Patronizing Handel, inventing audiences the intersections of class, money, music and history

Early Music

Volumn 28, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 33-49

  Hunter, David ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN   (United States)

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EID: 65849107537     PISSN: 03061078     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/em/28.1.32     Document Type: Article

References (95)

1. See the 370 items listed in the bibliography of M. R. Hunt, The middling sort: commerce, gender, and the family in England, 1680-1780 (Berkeley, CA, 1996)
2. and the 205 items in the bibliography of The middling sort of people: culture, society and politics in England, 1550-1800, ed. J. Barry and C. Brooks (Basingstoke, 1994)
3. Despite the books' similar titles, only 52 items appear in both bibliographies. A good introduction to current historiography is D. Hay and N. Rogers, Eighteenth-century English society: shuttles and swords (Oxford, 1997), though readers should note that the percentage of population divisions in table 2.1 are incorrect
4. D. Cannadine, The rise and fall of class in Britain (New York, 1999), p.20
5. E. P. Thompson states that 'At a political level it is evident that the gentry's hegemony over the political life of the nation was effectively imposed until the 1790s', 'Eighteenth-century English society: class struggle without class?', Social history, iii (1978), pp.133-65, at pp.162-3, while others, such as J. C. D. Clark, consider the élite's hegemony to have continued until 1832
6. For a linguistic interpretation reliant upon Adam Smith and David Ricardo see S. Wallach, '"Class versus rank": the traditions of eighteenth-century English social terms and theories of production', Journal of the history of ideas, xlvii (1986), pp.409-31, who concludes that 'The concept of 'class' had by 1821 captured the imagination of Great Britain's thinking population, while the term and the concept combined to absorb what people believed to be the way society divided itself' (p.431)
7. See P. H. Lindert and J. G. Williamson, 'Revising England's social tables, 1688-1812', Explorations in economic history, xix (Oct 1982), pp.385-408
8. and their 'Reinterpreting Britain's social tables, 1688-1913', Explorations in economic history, xx (Jan 1983), pp.94-109
9. See also P. Mathias, 'The social structure in the eighteenth century: a calculation by Joseph Massie', Economic history review, x (1957), pp.30-45
10. and J. E. Bradley, Religion, revolution, and English radicalism: nonconformity in eighteenth-century politics and society (Cambridge, 1990), esp. app. 2, 'Occupational structure and socioeconomic standing'
11. Gregory King was Lancaster Herald and examined tax returns and summaries of others to derive figures that 'dramatized negative national saving during the war against France' (Lindert and Williamson, p.385). His 1688 figures were drawn up in order to provide comparisons for 1696, and he published a revision in 1698
12. Joseph Massie was a polemicist intent on criticizing the colonial sugar lobby, but his figures for 1759 (published in a 1760 pamphlet), when adjusted in the light of the official statistics for 1755, are 'surprisingly close to recent estimates' (Lindert and Williamson, p.394)
13. A rough comparison between income distribution in the mid-18th century and the mid-1990s can be gained from official statistics. Of US households in 1996, 16.4 per cent (i.e. a slightly larger percentage of the population than the mid-18th century élite and middling sorts combined) had annual incomes of $75,000 or more; the median family income in 1995 was $42,300 (Statistical abstract of the United States, 1998, pp.468, 474)
14. For the UK the average household gross income before tax of the top 20 per cent of the population in 1996/7 was £45,870; the average household income for the same period was £21,690 (Social trends, 1999, p.97)
15. The misconception is used extensively by W. Dean, Handel's dramatic oratorios and masques (London, 1959), p.136
16. and with less certainty by C. Taylor, Italian operagoing in London, 1700-1745 (PhD diss., Syracuse U., 1991), p.78, among many writers
17. For a valiant attempt to root out the weed see W. Weber, 'The muddle of the middle classes', Nineteenth-century Music, iii (1979), pp.175-85
18. L. D. Schwarz, London in the age of industrialization: entrepreneurs, labour force and living conditions, 1700-1850 (Cambridge, 1992), p.233
