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Music in London 1800-1851

Music in London 1800-1851 was a five-year research project (2013-2018) funded by the European Research Council, based in the Music Department at King’s College London. The project was headed by Principal Investigator Professor Roger Parker and comprised a team of dedicated scholars, including five full-time post-doctoral research fellows, three post-doctoral research associates, an administrator and a very large number of visiting scholars.

Music in London 1800-1851 was an attempt to rewrite the history of music in early nineteenth-century London, emphasising the city’s unique position in European musical culture. It strove to encourage an approach to music history firmly centred on social and political meanings, in the process establishing an extensive dialogue between music history and related disciplines. The project’s driving rationale was that musical activity in the city could be addressed in the broadest possible manner and from an interdisciplinary perspective. Subject areas included common musicological ports-of-call such as concert music, operatic entertainment and music aesthetics. But other activities, less often considered, also became central to the project: the phenomenon of street music and ballad singing; popular theatre (in particular melodrama and popular musical entertainments); music and print culture; listening practices; music and politics; the multiple intersections between music and science; the manner in which music functioned in time of war.

Throughout its five-year programme, the project hosted a large number of events from small reading groups to large-scale conferences, the latter typically taking the form of group discussion of pre-circulated papers. In all, some twenty books (or special issues of journals) directly emerged from project activities.

Administrator

Angela Waplington

Publications

Among the major achievements of the project were a large number of multi-day workshops. Each of these brought together a group of international experts for discussion of pre-circulated papers. In many cases, listed below, the results were interesting enough to merit collection in an edited volume or a special issue of an academic journal.

  1. Sound Knowledge: Music and Science in London (18-19 October 2013), organised by Ellen Lockhart (University of Toronto) and James Q. Davies (University of California, Berkeley). The essays have appeared as James Q. Davies and Ellen Lockhart, eds., Sound Knowledge: Music and Science in London, 1789-1851 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017).
  2. The Melodramatic Moment, 1790-1820 (27-29 March 2014), organised by Katherine Hambridge (University of Warwick) and Jonathan Hicks (King’s College London). The essays have appeared as Katherine Hambridge and Jonathan Hicks, eds., The Melodramatic Moment: Music and Theatrical Culture, 1790-1820 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018).
  3. Music and Science in London 1800-1851 (27-28 June 2014), organised by Sarah Hibberd (University of Nottingham). The essays have appeared, under Sarah Hibberd’s editorship, as a special issue of the journal 19th-Century Music, Vol. 39/2 (Fall, 2015).
  4. Theatres of the Crimean War: Sound, Affect, and Media in the Production of Wartime (17-18 October 2014), organised by Gavin Williams (Jesus College, Cambridge). The essays have appeared as Gavin Williams, ed., Hearing the Crimean War: Wartime Sound and the Unmaking of Sense (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
  5. Charles Dibdin and his World (28-29 November 2014), organised by Oskar Cox Jensen (King’s College London), David Kennerley (University of Oxford) and Ian Newman (University of Notre Dame). The essays have appeared as Oskar Cox Jensen, David Kennerley and Ian Newman, eds., Charles Dibdin and Late Georgian Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
  6. Grand Opéra on the Move, 1800-1865 (5-6 December 2014), organised by Laura Protano-Biggs (University of Nottingham). The essays have appeared, under Laura Protano-Biggs’s editorship, as a special issue of the Cambridge Opera Journal, Vol. 29/1 (March 2017).
  7. Operatic Cosmopolitanisms (1-2 May 2015), organised by Sarah Collins (University of Durham) and Dana Gooley (Brown University). The essays have appeared, under Sarah Collins and Dana Gooley’s editorship, as a special issue of the journal Musical Quarterly, Vol. 99/2 (Summer 2016).
  8. Hebrew Melodies: Music and the Bible in 19th-century Europe (25-26 June 2015), organised by James Grande (King’s College London) and Brian Murray (University of Cambridge). The essays have been revised by the organisers and will be published, under the title Scripture and Song in Nineteenth-Century Britain, by Bloomsbury Press in 2021.
  9. Operatic Reflections and Reverberations, Britain 1800-1850 (15-16 January 2016), organised by Roberta Montemorra Marvin (University of Iowa) and Roger Parker (King’s College London). The essays are being revised by Roberta Montemorra Marvin and will become a volume submitted to a scholarly press.
  10. London Voices (1820-1840) (9-10 September 2016), organised by Susan Rutherford (University of Manchester) and Roger Parker (King’s College London). The essays have appeared as Roger Parker and Susan Rutherford, eds., London Voices, 1820-1840 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019).
  11. The Opium Workshop (9­-10 December 2016), organised by Josephine McDonagh (University of Chicago) and Briony Wickes (King’s College London). The essays appeared, under the organisers’s editorship, as a special issue of Literature & History, 29/1 (May 2020).
  12. Liberalism and Victorian Music Culture (27-28 January 2017), organised by Sarah Collins and Bennett Zon (University of Durham). The essays have appeared as Sarah Collins, ed., Music and Victorian Liberalism: Composing the Liberal Subject (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).
  13. Sound and Sense in Britain, 1770-1840 (Columbia, 12-13 May 2017), organised by James Grande (King’s College London) and Carmel Raz (Columbia University). The essays are being revised by the organisers and will become a volume submitted to a university press.
  14. Music and Politics in Britain, c. 1780-1850 (2-3 June 2017), organised by David Kennerley (King’s College London) and Oskar Cox Jensen (Queen Mary University of London). The essays are being revised by the organisers and will be submitted together as a special issue of the Journal of British Studies.
  15. Opera and Print Culture (23-24 June 2017), organised by Christina Fuhrmann (Baldwin Wallace University) and Alison Mero (Journal of Musicology). The essays are being revised by the organisers and will become a volume submitted to a scholarly press.
  16. Song and the City (27-28 October 2017), organised by Ian Newman (University of Notre Dame). The essays have appeared, under Ian Newman’s editorship, as a special issue of the journal Studies in Romanticism, Vol 58/4 (Winter 2019).
  17. Music Aesthetics in 19th-Century Britain (15-16 December 2017), organised by Kathy Fry (King’s College London). The essays are being revised by the organiser and will be submitted together as a special issue of an academic journal.

