Music in Regency England
with Louisa Cornell
begins in 2 Weeks!
Music in Regency England
Instructor: Louisa Cornell
Active Class Dates: June 17-28, 2019
Cost: TBM Members: $15, Non-Members: $20
To Register: https://thebeaumonde.com/classes
Music in Regency England
From Society’s Music Rooms to London’s Opera Houses
(And everywhere in between!)
In an era without radio, television, the internet or any of the myriad other avenues of entertainment we take for granted, music played an incredibly important role in the world of Regency England. Music, in all of its various forms from the erudition of the opera halls of London to the lamplit stages of Vauxhall Gardens to the ballads sung on the streets of Seven Dials, can play a role in every Regency romance. The trick, is to make certain one casts the role correctly in order to ensure one’s characters are dancing, singing, listening to or performing an appropriate tune.
During this two-week course, participants will be given a complete outline of the musical education of young ladies. Topics will include the sources from which a young lady might acquire her music and her music instruction, the important role the introduction of Broadwood’s pianos had in the musical culture of the era, other instruments a young lady might take up and those she most definitely could not. A brief discussion of appropriate musical terms and vocabulary one might need when writing a Regency romance will be included. Repertoire appropriate to different voices will be provided. The reasons young men were not required to study music will be delineated and the importance of ladies’ music collection propensities in the preservation of England’s musical heritage will also be covered.
In addition, the importance of opera performance and attendance in Regency society will be discussed. Topics will include the makeup and behavior of opera audiences (misbehaviors included,) the social aspects of opera attendance, those houses where opera was performed, the vociferous hired groups responsible for their success or failure, the forms opera might take, singers and composers, and the sorts of lives many of these singers lived along with the non-musical things some of them had to do to survive.
The course will be rounded out with information about the advent and boom of street ballads during the Regency era, the musical entertainment provided at Vauxhall Gardens, and the Christmas music one might mention in all of those Christmas novellas.
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For information about becoming a Regency Academe presenter or submitting a workshop proposal, contact our Programs Director at academe@thebeaumonde.com.
For more general information about The Beau Monde chapter’s Regency Academe and upcoming Fall 2019 classes, visit: https://thebeaumonde.com/resources/academe.