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Letting off Steam

Railways and Musical Life in Nineteenth Century Britain

The Three Choirs Festival

The cities of the Three Choirs also deserve study since easy travel between them was vital to the success of the Festival. What. is more, the railway transformed and revived the festival which, in the middle of the century was in grave danger of having to cease. The Festival Chorus was made up of the choirs of the three Cathedrals, together with contingents of singers from Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester and the surrounding countryside. The chorus of the home town was naturally the largest.

The three contingents rehearsed the works separately and only a very little time before the actual festival (if at all) did they get together and rehearse as one. The orchestra at that time was also drawn from the locality. Easy communication between the three cities therefore became vitally important in the weeks leading up to the festival. By the 1860s the three cities were linked by rail to most parts of Britain.

It was not until the 1870s that the direct line from Worcester to Hereford was completed, however, since problems were encountered while tunnelling through the Malvern Hills. Before that date it was necessary to travel, very awkwardly, via the lines to Leominster or Newport if one wished to reach Hereford from Worcester or Gloucester, which must have caused a great deal of inconvenience.

The line from Shrewsbury had reached Hereford by 1858, and as early as 8 a.m. on the first day of the festival in that year, visitors began to arrive in a continuous stream and for two hours they poured forth from the station:

The pressure of the crowd thus collected was such that several ladies fainted. The audience was prodigious, every seat was filled, even the tombs being covered. Persons gladly paid to be allowed to sit on the steps of the gallery, and gentlemen and ladies were content with standing room for the want of better accommodation. (Morning Post)

Because of the direct connection with South Wales along the Hereford, Abergavenny and Newport Railways, line a vast number of Welsh visitors also arrived, as the Times noted:

Even the aborigines of which hilly principality are relaxing their antipathy to the "Saxon" music and beginning to admit that there may possibly be even better vocal melody than the vocal Penillion and grander harmony than can be swept from the strings of an antique Bardic harp.

Later, as can be seen from the advertisement opposite, the Great Western Railway brought in yet more Welshmen from Cardiff and other town along their Newport-Gloucester line. In this way the railways brought a much larger number and greater variety of people into the festival audience and ensured the festival’s survival into the twentieth century.

Metropolitan developments

The annual or triennial festival was not the only opportunity the Victorians had to hear symphonic or choral music. In most towns, as mentioned above, there was by the middle of the century, a musical society of some description: often only a choral society, but quite frequently an orchestra as well.

For those lucky enough to live in the new suburbs around London or Manchester there was the opportunity, with the arrival of the railways, of "going up to town" for a concert or really professional standard. As early as 1846 we read in the Musical Times of the first British performance of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis and we learn that:

Our London friends will hail the news of the performance with joy, and happy it is for our country friends that, they live in these railroad times, whereby the facility of being present is so much increased.

The Great Exhibition and the Crystal Palace

The largest concert hall in mid-Victorian London was the Crystal Palace, which by then had been moved from Hyde Park to the southern suburb of Sydenham.

The Crystal Palace and the Great Exhibition for which it was built in 1851 were of great importance to both the musical and railway worlds. Some people, including the authors of the Official Catalogue, saw in the building itself a gigantic railway station. Like the railways, it was paid for by public subscription and the sale of tickets, but unlike them it made a profit of over 100%, which was devoted to the founding of the South Kensington museum and cultural complex (which eventually contained the Royal Albert Hall, Royal College of Music and Royal College of Organists).

The Great Exhibition contained 19,000 exhibits, ranging from an earthenware water-closet to a plaster statue of Shakespeare, from musical instruments to an express locomotive. The piano was the instrument which benefited most from the exhibition. Up to that date, because of its cost, it had remained exclusively an upper- and middle-class instrument. New methods of manufacture brought down the price so that many which were displayed at the Great Exhibition were suited to the pockets of the working-class. These instruments were known as "cottage or "piccolo" pianos due to their small size and had the consequent advantage of fitting into the smallest of front rooms or parlours.

Not only were ordinary pianos displayed, but also there were many kinds of mechanical pianos, transposing, pianos, and expanding pianos for use on board ship. The Crystal Palace also contained a number of organs by various builders from which enthusiastic councillors could choose the most suitable for their new town halls. A special musical jury was set up to award prizes to the best exhibitors and it included such eminent musicians as Hector Berlioz, Sir Henry Bishop, Sir George Smart, Sterndale Bennett, Cipriani Potter, Thalberg and Neukomm.

The railways played their part in the proceedings by enabling six million people (then, one-third of the population of England and Wales) to visit the Exhibition and ensuring its success. Indeed, the Great Exhibition could riot have been held much before 1851 for it was only in the late 1840s, as has been shown, that the main trunk lines between London and the provinces were completed.

By 1850 practically every town in England was linked by rail with London. The Royal Commission (which included such eminent railway Men as Brunel and Robert Stephenson) responsible for organising the Exhibition took early steps to get the agreement of the railway companies to run cheap excursions at single fare for the return trip, with further reductions for a journey over 100 miles. Subscription clubs were organised to enable the working-classes to visit the Exhibition, and in the event the third-class fare from Manchester or Leeds to London, normally over fifteen shillings single, was as low as five shillings return - the equivalent of a day’s wages for a craftsman.