In addition, the PI and Research Fellows are each preparing a monograph:

  • James Grande, Articulate Sounds: Music, Dissent, and Literary Culture, 1789-1840 Under contract with the British Academy/Oxford University Press.
  • Oscar Cox Jensen, The London Ballad-Singer, 1792-1864 In preparation, to be submitted to a university press.
  • Jonathan Hicks, Music on the Move in Early Victorian London In preparation, to be submitted to a university press.
  • Roger Parker, Brooding City: Music in London in the 1830s In preparation, to be submitted to a university press.

Project team

Headshot-OCJ

Oscar Cox Jensen

Research Fellow

katy fry

Katherine Fry

Postdoctoral Research Associate

grandejames

James Grande

Lecturer in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture

KHambridgeProfilePic201811

Katherine Hambridge

Research Fellow

jon hicks

Jonathan Hicks

Research Fellow

David Kennerly

Research Fellow

Roger Parker, Thurston Dart Professor of Music at King's College London

Roger Parker

Thurston Dart Professor of Music

Gavin Williams

Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow

willsonflora

Flora Willson

Lecturer in Music

Conferences

Term IX, August – December 2017

15-16 December
Conference – Musical Aesthetics in 19th-Century Britain (PDF, 321 KB)
Organiser: Kathy Fry

7 December
Shows of London Meeting on Middles, Media, Masses
Organisers: Flora Willson and James Grande

28 November
Shows of London Meeting on Middles, Media, Masses
Organisers: Flora Willson and James Grande

16 November
Shows of London Meeting on Middles, Media, Masses
Organisers: Flora Willson and James Grande

27-28 October
Conference – Song and the City, 1790-1840 (PDF, 89 KB) (University of Notre Dame, London Global Gateway)
Organiser: Ian Newman

9 October
Eliza Flower Study Afternoon
Organiser: Kate Bowan

10 September
Symposium – Instrumental Music in Early 19th-Century London
Organiser: Ellen Lockhart

 

 

Term VIII, January – July 2017

23-24 June
Conference – Opera and Print Culture (PDF, 119 KB)
Organisers: Christina Fuhrmann, Alison Mero

22 June
Music in London Panel “Origins and Pre-Histories”
Roger Parker, James Grande, Katherine Hambridge, Nicholas Mathew, Ben Walton
at the Music and the Middlebrow Conference (University of Notre Dame, London Global Gateway) Organisers: Christopher Chowrimootoo and Kate Guthrie

