The Ballad-Singer in Georgian and Victorian London

Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-1-108-82108-7
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 298 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 404 g

For three centuries, ballad-singers thrived at the heart of life in London. One of history's great paradoxes, they were routinely disparaged and persecuted, living on the margins, yet playing a central part in the social, cultural, and political life of the nation. This history spans the Georgian heyday and Victorian decline of those who sang in the city streets in order to sell printed songs. Focusing on the people who plied this musical trade, Oskar Cox Jensen interrogates their craft and their repertoire, the challenges they faced and the great changes in which they were caught up. From orphans to veterans, prostitutes to preachers, ballad-singers sang of love and loss, the soil and the sea, mediating the events of the day to an audience of hundreds of thousands. Complemented by sixty-two recorded songs, this study demonstrates how ballad-singers are figures of central importance in the cultural, social, and political processes of continuity, contestation, and change across the nineteenth-century world.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Cox Jensen, Oskar

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikgattungen Volksmusik
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Figures; List of Musical Examples; List of Recordings; List of Tables; Acknowledgements; Note on the Text; List of Abbreviations; Introduction; 1. Representations: Seeing the Singer; Interlude I. 'Oh! Cruel'; 2. Progress: Ancient Custom in the Modern City; Interlude II. 'Lord Viscount Maidstone's Address'; 3. Performance: The Singer in Action; Interlude III. 'The Storm'; 4. Repertoire: Navigating the Mainstream; Interlude IV. 'Old Dog Tray'; Conclusion; Bibliography.

Über Autor(innen)

Cox Jensen, Oskar
Oskar Cox Jensen is a Senior Research Associate at the University of East Anglia. He is the author of Napoleon and British Song, 1797–1822 (2015), co-editor of Charles Dibdin and Late Georgian Culture (2018) and a special forum of Journal of British Studies: 'Music and Politics in Britain' (2021), and author of numerous book chapters and articles in journals including Studies in Romanticism.