It should be remembered that this was the first occasion on which the vast majority of these people had even contemplated visiting the capital. As direct result of the Great Exhibition the piano came to be found in most English homes. When the Great Exhibition was over the Crystal Palace was removed to Sydenham. There it was re-erected and enlarged, so that in cubic contents it was almost half as big again as it had been. Dispersed about the building were quantities of sculpture, paintings and every kind of object of art and industry; around it were terraces, parterres, and fountains. It was the old idea of Vauxhall and other Gardens carried out on a gigantic scale, and like those places it was to depend for its attraction partly on musical performances.

There was not much music at the opening ceremony, however. George Grove, who had been appointed secretary, had the brilliant idea of getting Tennyson to write an ode and Berlioz to set it to music, but without success. After a year the conductor of the permanent orchestral was dismissed by a board of directors, annoyed at his poor musical results. He was immediately replaced by a young German, August Manns.

The band, which until then had consisted of 61 brass instruments and three wind, was wisely converted by Manns into a proper orchestra. lie then began a series of orchestral performances, averaging ten a week, of which the Saturday concerts (when the strings were reinforced) were for the next four or five years to attract trainloads of music-loving Londoners. A branch line was constructed by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway directly to the Palace in order to enable people to reach it easily. A little later a special station (the so-called "High Level") was constructed by the London, Dover and Chatham Railway in the grounds.

The size of the Crystal Palace, combined with the easy access afforded to it by the railway, and the easy access the railways now afforded to London, made it the ideal place for the holding of festivals by gigantic choirs and orchestras. The "monster concert" was just another manifestation of the Victorian love of the spectacular which was obvious in the theatre, in architecture and in the construction of such feats of railway engineering as the Snowdon Mountain Railway, the Severn Tunnel and the Tay Bridge.

The Handel Festivals

Officially, the first of these festivals was to be the Handel Festival of 1859, intended to commemorate the centenary of Handel’s death. It was decided, however, to hold a preliminary festival in 1857 to make sure that it would all be possible. The Central Transept was to be used, which would enable an audience of up to 12,000 to be seated comfortably, with a choir and orchestra of appropriate dimensions.

In the event, the railway carried to the Crystal Palace an orchestra of 300 strings; 9 each of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons; 12 each of horns and of mixed trumpets and cornets; 9 trombones, 3 ophicleides, 9 serpents and bass-horns; 3 drums and 6 side-drums. To all this was added a specially constructed 20-ton, 4,384-pipe, four-manual organ, 2,000 singers and the most eminent .soloists. The works performed on that occasion were Messiah, Judas Maccabeus and Israel in Egypt; it was an outstanding success. The entire production was conducted by Costa, who continued to conduct similar festivals triennially until 1880.

The festivals themselves continued until 1926. Over the years the chorus slowly increased in size and it became common for large numbers of chorus-members to travel in by train (special cheap tickets were available) from the provinces. In 1903 the provincial contingent consisted of: Birmingham, 90 voices; Bradford, 90; Bristol, 50; Leeds, 70; Sheffield, 220; other places, 56.

Mann’s Saturday Concerts

Meanwhile, in his capacity as conductor of the permanent orchestra, August Manns introduced many new works, particularly at the special Saturday concerts, for which extra trains were run. It was at the Crystal Palace that Schubert first came before the English public as a symphonist, and many of the younger English composers, such as Sullivan, Parry, Stanford, Cowen, MacCunn.

German and Smyth benefited from performances of their early works at one of these concerts. Edward Elgar also owed a great deal to the Crystal Palace concerts. In his twenties, the rail services had improved sufficiently to allow him to the Crystal Palace:

I lived 120 miles from London. I rose at six, walked a mile to the railway station, the train left at seven; arrived at Paddington about 11, underground to Victoria, on to the Palace arriving in time for the last three-quarters of an hour of the rehearsal; if fortune smiled, this piece of rehearsal included the work desired to be heard, but fortune rarely smiled and more often than not the principal item was over. Lunch. Concert at three. At five a rush to Victoria, then on to Paddington, on to Worcester arriving at 10.30. A strenuous day indeed; but the new work had been heard and another treasure added to life’s experience.

One of the early compositions, Sevilliana, was given by Elgar to his violin teacher Politzer who in turn gave it to Manns, who performed it at the Crystal Palace on 12 May 1884, the first music by Elgar to be heard in London.

Band Competitions

The Crystal Palace, which housed so many different events, was also the scene of the famous brass-band competitions which continued to be held there until the Palace burned down in 1936. It is believed the earliest all-brass bands in this country date from the beginning of the nineteenth century. They proliferated in the industrial north of England where they were set up by philanthropic factory-owners who wished to give their workers something constructive and uplifting to do in their spare time.

Many of the larger railway companies who adopted an old-fashioned paternalistic attitude to their employees also encourages the formation of bands or even orchestras. A "Leeds Railway Band" won the large-scale competition, held in the Zoological Gardens, Hull, in 1856. The Musical Times in 1847 informs us that:

In the large workshops of the Great Western Railway, at Swindon, a number of these men have combined to make a most excellent orchestra, seconded by the liberality and encouragement which seems to pervade the Company's arrangement at this village, for the benefit, improvement and amusement of their workmen.

There were also bands at the other railway "villages" of Crewe and Wolverton (where the singing of the church’s congregation was also said to be "far above average").

Competition played a very important part among these bands. The railway had made the possibility of gathering together a large number of bands from all over the country, so that the competitions at both the Crystal Palace and Belle Vue, Manchester, became an annual event. The famous band conductor, Enderby Jackson, managed to persuade the railway companies to provide specially cheap tickets for both the bandsmen and their families to go to these competitions, so it was possible at one time to obtain a return ticket from Leeds to London for as little as four shillings and sixpence.

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