2-3 June
Conference – Music and Politics in Britain: c. 1780-1850 (PDF, 278 KB)
Organisers: David Kennerley, Oskar Cox Jensen

26 May
Mono-Poly Symposium
Organisers: Josephine McDonagh and Flora Willson

12-13 May
Conference – Sound and Sense in Britain, 1770-1840 (PDF, 2.5 MB) (Columbia University)
Organisers: James Grande and Carmel Raz

28 April
Caricature Day
Organiser: Tessa Kilgarriff

27 April
Symposium – Peacock’s Operatic Criticism
Organisers: Roger Parker and Josephine McDonagh

23 March
Shows of London Meeting on Mono-poly
Organisers: Josephine McDonagh and Flora Willson

16 March
Guest Reading Group
Carmel Raz

2 March
Shows of London Meeting on Mono-poly
Organisers: Josephine McDonagh and Flora Willson

22 February
Workshop – Rees’s Cyclopaedia
Michel Noiray

10-12 February
Conference – Weber in London: Opera and Cosmopolitanism (PDF, 1.8 MB) (Royal College of Music)
Organiser: Wiebke Thormählen

9 February
Shows of London Meeting on Mono-poly
Organisers: Josephine McDonagh and Flora Willson

27-28 January
Conference – Liberalism and Victorian Music Culture (PDF, 307 KB)
Organisers: Sarah Collins and Bennett Zon

20-21 January
Workshop – Blackface Minstrelsy
Organiser: Jonathan Hicks

19 January
Shows of London Meeting on Mono-poly
Organisers: Josephine McDonagh and Flora Willson

 

 

Term VII, August – December 2016

9-10 December
Workshop – The Opium Workshop
Organisers: Josephine McDonagh and Briony Wickes

24 November
Shows of London Meeting on Mono-poly
Organisers: Josephine McDonagh and Flora Willson

3-6 November
Music in London Special Meetings (Vancouver, American Musicological Society Conference)
Organiser: Roger Parker
Roger Parker, Wiebke Thormahlen, Gavin Williams, Katherine Hambridge, Susan Rutherford, Erin Johnson-Williams, Diane Tisdall, Fabio Morabito, Davinia Caddy, Jonathan Hicks, Flora Willson, Kathy Fry

20 October
Guest Reading Group – Local and Urban Histories
Brianna Robertson, Amélie Addison

19 October
Shows of London Meeting on Mono-poly
Organisers: Josephine McDonagh and Flora Willson

9-10 September
Conference – London Voices (1820-1840) (PDF, 320 KB)
Organisers: Susan Rutherford and Roger Parker

31 August-2 September
Conference -British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS), Cardiff
Roger Parker, Jonathan Hicks, Tessa Kilgarriff, Clare Pettitt

 

 

Term VI, January – July 2016

29–31 July
Conference – Theatre in the Regency Era, Cambridge
Oskar Cox Jensen, David Kennerley

29 July
Workshop – The Opium Connection
Organisers: Josephine McDonagh and Briony Wickes

11–13 July
Conference – 19th Biennial International Conference on 19th-Century Music, Oxford
Oskar Cox Jensen, Jonathan Hicks, James Grande

8-9 July
Conference – Germanic Enthusiasms, Anglo-Saxon Attitudes – Conflict, Transfer and Assimilation in London’s Musical Life, c. 1800-1850 (PDF, 153 KB)
Organiser: Monika Hennemann

24-25 June
Conference – The Musical Pasts Consortium I – Music and the Urban (PDF, 283 KB)
Organisers: Emma Dillon, Ziad Elmarsafy, Roger Parker and Martin Stokes

2 June
Workshop – Music and Dance in Early 19th-Century London
Davinia Caddy, Erica Buurman, Joseph Fort

27 May
Conference – Music, Medicine & Emotions, QMUL
Oskar Cox Jensen, James Grande

13 May
Workshop – Twice Round the Clock
Organiser: Tessa Kilgarriff

14-16 April
Conference – The London Stage and the 19th-Century World (Oxford)
Oskar Cox Jensen, Jonathan Hicks, Tessa Kilgarriff

12 April
Workshop – Interdisciplinary 19th-Century Studies (Oxford)
Organiser: Sally Shuttleworth

19 January
Guest reading group – Mapping London
Matthew Sangster

18 January
Guest reading group – Music in Brussels and London: A Comparative View
Tatiana Debroux, Valérie Dufour, Christopher Murray