19. For additional information on the unequal distribution of wealth see P. H. Lindert, 'Unequal English wealth since 1670', Journal of political economy, xciv (1986), pp.1127-62
20. P. H. Lindert, 'Towards a comparative history of income and wealth inequality', Income distribution in historical perspective, ed. Y. S. Brenner, H. Kaelble and M. Thomas (Cambridge, 1991) pp.212-31, esp. fig. 9.3
21. R. V. Jackson, 'Inequalities of incomes and lifespans in England since 1688', Economic history review, xlvii (1994), pp.508-24
22. and D. H. Fischer, The great wave: price revolutions and the rhythm of history (New York, 1996)
23. Schwarz, London in the age of industrialization, pp.57, 71
24. R. McGuinness and H. D. Johnstone, 'Concert life in England I', The Blackwell history of music in Britain: the eighteenth century, ed. H. D. Johnstone and R. Fiske (Oxford, 1990), pp.31-95, at p.83
25. The authors incorrectly give 1745 as the date when subscriptions were abandoned, as does J. Brewer in a close paraphrase, The pleasures of the imagination: English culture in the eighteenth century (London, 1997), pp.373-4
26. See O. E. Deutsch, Handel: a documentary biography (New York, 1955), p.637. Handel and Heidegger may not have had season-ticket subscriptions for some seasons during the 1730s
27. For reproductions of tickets see R. Macnutt, 'Ticket', New Grove dictionary of opera (London, 1992), iv, pp.734-6
28. and V. Moger, The favour of your company: tickets and invitations to London events and places of interest, c.1750-c.1850 (London, 1980)
29. This point, made 50 years ago in W. C. Smith, Concerning Handel: his life and works (London, 1948)
30. is conceded by Ruth Smith, though she claims that 'The theatre audience for opera and oratorio was not restricted to the aristocratic and rich': Handel's oratorios and eighteenth-century thought (Cambridge, 1995), p.36
31. Taylor, Italian operagoing, p.289
32. For the emptiness of the first gallery in 1732/3 see J. Milhous and R. D. Hume, 'Box office reports for five operas mounted by Handel in London, 1732-1734'. Harvard library bulletin, xxvi (Jul 1978), pp.245-66
33. L. Hughes The drama's patrons: a study of the eighteenth-century London audience (Austin, TX, 1971), p.156
34. See H. W. Pedicord, 'By Their Majesties' Command': the house of Hanover at the London theatres, 1714-1800 (London, 1991); D. Burrows
35. and R. D. Hume, 'George I, the Haymarket Opera Company and Handel's Water Music', Early music, xix (1991), pp.323-41
36. C. Taylor, 'Handel and Frederick, Prince of Wales', Musical times, CXXV (1984), pp.89-92
37. Quoted in M. Baer, Theatre and disorder in late Georgian London (Oxford, 1992), p.65
38. He continues: 'Those among the middling and lower orders, whom affectation or curiosity had drawn to the Theatre [Covent Garden] at his first setting out in conjunction with Rich, fell off by degrees.' J. Mainwaring, Memoirs of the life of the late George Frederic Handel (London, 1760; R/1964), p.120
39. The point is emphasized in J. Milhous and R. D. Hume, 'Heidegger and the management of the Haymarket Opera, 1713-17', Early music, xxvii (1999), pp.65-84
40. See G. E. Mingay, The gentry: the rise and fall of a ruling class (London, 1976), p.2
41. Hunt, The middling sort, p.208
42. Thompson, 'Eighteenth-century English society', p.143
43. See D. Burrows, 'Handel and the Foundling Hospital', Music and letters, lviii (1977), pp.269-84
44. R. McClure, New channels of beneficence: a portrait of pre-evangelical association charity, 1739-1758 (PhD diss., Columbia U., 1968)
45. D. T. Andrew notes (Philanthropy and police: London charity in the eighteenth century (Princeton, NJ, 1989), p.80) that these performances afforded Handel the opportunity for both benevolence and publicity, though he was hardly in need of the latter and, as to the former, he had been involved with the Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy and the Fund for the Support of Decay'd Musicians since the 1730s
46. D. Burrows, Handel (New York, 1994), p.340, also supports the theory that the hospital performances 'sealed' acceptance of the oratorios
47. In the literary context, R. D. Hume ('Texts within contexts: notes toward a historical method', Philological quarterly, lxxi (1992), pp.69-100, at p.83) has warned of the dangers of refusing 'to try to distinguish the probable responses of the educated, the ill-educated, the female, the lower-class, and the parvenu (et al.), [for if we do] then we are consigning ourselves to the dubious benefits of a homogenized 'eighteenth-century reader' - or refusing to grapple with the problems of the 'real' novel audience at all.'
