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Letting off Steam

Railways and Musical Life in Nineteenth Century Britain

Choral competitions

Since band competitions were encouraged by the railway companies, it was only natural that before long, a large-scale choral competition should take place. Of course, these had long been the custom in Wales in the form of eisteddfodau, but in England this was not the case.

Small choral competitions had been held at the end of the eighteenth century, but due to the problem prior to the coming of the railways of transporting whole choirs to a particular place, the idea had not become very widespread or popular.

An example of this early type of competition took place at Belle Vue, Manchester, in 1855 .The event called "prize glee singing" and was attended by four choirs, one each from Idle and Bradford in Yorkshire, Burnley in Lancashire, and Etruria in Staffordshire, all of which places were connected reasonably well by rail with Manchester. In spite of this the choirs only consisted of five members each, so it was more reminiscent of the eighteenth-century style of competition than the later nineteenth.

The first true large-scale competition was held at the Crystal Palace in September 1860. It was organised by John Curwen who designed it to show off the achievements of his Tonic Solfa system of musical notation and education. Five choirs took part, this time showing the real influence of the railways since they came from such widely separated places as the Potteries, Finsbury, the West Riding of Yorkshire, Brighton and Edinburgh.

The choirs were given five pounds for expenses but there were no money prizes, the awards being represented by a crimson banner (won by the West Riding), a purple (Finsbury) and an orange one (Potteries). The next year a similar competition was again held in spite of the losses incurred by the previous one. They continued for several more years but eventually had to cease. Their influence was felt in the many competitions held throughout the country and attended by choirs from quite far away by means of the special facilities offered by the railway companies. These competitions did a good deal to raise the general standard of choral singing in Britain and also provided a number of composers with useful outlets for their works, in the form of set-pieces.

The Alexandra Palace

In 1873 a rival to the Crystal Palace opened on the "Northern Heights" of London at Muswell Hill (as opposed to the "Southern Heights"' at Sydenham). This was the Alexandra Palace, named after the Prince of Wales’ Danish wife.

It was designed to attract visitors from the north of England as well as London by means of the newly-opened station at Wood Green, from which a branch line ran directly to the main entrance of the palace, continuing to the Great Northern main line at Highgate. When they arrived at the palace, visitors were pleased to discover that they only had a few steps to climb to the central transept, as opposed to the long flight of steps at Crystal Palace (Low Level).

The north end of the transept was dominated by a brand-new Willis organ, which at the time was the largest in the world blown by two steam-engines. A choir and orchestra of one thousand performers could be accommodated around the organ, where busts of Beethoven, Handel, Rossini, Verdi, Mendelssohn and Auber could be seen.

Sixteen days after its opening the palace was burned down. Since supplies of water were inadequate to fight the fire, the volunteer brigades concentrated on saving the railway station, which had become a Promising source of income in its brief career, nearly one hundred thousand people having travelled to the palace in the sixteen days.

By 1875 the palace had been rebuilt, but of a new design, more solid in construction and, judging from its four water-towers, obviously not meant to suffer the fate of its predecessor. The main feature was the Great Hall, 386 feet long and 184 feet wide, with seating sufficient for 12,000 and a brand-new Willis organ.

The station remained in its original position, outside the main doors to the Great Hall. In spite of all the apparent advantages of the Alexandra Palace it has never been a financial success. Soon after the opening a Choral Society was formed but due to the extremely resonant acoustics of the Great Hall they eventually nave their performances elsewhere.

In the beginning there were many organ recitals on the magnificent new instrument, and fairly frequently choral and orchestral concerts took place, with opera performances in the theatre. Towards the end of the century the concerts dwindled and remained at a low ebb well into the present century.

A very unusual connection between railways and music was made during the first London performance of Elgar’s The Kingdom: during the concert the organ bellows burst and the Trustees decided that "the Great Northern Company be communicated with, as to the steam from their engines entering the boiler-house and damaging the organ, and for the same to be remedied".

Mapleson’s National Opera House

Another musical project in London which had connections (quite literally) with the railway, aim which was even less successful than the Alexandra Palace, was the National Opera House planned by the impresario Mapleson. This building was to have been constructed on the Victoria Embankment on the site now occupied by New Scotland Yard.

