Victorian Music , A social and cultural history

Asa Briggs & Janet Lovegrove

This major new book provides a sparkling and detailed account of classical, modern, and popular music throughout Queen Victoria’s long reign. Lord Briggs has written the work with the music specialist Janet Lovegrove. The approach is deliberately chronological. It observes the music scene - both metropolitan and provincial - at twenty-year intervals. It particularly shows how contemporaries themselves perceived music in 1837, 1857, 1877 and 1897. The authors trace the repertory of opera, of orchestral, choral, chamber and popular music. They show the performers, theatres, halls and rooms. They provide many illuminating stories of the lives and work of the composers, writers and critics, publishers, teachers and lecturers, who were keen to bring music to the many rather than the few.

The book is well illustrated. These pictures complete the overwhelming impression of an era teeming with energy and ambition, in music as in all else. The era laid the foundations of the musical heritage and standards we enjoy today.

The acclaimed historian Lord Asa Briggs left this work behind when he died in March 2016. His co-author, Janet Lovegrove, read music at Cambridge, and worked in general publishing, lastly as sub-editor of Vogue. She describes herself as a musical jack-of-all-trades: teaching, singing, coaching, lecturing and writing.