15-16 January
Conference – Operatic Reflections and Reverberations, Britain 1800-1850 (PDF, 222 KB)
Organisers: Roberta Montemorra Marvin and Roger Parker

 

 

Term V, August – December 2015

18 December
Guest Reading Group – Seriality
Clare Pettitt

12–15 November
Conference – American Musicological Society (Louisville)
Sarah Hibberd, Jonathan Hicks

17-18 September
Practice as Research Event – Dickens’ Is She His Wife? (London)
Oskar Cox Jensen, Nicola Kirkby, Jo Robinson, Emma Whipday

Term IV, January – July 2015

16-19 July
Conference – Romantic Imprints (Cardiff)
Oskar Cox Jensen, James Grande

7 July
Conference – The 100 Days (Warwick)
Oskar Cox Jensen, Katherine Hambridge

25-26 June
Conference – Hebrew Melodies: Music and the Bible in 19th-Century Europe (PDF, 14.6 MB)
Organisers: James Grande, Brian Murray

19-20 June
Conference – Music and Realism (Birmingham)
Organisers: Ben Earle, Arman Schwartz
Sarah Hibberd, Jonathan Hicks, Heather Wiebe, Gavin WIlliams, Flora Willson

4 June
Workshop – 19th-Century Song
Organisers: Oskar Cox Jensen, Ian Newman

1-2 May
Conference – Cosmopolitanism
Sarah Collins, Dana Gooley, Wiebke Thormählen, Derek Scott, Daniel Grimley

27-28 March
Conference – Sonic Spaces: Music and Visual Culture in 19th-Century London (PDF, 51 KB) (Yale Center for British Art)
Organisers: Erin Johnson-Hill, Tim Barringer

19 March
Guest reading group – London Voices
Katrin Losleben

5 March
Guest reading group – Approaches to Ballads
David Atkinson, Vic Gammon

27 February
Guest reading group – Walking in the 18th-Century City
Clare Brant, Catharina Loeffler

14-16 January
Conference – Hearing Landscape Critically: Music, Place, and the Spaces of Sound (Harvard)
Organisers: Daniel Grimley, Jonathan Hicks, Michael Uy, Carina Venter
James Grande, Jonathan Hicks

January-March
MMus course – Music in 19th-Century London

 

Term III, August – December 2014

5-6 December
Conference – Grand Opéra on the Move (PDF, 185 KB)
Organisers: Sarah Hibberd, Laura Protano-Biggs

28-29 November
Conference – Charles Dibdin and his World (PDF, 1.3 MB)
Organisers: Oskar Cox Jensen, David Kennerley, Ian Newman

20 November
Reading group in collaboration with Shows of London – Street Music and Modernism
Anna Snaith

13 November
Guest reading group – Music and the Public Sphere
Rachel Johnson

17-18 October
Conference – Theatres of the Crimean War: Sound, Affect, and the Media in the Production of Wartime (PDF, 252 KB)
Organisers: Andrea Bohlman, Delia Casadei, Peter McMurray, Gavin Williams

18-19 September
Conference – Operatic Geographies (Oxford)
Organiser: Suzanne Aspden

4-6 September
Conference – Royal Musical Association (Leeds)
‘London 1800-1851: Intrusion and Importation’ panel (Oskar Cox Jensen, James Grande, Jonathan Hicks, Roger Parker)

 

Term II, January – July 2014

27-29 June
Conference – Music and Science in London, 1800-1851 (PDF, 132 KB)
Organiser: Sarah Hibberd

23 June
Conference – Inventing Urban Modernity
Organisers: Oskar Cox Jensen, Mary Horgan, Jo Robinson, Simon Vickery

18-21 June
Conference – 19th-Century Music (Toronto)
Oskar Cox Jensen, James Grande, Katherine Hambridge, Jonathan Hicks

12 June
Guest reading group – Salon Culture and Jenny Lind, 1846-7
Matildie Thom Wium

4 June
Guest reading group – Mozart and Rossini in London’s Theatres
Christina Fuhrmann

16 May
Guest reading group – The Gothic Revival in Art and Music
Tim Barringer

24 April
Guest reading group – The Romantic Guitar
Christopher Page, James Westbrook

27-29 March
Conference – The Melodramatic Moment, 1790-1820 (PDF, 275 KB)
Organisers: Katherine Hambridge, Jonathan Hicks