48. For the pre-Royal Academy of Music criticisms see L. Lindgren, 'Critiques of opera in London, 1705-1719', Il melodrama italiano in Italia e in Germania nell'età barocca (Como, 1995), pp.143-65
49. M. Foss, The age of patronage: the arts in England, 1660-1750 (Ithaca, NY, 1972)
50. Foss was preceded by A. Hauser, The social history of art (New York, 1951)
51. C. Gerrard, The patriot opposition to Walpole: politics, poetry, and national myth, 1725-1742 (Oxford, 1994), p.48
52. See, for example, Mainwaring, 'This noble spirit of independency, which possessed him almost from his childhood, was never known to forsake him' (p.41)
53. R. A. Streatfeild, Handel (London, 1910; R/New York, 1964), pp.118-119, 143, 148 and esp. 183: 'Handel was an incarnation of the spirit of revolt against the old system of patronage that had ruled the world of music for so long.'
54. Smith, Concerning Handel, pp.9-64
55. J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, commerce, and history: essays on political thought and history, chiefly in the eighteenth century (Cambridge, 1985), pp.108-9
56. Johann Mattheson, Das neueröffnete Orchestre (Hamburg, 1713)
57. D. Burrows, 'Handel and Hanover', Bach, Handel, Scarlatti: tercentenary essays, ed. P. Williams (Cambridge, 1985), pp.35-59
58. J. Clark, 'The mysterious Mr Buck: patronage and politics, 1688-1745', Apollo, cxxix (May 1989), pp.317-22
59. and Lord Burlington: Architecture, Art and Life, ed. T. Barnard and J. Clark (London, 1995)
60. (Deutsch, Handel, p.602)
61. For the continuing financial losses, see J. Milhous, 'Opera finances in London, 1674-1738', Journal of the American Musicological Society, xxxvii (1984), pp.567-92
62. and E. Gibson, 'Italian opera in London, 1750-1775: management and finances', Early music, xviii (1990), pp.47-59
63. For the close relationship between the upper class, poetry and politeness, see T. Woodman, Politeness and poetry in the age of Pope (Rutherford, NJ, 1989)
64. See also L. E. Klein, Shaftesbury and the culture of politeness: moral discourse and cultural politics in early eighteenth-century England (Cambridge, 1994)
65. For an anthropological approach to patronage see S. N. Eisenstadt and L. Roniger, Patrons, clients and friends: interpersonal relations and the structure of trust in society (Cambridge, 1984)
66. After noting Handel's inital English pension of £200, awarded by Queen Anne in 1713, Jeremy Black goes on to claim, mistakenly, that Handel's 'livelihood depended on the commercial success of his works on the London stage': An illustrated history of eighteenth-century Britain, 1688-1793 (Manchester, 1996), p.142
67. D. Griffin, Literary patronage in England, 1650-1800 (Cambridge, 1996), p.269
68. See D. Hunter and R. M. Mason, 'Supporting Handel through subscription to publications: the lists of Rodelinda and Faramondo compared', Notes, Ivi (1999), pp.27-93
69. See W. Weber, 'The myth of Mozart, the revolutionary', Musical quarterly, lxxviii (1994), pp.34-47, at p.42
70. 'Handel's activity and spirit of enterprize at this time [1739], in his fifty-sixth year, were truly wonderful! opposed and oppressed by the most powerful nobles and gentry! suffering with bodily and mental disease! with rivals innumerable!' (Charles Burney, A general history of Music, ed. F. Mercer (New York, 1935), ii, p.827)
71. 'The public always sided with Handel.' (William Coxe, Anecdotes of George Frederick Handel and John Christopher Smith (London, 1799), p.21)
72. 'He addressed himself to the great mass of the public' (V. Schoelcher, The life of Handel (London, 1857), pp.302-3)
73. 'He had done with the quality' (N. Flower, George Frideric Handel: his personality and his times (London, 1947), pp.321)
74. Dean, Handel's dramatic oratorios and masques, p.6
