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Letting off Steam

Railways and Musical Life in Nineteenth Century Britain

The Liverpool and Manchester Railway

The year 1830 saw the official opening of the first modern railway, which ran between Crown Street in Liverpool and Liverpool Street in Manchester. The principal reason for the railway was commercial, and at first, passenger traffic was the main user since it was popular with the merchants who conducted their business in Liverpool, yet preferred to live in Manchester.

Soon after the success of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, it was decided to link London with both cities by means of a line running via Birmingham. The result was the Grand Junction Railway between Birmingham and Newton-le-Willows (on the L & MR), and the London & Birmingham Railway between Euston and Curzon Street.

The impact of the completion of the main line cannot be overestimated, for not only did it connect the three towns but also Rugby, Coventry, Wolverhampton, Stafford and Warrington. It also saw the founding of the town of Crewe (until then a village of barely 300 inhabitants), connection with several other towns of importance by means of branches, and the beginnings of London's "commuter belt".

Whereas in the past it had taken at least three days to get from London to Manchester, it was now possible to do the return journey in the same day. The two railways opened officially in 1838, and in the Musical World for September of that year we find comment on the use of the lines by musicians:

EFFECT OF RAILWAY TRAVELLING. - Mr Mori, together with Madame Grisi, Madame Albertazzi, Lablache, lvanoff, &c, gave a concert on Monday in Birmingham; the following evening they performed in Manchester on Wednesday evening they gave a concert in Liverpool, and tonight (Saturday) they gave a second concert in Birmingham. They have thus visited the two greatest towns in the north of England, and the capital of the midland counties twice in the course of six days, and remained two nights in each town, during the space of time nearly one-half of which, under the old system of travelling, would have been alone consumed on the road.' - Liverpool Chronicle

The Railway Mania

The 1840s saw a time of great industrial expansion due to the influence of the railways. They also saw what became known as "Railway Mania", in which many lines were projected and a lesser number actually constructed. The opening of a new line was always an important event whether it was a branch line to a market town or another section of a main line. The celebrations held at such an event were known as "gongoozling".

Many of the new lines were commemorated in broadside ballads, which were intended to be sung to popular tunes of the time. The following was written for the Port of Tyne Journal and therefore cannot be strictly said to be a broadside at all, it does, however, possess many of the general characteristics. It refers to the opening of the Newcastle and Shields Railway in 1839 and was intended to be sung to the then popular tune "La Pique":

Well many droll sights have I seen in my time,
In many a ship, in many a clime:
But old Shields metamorphosed, as shell been today,
Why, my old wig from brown, Jack, you see has turned grey.

Why, when I was a lad, Jack, and old mother you know
As women will do, Jack, a-gadding would go,
We talked only a month, and then WALK’D up to town,
And JEM JOHNSON’S WHERRY convoyed us all down.

…

Then coaches and steamboats and gigs came in play,
And the hacks and the wherries were all done away;
But the sand-banks by water, up high banks by land,
Brought our steamboats "up-standing" and gigs to a stand.

Howsomever, you see, Jack, some Captain they tell
Sticking fast on a sand-bank as often befell,
RAIL’D so hard at the river, as I have heard say
That they got up a RAILROAD – it was opened today.

And like the ship's ways, Jack, it stretches among
The hills and the valleys, old Tyneside along;
And the ships lay in line, with a thing at their bow
Like a fiend from the pit, Jack, that took then in tow.

For it snorted and roared, and struggled and screamed,
Like the horrible shapes that mayhap we have dreamed;
Then another wild scream, Jack, another deep groan,
And like underground-thunder, the phantoms were gone!

They say it's all science - say it’s all bam -
For it either is witchcraft or else it’s a sham,
To rush like a thundercloud up to the town;
I'm afeard it will end in their all rushing DOWN.

Compositions influenced by the new railways

Not surprisingly, many musical compositions appeared during the nineteenth century which showed the influence of the railways. Many pieces were intended to be musical evocations of a ride in a railway train, for which the most suitable popular musical form was the galop. In the slow introduction the composer could illustrate the train starting off and accelerating, and then in the main body of the work he could depict it rushing through the countryside.

Probably the most famous of these galops was the Excursion Train Galop which was published in about 1844. Not only did it reflect the current craze for excursion trains but the cover also showed a train-load of excursionists travelling under the Shakespeare Cliff on the newly-opened London to Dover line (South Eastern Railway), thereby being doubly topical.

In 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition, as a result of which more people than ever before travelled by train, there appeared in the Musical Times an advertisement for a song composed by a pupil of Moscheles: "‘THE RAILWAY PLATFORM’ , a Song for Railway Passengers of every class. The Music by John Thomas Cooper. Price 6d. To be had at all the Railway Stations."

