the male voice.sa

Castrati first appeared in the Papal Chapel in I 562, and in opera in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries they became fantastically popular. Despite the fact that they grew fat they were praised as actors, and their singing was, of course, ‘divine’:

The powerful mesa di voce, the ‘placing’ or ‘sending of the voice’, literally ‘sent’ the audiences of the time, especially the women, and the mass hysteria they provoked did not differ from the. . . adulation on which modern ‘crooners’ are thriving.8s

The development of music in England is closely connected with the progress of industrialization and the consequent changes in society, particularly the further emergence of the middle class. C. V. Wedgwood

10 A. Harman, op. cit. p. x. Watteau, of course, painted at the beginning of the century. This should remind us that a correct chronology is as important in artistic as in any other form of historv.

M. F. Bdcofzer, Music in the Baroqus Era (1948), p. 339. Ibid. Ia Zbid. pp. 405-6.

326 THE PLACE OF MUSIC I N THE HISTORY SYLLABUS

in Poetty and Politics under the Stuart$ has shown how in the period of the Civil War the Cavaliers turned from their love songs and stately pas- torals to hard-hitting, witty ballads and drinking songs, which were a kind of propaganda for the king’s cause. Their poetry lost its personal bias, its air of supercultivation, its remoteness from everyday reality; it became topical and socialized in that it reflected the social ~cene .3~ By the eighteenth century another of the arts, music, owing to the pressures of a changing society, was certainly socialized to a high degree. This development has been thought of more as a retrogression than anything else, for it meant in practice the commercialization of music in England and the importation of foreign musicians. One writer has called this period ‘The Dark Ages: Culture, and the Oratorio’.S5

The outstanding development in music as a result of middle-class influence was indeed the emergence of the oratorio. Handel had arrived in England all ready to promote the vogue for Italian operas, but he found that after initial successes his hopes were doomed to failure. Three reasons may be suggested: first, the London nobility was too weak to support one, let alone two, opera companies; second, the court was not directlyassociatedwith opera in England as it was on the Continent, where the Duke of Brunswick literally sold his subjects as merccnaries to finance his flourishing opera house;Se and third, the middle class, from whom the bulk of an audience had to be drawn in London, was not interested in a musical entertainment designed primarily for the nobility and presented in a foreign tongue. I t was the audience and not opera as a form that was in some way deficient, and Handel turned for support from the nobility to the middle class. He was quite prepared to work as a commercial musician in a foreign country, and as a business man he turned to oratorio, which gave the public the kind of music it desired -music that was both beautiful and uplifting. Yet it is of interest that Handel, true to the pattern of eighteenth-century patronage, produced his first oratorios for his patron the Duke of Chandos.

On an even more popular level for a time was The Beggar’s Opera, which apart from The Messiah probably constitutes the greatest commercial success of the century. Opinions on its worth as music and an art form vary. Wilfred Mellers has described it as typical of middle-class culture, and of the middle-class desire

‘to get it both ways’: for if on the one hand it patronizes the folk, on the other it administers a ‘realistic’ rebuff to that aristocratic Italianate con- vention which the middle-class public would have no truck with; it patronizes one and jeers at the other and it has no understanding of what either stood f0r.37

I t may have been a conscious middle-class challenge to aristocratic taste, but its success, though great, was short, for it included much

C . V. Wedgwood, Poetry and Politics under tha Stuarts (1960), pp. 71-103. s1 W. Mellers, Music and Society (1946)~ Ch. VI. a6 M. F. Bukofzer, op. cit. p. 398. a7 W. Mcllers, op. cit. pp. 93-4.

JOHN D. STANDEN 327 political satire which was eliminated by the Licensing Act of 1737. Nevertheless its worth as a social document cannot be denied.

