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7/27/2019 British Music History
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British Music History
7/27/2019 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