25 March
Study day – The Crimea (UNC, Chapel Hill)
Organisers: Andrea Bohlman, Delia Casadei, Peter McMurray, Gavin Williams

27 February
Guest reading group – Theatre History and Visual Culture
Jim Davis, John Stokes

20 February
Guest reading group – Performance as Research
Jacky Bratton, Gilli Bush-Bailey

13 February
Guest reading group – Melodrama (Cambridge)
James Chandler, Miranda Stanyon

16 January
Guest reading group – Melodrama
Jacky Bratton

January-March
MMus course – Music in 19th-Century London

 

Term I, August – December 2013

17 December
Guest reading group – Melodrama
Katherine Astbury, Devon Cox, Clare Siviter

4 December
Guest reading group – Melodrama (Warwick)
Katherine Astbury, Devon Cox, Clare Siviter

6-10 December
Pre-conference meeting – The Crimea (American Musicological Society, Pittsburgh)
Andrea Bohlman, Delia Casadei

4-6 November
Conference – Plays, Places, and Participants: Light Opera, Dance, and Theatre around 1800 (Trondheim)
‘Music in London’ session (Oskar Cox Jensen, Katherine Hambridge, Jonathan Hicks)

21 October
Discussion of James Chandler’s An Archaeology of Sympathy
Rowan Boyson, James Chandler, Josephine McDonagh, Clare Pettitt, John Stokes, James Whitehead

18-19 October
Conference – Sound Knowledge: Music and Science in London (PDF, 3.2 MB)
Organisers: James Davies, Ellen Lockhart

9-13 September
Conference – Hearing Landscape Critically: Music, Place, and the Spaces of Sound (Stellenbosch)
Organisers: Daniel Grimley, Jonathan Hicks, Stephanus Muller, Michael Uy, Carina Venter
‘Music in London’ panel (Roger Parker, Gavin Williams, Flora Willson)

Visiting Scholars


Term I, August – December 2013
James Davies (Berkeley); Sarah Hibberd (Nottingham); Erin Johnson-Hill (Yale); Ellen Lockhart (Princeton); Wiebke Thormählen (Royal College of Music)

Term II, January – July 2014
Sarah Hibberd (Nottingham); David Kennerley (Oxford); Erin Johnson-Hill (Yale); Ian Newman (Notre Dame); Laura Protano-Biggs (Cambridge); Wiebke Thormählen (Royal College of Music)

Term III, August – ­ December 2014
Sarah Hibberd (Nottingham); David Kennerley (Oxford); Erin Johnson-Hill (Yale); Ian Newman (Notre Dame); Laura Protano-Biggs (Nottingham); Wiebke Thormählen (Royal College of Music)

Term IV, January – July 2015
Anselm Gerhard (Bern); Erin Johnson-Hill (Yale); Ian Newman (Notre Dame); Laura Protano-Biggs (Nottingham); Wiebke Thormählen (Royal College of Music); Valeria Lucentini (Bern)

Term V, August – December 2015
Tessa Kilgarriff (Bristol/National Portrait Gallery); Matildie Thom Wium (Bloemfontein)

Term VI, January – July 2016
David Kennerley (Oxford); Tessa Kilgarriff (Bristol/National Portrait Gallery); Roberta Montemorra Marvin (Ohio); Clare Pettitt (King’s College London); Davinia Caddy (Auckland)

Term VII, August – December 2016
Phyllis Weliver (Saint Louis)

Term VIII, January – July 2017
Willemien Froneman (KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa); Chinua Thelwell (College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia); Michel Noiray (CNRS, Paris); Laura Protano-Biggs (Peabody Conservatory, Baltimore); Carmel Raz (Columbia, New York)

Term IX, August – December 2017
Davinia Caddy (Auckland); Katie Barclay (Adelaide); Ellen Lockhart (Toronto); Julia Lockhart (British Columbia); Cecilia Livingston (Toronto); Valentina Anzani (Bologna); Kate Bowan (ANU); Clare Midgley (Sheffield Hallam); Paul Pickering (ANU)

Term X, January – April 2018
Valentina Anzani (Bologna); James Davies (Berkeley); Matildie Thom Wium (Bloemfontein)

 

Partners

ERC, European Research Council, established by the European Comission logo

European Research Council

Project status: Completed

Principal investigators

Roger Parker, Thurston Dart Professor of Music at King's College London

Roger Parker

Thurston Dart Professor of Music

Contact

Keywords

  • music
  • London
  • history
  • 19th-century