St. Giles was a notoriously dangerous part of London by reason of the criminals who resorted there, for it was outside the .jurisdiction of the City Magistrate. Gay’s satire was meant to sting the Whigs, especially Robert Walpole, and followed the pattern of contemporary street songs. The characters of Mr. and Mrs. Peachum were based on the lives of real people-Mr. and ‘Mrs.’Jonathan Wild. In the opera Mr. Peachum was ‘a scapegoat for the accumulating vices of the age-a villain with no redeeming features. He was an ideal prototype for melodrama; ruler of an underworld where every human sympathy was flouted.’38 Gay was particularly desirous of attacking the manners and customs of the society of the day, and so he brought up to date the words of Lillibulero to attack the Whig government:

The modes of the Court so common are grown,

Friendship for interest is but a loan, That a true friend can hardly be met;

Which they let out for what they can get.3D The success of The Beggar’s Opera was unprecedented, and this led to

a number of sequels on similar lines. Nancy: or The Parting Lovers, which sang the glory of England and the honour of jolly Jack Tar, was produced more or less as patriotic propaganda in I 739, the time of the War of Jenkins’ Ear. In 1755 it turned up again, this time as The Press Gang: or Love in Low L$e, just before the Seven Years War.4Q

One further development took place in the world of music as a result of the pressure from the rising middle class-the establishing of public concerts. The first public concerts had taken place in the late seventeenth century and were ill thought of by Roger North:

The first attempt was low: a project of old Banister, who was a good violinist and a theatrical1 composer. He opened an obscure room in a publick house in White fryars; filled it with tables and seats, and made a side box with curtaines for the musick. IS. a piece, call for what you please, pay the reckoning, and Welcome gentlemen.41

The initial pressure for better concerts came from the higher reaches of society, whose members’ education was in many cases completed by a continental tour, The music of famous European composers was known to this class of Englishmen, and, when they returned to England, they were prepared to encourage continental musicians to come to England or send copies of their compositions to be played here. Thus arose sub- scription concerts, which have in some forms survived till today. How- ever, North thought that the original idea-to hear good music-had been lost by the eighteenth century:

Since [the seventeenth century] it [concert giving] hath bin carryed on 88 R. Nettel, Sing a Song of England (1954), p. 124. ao Ibid., quoted on p. 130. Zbid. p. 140. 41 J. Wilson (ed.), Roger North on Music ( ~ g h ) , p. 302.


with very great profusion, for celebrating the choisest Itallian operas and inviting over the most celebrious voices, . . . One thing I dislike is the laying too much stress upon some one voice, which is purchased at a dear rate. . . . Many persons came to hear that single voice, who care not for all the rest, especially if it be a fair Lady, And observing the discourse of the Quallity-crittiques I found it run most upon the point, who sings best? and not whether the musicke be good, or wherein.42

But whatever criticism there was of public concerts, through them England at least kept in touch with new, continental music. England became the place where a composer could make his fortune. Mozart toured England as a boy prodigy, whilst C. P. E. Bach resided in London for the great part of his life. Yet the most significant names associated with English concerts are Haydn and his ‘manager’ Salomon, whose policy, typical of eighteenth-century England, ‘was to capitalize the genius of H a y ~ I n ’ . ~ ~ Moreover, Haydn did reap a benefit other than material gain. In London he was provided with a far larger orchestra than his patrons, the Esterhazy family, could muster. Thus he was able to develop his style, resulting in his famous last symphonies, specially written for London.

I t is of no use to pretend that the promotion of concerts meant anything at all to the majority, who were excluded by the cost. Yet they were provided with music to some extent, and, as Nettel has pointed out, ‘if the Industrial Revolution favoured commercial exploitation of music, it favoured also the city choral festivaW.44 With the development of towns there grew up choral societies, particularly in the North where they met the need for relaxation.45 Moreover, in London capitalist enterprise provided pleasure gardens where music was performed, The Vauxhall and Ranelagh Gardens charged 2s. entrance when concerts were given and attracted large audiences; firework displays could attract an audience even when the cost of entrance was 5s. The final rehearsal of Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks took place in Vauxhall Garden, and 12,000 paid 2s. 6d. for admission to Green Park on 27 April 1749 when the work was performed in celebration of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle.46

As has been said above, the music of the eighteenth century was often topical. The wars against the French Revolutionary Government and Napoleon produced a crop of patriotic songs:

But with France it’s all up, they are meeting their fate, They’ve thrown down their basket of crockery,

J. Wilson, op. cit. pp. 312-13. 4s R. Nettel, The Orchestra in England (1946)’ p. 96. 4 4 K. Nettel, The Englishman Makes Music (1g52), p. 17. 4 5 Examples of Festivals and Choral Societies are: I 768 Birmingham Festival, I 770 Nor-

wich Festival, 1772 Chester Festival, I 778 Newcastle-on-Tyne Festival, I 784 Liverpool Music Festival, 1791 York Festival, and of course a host in the nineteenth century. A list could be compiled from: P. M. Young, The Choral Tradition (rg62), pp. 191-5, and P. A. Scholes, The Mirror of Music 38~-3944 (1947), pp. 23-8, 38-45 and 151-65.

46 K. Ncttcl, The Orchestra in England (1946), pp. 27-8.

J O H N D. STANDEN 329 And vengeance like this will o’ertake soon or late,

Then of England, that wonderful country, sing,

Mild laws that protect us, a Protestant king,

All who make of religion a mockery.

Where we’ve thousands of joys if we need ’em;

Lovely women, grog, biscuit, and freedom.47

The sentiments expressed are hardly of the highest order. For high sentiments in eighteenth-century music one has to turn to the part played by music in Methodism. John Wesley favoured simple music in which all could take part, and he considered German chorales as particularly suitable. He believed wholeheartedly in the power of music to uplift people’s souls, especially the souls of those who were starved of the finer passions and whose religious emotions were amplified by com- munal participation. I t was to such ends that the Wesleys’ hymns were directed. The passion and emotions thus aroused were far from the normal reaction to the formal classicism of most eighteenth-century music, and one of the best ways to begin a study of Methodism is to start with its music.**

Indeed, to approach a particular topic in history through any suitable contemporary song may be helpful. One topic in particular, namely Jacobitism, can be treated most fully in song. Charles Edward‘s success at Prestonpans was greeted with ‘Oh, my Bonny Highland Laddie’. I n England the reaction was very different. ‘God Save the King’ was first used to effect on 28 September I 745 to rally the English after their defeat, when the music was performed, as arranged by Dr. Arne, a t Drury Lane Theatre. The following Monday The Daily Advertiser reported the event:

On Saturday night last, the audience at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, were agreeably surprised by the Gentlemen belonging to that House performing the anthem of God Save our noble King. The universal Applause it met with, being encored with repeated Huzzas, sufficiently denoted in how just an abhorrence they hold the arbitrary Schemes of our invidious Enemies, and detest the despotick Attempts of Papal power.4g

I t is the situation of the first performance that explains the bloodthirsty words of the second verse, but before long the words had been adapted for very different sentiments:

God bless the happy hour: May the Almighty power

Make all things well;

47 R. Nettel, Sing a Song of England, quoted on p. 161. 01 There may be a certain amount of difficulty in obtaining the contemporary tunes used

by Wesley. A Collection of Hyrnw f o r thc Use of People called Methodists ( I 780) is of great value, but many references can be found for original tunes and their cross-reference number in the English Hymnal in Chapter 13 (pp. 91-100) of The Music of Christian Hymo& (1957) by Is. Routley.

d B Quoted by H. E. Piggott, Songs lhnt Ma& History (1937), pp. 3-4. BB


That the whole progeny Who are in Italy May soon and suddenly

Come to Whitehall.50

And again: God Save the Church I pray And Bliss the Church I pray

Against all Heressie And Whigs Hypocrasie Who strive Maliciously

Her to Dafame.61

But Jacobite hopes were dashed after the retreat from Derby, and soon it was not only ‘Farewell Manchester’, but also farewell, after the defeat at Culloden, to Charles Edward-‘Lenachan’s Farewell’ and ‘The Lament of Flora MacDonald‘. Nor are these the only songs connected with the Jacobites. Jacobitism certainly aroused the inspiration of the song writers, and it seems natural that the songs should now be used to arouse the interest of the young. 6 2

From the practical teaching point of view the use of music in the history lesson presents some problems, though none of them is insuper- able. Something may be accomplished by word of mouth alone, though far more is gained by actual musical examples. The use of a piano is the most obvious means of giving examples, but this presupposes that the history teacher is a pianist and that the history room contains a piano! Songs may be sung to the class, but it is far better for the class to learn a song, and here any instrument can be used for giving the note and keeping the class in tune, whilst unaccompanied singing is by no means an impossibility.