It was to have its own station on the new District Railway and would contain changing-rooms downstairs next to the station where opera-goers from the suburbs would be able to change into evening-dress after their journey. Mapleson does not appear to have considered the effect of the vibrations of the trains passing underneath on the building on the performances. The foundations were laid officially in 1876 arid were to have cost f2, 500.

The Thames-soaked land caused so many problems, however, that they eventually cost £33,000. Similar problems continued to be encountered and the building had to be stopped due to lack of funds. The railway station became that now known as "Westminster" - and Mapleson’s ambitious scheme came to nothing.

The Carl Rosa Opera Company

Although many provincial towns contained theatres of some description and although operatic performances were sometimes mounted there, first class professional performances were not seen until the coming, of the railways,. Whereas formerly it would have been unthinkable for a whole company to tour complete with singers, orchestra and scenery, the railways made this a distinct possibility and several impresarios took up the challenge. The first of these was the opera company owned by Carl Rosa.

This was formed in 1875 and made its debut at the Princess Theatre in London. It was Rosa’s policy to give all operas in English, thereby removing the snobbery found at the Royal Italian Opera (Covent Garden) where almost all operas were performed in Italian. After the first London season the company toured Britain incessantly, occasionally returning to London for a summer season. The company, by means of the railway, brought opera in good performances to many thousands of people who had never even heard bad performances before.

The D’Oyly Carte Opera Company

In the year of Carl Rosa’s first London season another impresario named Richard D’Oyly Carte persuaded the young Arthur Sullivan to compose curtain-raiser for Offenbach’s La Perichole; the result was Trial by Jury, which was an immediate success. Following, this Gilbert and Sullivan wrote a two-act comic opera entitled The Sorcerer, which was again produced by D’Oyly Carte’s Comedy Opera Company. The remarkable success of these two works made D’Oyly Carte decide to tour with them both.

In March 1878, they travelled to Liverpool for three nights, then on to Bradford, Glasgow, Aberdeen. Edinburgh, Nottingham, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Dublin, Liverpool, Hull and ended up on Sheffield on 5th August. Another touring season began in September, during which they revisited several of these towns and added Southport and Brighton to the list.

With the phenomenal success of HMS Pinafore in May 1878, D’Oyly Carte decided that one touring company was insufficient to cope with the provincial demand for performances. He therefore introduced four companies. The "1st Pinafore Company" covered Scarborough, Manchester, Glasgow, Dundee, Edinburgh, Newcastle Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, Liverpool, Nottingham, Leicester, Brighton and Bristol; the "2nd Pinafore Company" toured Southampton, Bath, Exeter, Plymouth, Jersey, Guernsey, Ryde, Worthing, Eastbourne, Chatham, Tunbridge Wells, Margate, Alexandra Palace, Canterbury, Bury St Edmunds, Colchester, Ipswich, King's Lynn, Peterborough, Huddersfield, Halifax, York, Darlington, South Shields, Sunderland, Carlisle, Preston, Bolton, Hanley. Wolverhampton, Leamington, Cheltenham, Cardiff and Torquay.

These two companies, together with the "1st and 2nd London" companies, (which in fact only gave three performances in the capital) managed to get HMS Pinafore to almost every town of any importance in Britain. If the order of visiting each town is compared with a map of the railway system it will be seen that, with few exceptions, this order was actually dictated by the railways.

Conclusion

Without the development of an adequate railway system during the early part of the nineteenth century, the social and economic progress of England would have been minimal. Generally, fast travel would have been non-existent and industrial growth would consequently have been hindered greatly. There would have been no towns greater than the size which the surrounding countryside could have provided food for.

The railways are now an established part of everyday life. Indeed, so rapidly were they accepted as part of the Victorians' world that it was soon difficult to imagine a life without them. For this reason the profound effects of the growth of the railway system on many aspects of society have been forgotten. One small yet interesting aspect is the development of musical life during the century. At first sight, the connection between this and the railways may appear tenuous, but as has been seen, they played a vital part in this development in many different ways.