75. See I. Q. Brown, 'Domesticity, feminism, and friendship: female aristocratic culture and marriage in England, 1660-1760', Journal of family history, vii (1982), pp.406-24
76. and B. Kowaleski-Wallace, 'Two anomalous women: Elizabeth Carter and Catherine Talbot', Eighteenth-century women and the arts, ed. F. M. Keener and S. E. Lorsch (New York, 1988), pp.19-27
77. See S. H. Myers, The bluestocking circle: women, friendship, and the life of the mind in eighteenth-century England (Oxford, 1990)
78. See M. Mascuch, 'Social mobility and middling self-identity: the ethos of British autobiographies, 1600-1750', Social history, xx (1995), pp.45-61
79. See S. McVeigh, Concert life in London from Mozart to Haydn (Cambridge, 1993)
80. See Mascuch, 'Social mobility'
81. Mascuch ('Social mobility', p.61) comments that 'In the subjective perspective of reality framed by the middle sort, the openness of the abyss of poverty, into which providence might at any moment cast whole families, was more awesome than the openness of the élite into which individuals might climb.'
82. Mascuch alludes to L. and J. C. Fawtier Stone, An open elite?: England 1550-1880 (Oxford, 1984)
83. The attribution to Fielding is supported in M. C. Battestin, New essays by Henry Fielding (Charlottesville, VA, 1989), pp.331-2
84. Faulkner's Dublin Journal, 20 Apr 1742 (Deutsch, Handel, pp.546-7)
85. Quoted in E. Hornby, 'Some aspects of the musical festivals in Salisbury in the 18th century', The Hatcher review, xii (1981), pp.78-85, at p.79
86. Linda Colley (Britons: forging the nation 1707-1837 (New Haven, CT, 1992), p.32) gets it half right by correctly pointing to the parallels between the deliverance from oppression of the Israelites portrayed in oratorios and the role of the Hanoverians in preserving Protestantism in Britain, but she then claims that 'It was because he celebrated Britain in this glowing fashion, that Handel became such a national institution', which is only true if 'national' is limited to the élite. Extension to the middle class could not occur until the mid-19th century, even then it begs the question of what constitutes 'national'
87. D. Wahrman, 'National society, communal culture: an argument about the recent historiography of eighteenth-century Britain', Social history, xvii (1992), pp.43-72, at p.48. Wahrman makes his point in the context of less expensive cultural activities and therefore is able to extend it to the middling sorts
88. N. Rogers, 'Paul Langford's "Age of Improvement"', Past and present, cxxx (1991), pp.201-9, at p.207
89. For typical sacred musical fare outside London see D. Hunter, 'English country psalmodists and their publications, 1700-1760', Journal of the Royal Musical Association, cxv (1990), pp.220-39. To comment that the musical experience of the middling and lower sorts - some 96 per cent of the population - is underresearched, might justifiably be regarded as litotes
90. Griffin, Literary patronage, pp.39-44
91. See McVeigh, Concert life in London, p.37
92. See W. Weber, The rise of musical classics in eighteenth-century England: a study in canon, ritual, and ideology (Oxford, 1992), chaps. 4, 8 (though in the case of some provincial festivals Weber plays down the role of the élite)
93. One hundred years after the writing of Messiah the élite found concertinas fashionable. See A. Atlas, The Wheatstone English concertina in Victorian England (Oxford, 1996)
94. Most musicians were barely of the middling sort in terms of income. See D. A. Rohr, A profession of artisans: the careers and social status of British musicians, 1750-1850 (PhD diss., U. of Pennsylvania, 1983)
95. For the poor pay of theatre orchestra musicians in 1710-11 see G. Beeks, '"Exit, pursued by a bear": the Haymarket Opera orchestra and Handel's arrival in England', Händel-Jahrbuch, xlii-xliii (1996-7), pp.55-67