Yet the greatest aid to teaching music with history is the gramophone.

Pure to Remain.

Quoted by H. E. Piggott, Songs that Made History (1997), p. 6. I1 Zbid. E.* All these examples of the interweaving of music and society in the eighteenth century

can be integrated with a history syllabus. A general outline of the period can be followed by a study of London in the early eighteenth century with The Beggar’s Opera as the starting point. Next could come a survey of the reign of Queen Anne and a biographical account of Handel’s career, which could include the establishment of the Hanoverians on the throne of England. In discussing Walpole the teacher can thcn use the pupils’ knowledge of the political atmosphere of the period already gained from The Beggar’s Opera, whilst the story of ‘God Save the King’ could form an appropriate way of treating the Jacobite rebellions. After a straightforward account of Pitt and the Seven Years War, the life and character of the Duke of Newcastle could lead to a study of patronage in politics and in the arts. Here there is a chance to introduce European history with patronage as the link: musicians and artists at the court of Louis XV, Bach in Prussia at the court of Frederick the Great and the diffcring fates in Austria of Haydn, patronized by the Esterhazys, and of Mozart, patronized by no one person for any length of time. Moreover, Haydn’s life-story may be used [or a return to English history to the Industrial Revolution, where his career shows the development of modem business methods. A detailed survey of the growth of England’s industries will almost certainly be followed by some discussion of the effects of this growth. Once again music may be used to approach one of the most important of these effects-the rise of the middle class. However, the choice of topic and the treatment of any particular subject will naturally vary according to the children being taught and to the inclination of the teacher.

JOHN D . STANDEN 331 I t is the one essential piece of apparatus, especially now that the choice of records is so large. The records selected should be well-made historical recordsss where possible, and preference should fall on S.P. (78 r.p.m.) records which are more convenient for short excerpts than L.P.’s (334 r.p.m.). Unfortunately, L.P.’s offer by far the larger selec- tion of music, and perhaps ideally the excerpts needed could be tape- recorded. In that way one can make use of all sources-gramophone, radio, T.V. and live performances. Pictures, time charts, film strips and films will also be of great use in the discussion of the social background, of composers’ lives and of the history of instruments and musical technique, but one is severely limited on the side of films and film strips by what has been produced. Perhaps the void here may be filled by making one’s own film strips and charts, whilst, for younger children, the making of reproductions of old instruments could form an admirable project. Finally, whenever possible, original sources should be included in the lesson. Local museums or the school’s museum service may be able to provide old instruments,6* whilst reproductions of music manuscripts are fairly easy to obtain from music books and may be projected by use of an epidiascope.

I t is often stated that education should aim at the full development of the individual, and that there is more to education than the mere learning of a subject. Only too often history is treated as a subject where the memorization of facts is all important to the exclusion of real understanding. The inclusion of music in the history lesson will help to create this real understanding, whilst music itself will also gain many benefits. The combination of the subjects will reinforce the position of history as one of the foremost ‘arts’ subjects, with the wide cultural and educa- tional values which are indispensable for a complete education.

58 i.e. records using contemporary instruments playing from scores that have been edited with t he greatest scholarship.

54 Museums that have material of a musical nature include the Victoria and Albert, Fenton House, the Geffkye, Horniman and Donaldson (Royal College of Music) in London. Outside London there are Snowshill Manor (Broadway, Gloucs.), Heaton Hall (Manchester), New- port (Isle of Wight), St. Fagan’s (Glamorgan), Pitt Rivers (Oxford) and the Fikwilliam (Cambridge).

the place of music in the history syllabus

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