Not only was the subject of the song novel, but also its price was remarkably low and its method of distribution unusual. A little later, in 1855, there appeared advertisement for a whole choral work inspired by the railway. This was Sir George Macfarren’s Song of the Railroads, the title of which bears an uncanny resemblance to Berlioz’s work of 1847, Chant du Chemin de fer, which was written to commemorate the opening of the French railways designed to connect with the South Eastern at Dover.

The development of the seaside resort

Directly linked to the expansion of the railways was the quite phenomenal growth of the seaside tourist industry, with its important, though not immediately obvious nowadays, musical consequences. Until the railways came, as far as holidays were concerned, there were two classes of people: those who were on holiday all the time and those who almost never took a holiday in the sense that we understand of a period of a week or more away from work and home.

For one class, the aristocracy and gentry, life was one long holiday. In the summer, however, it was usual to visit an inland spa such as Bath or Cheltenham, or a continental one, such as Baden-Baden, or, increasingly, because of the patronage of the Prince Regent, a seaside resort such as Brighton or Scarborough. The intention of these visits was to allow one’s body to recover from the excessive eating and drinking of the previous year by means of mineral waters and sea-water.

Every spa town of any importance possessed one or more Pump- Rooms where patients took the waters. These usually contained a resident orchestra which provided a suitable musical background for conversation. This orchestra was made up of both local and London players and often performed from 7 a.m. till late at night.

For the other class, from the industrialist down to the farm labourer, holidays away from home were practically unknown. For these people the word "holiday" retained its original meaning of a "holy day" when work ceased to allow attendance at church services. The Industrial Revolution began an attack on holidays and leisure.

The new factory owners wished to keep their establishments open as much as possible so they imposed stern rules about unpunctuality and attendance at work. Naturally this led in time to protests for shorter hours, a Saturday half-day, and eventually an annual holiday. Since a substantial part of the population lived in a smoky industrial environment it was to be expected that during their short holidays they should wish to get away to the country or, even more, to the seaside which they knew their "betters" favoured so greatly. Until the railways arrived, however, this was impossible, yet once the first real "holiday line" was opened between London and Brighton in 1840 it was immediately assailed by "those swarms ... daily and weekly disgorged upon the Steyne from the Cancer-like arms of the railroad." The day-trip to Brighton became especially popular and in 1846 an excursion train of 44 carriages drawn by four locomotives carried 4,000 passengers to that resort.

As the seaside resorts boomed, the spas declined and their orchestras and conductors found a new place at the seaside. Later in the century these bands came to contain music students from London, the best known of these being Gustav Holst, who played in Stanislas Wurm's "White Viennese Band" in Brighton. Examples of resorts which had important and good (because they contained so much London talent) orchestras are :Llandudno, Scarborough, Weston-super-Mare, few Brighton, St. Annes-on-Sea, Eastbourne ("The Devonshire Park Orchestra") and Bournemouth.

The programmes heard by the holidaymakers were designed, after the manner of many Victorian concerts, to entertain yet instruct. A typical programme would contain several vocal numbers, selections from famous operas, an overture and a symphony by Mozart, Haydn, or even Beethoven. The importance of these orchestras cannot be overestimated. With the spread of education, interest in the arts was growing which was not easy to satisfy, particularly in the case of music, so that a band of first-class professional musicians was something new for most holidaymakers.

The music festivals

The day-excursion became very important as far as music was concerned. It facilitated attendance at that very Victorian musical event, the Musical Festival. As we have seen, before the coming of the railways small festivals were in existence, but travelling to and from them caused problems. It was now possible, however, not for just a few singers of a choir to attend a festival, but for a much greater number to be present.

One of the first instances of the railways’ direct contribution to a festival occurred in 1846. It was usual for a London contingent to be sent to the Birmingham Festival each year. However, in that particular year the festival committee bad been fortunate enough to receive as their main commission, Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah.

Mendelssohn especially came over to Britain to conduct the piece and while in London, rehearsed the 38-strong London contingent as well as the soloists and the orchestra. On the Sunday afternoon prior to the opening of' the festival, they all met at Euston station at 2 p.m. and were conveyed, together with the "gentlemen of the Press", in a special train to Birmingham, arriving around three hours later.

It is interesting to note that when Mendelssohn travelled to Birmingham in 1837 for the Festival which was to contain the first British performance of his oratorio Saint Paul, he travelled by coach, starting his return journey after the morning concert on the last day and arriving in London at midnight.

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