Did They Throw Tomatoes?  The Performer-Audience Relationship in 18th-century England

Chloe Prendergast

Student Number 3111644 Supervisor(s) Stefan Petrovic and Jed Wentz Title Did They Throw Tomatoes? The Performer-Audience Relationship in 18-century England Research Question What was the nature of the performer-audience relationship in 18th-century England and how can this influence our relationship with audiences today? Summary With the explosion of the public concert in 18th-century England and the ensuing so called “rage for music”, it is clear that concerts were a vital part of the social life of England’s elite and burgeoning middle class. What created this experience? What roles did both audience and performers play? How did it differ from the ways in which we encounter classical music concerts in the 21st century? This research explores how 18th-century English music was publicly experienced in paid, secular concert settings. It was quite different from what we might now expect in the same setting, and therefore it engendered a vastly different performer-audience relationship than what we often have today. The concert spaces, audience makeup, and concert etiquette each were contributing factors in creating a varied and highly social experience for concertgoers. The aim of this research paper is to illuminate this experience and explore how something similar might be relevantly created in the 21st century. Short Bio Chloe Prendergast is a violinist originally from Denver, Colorado. She is the artistic director of the Beethoven Festival of the Hague, a member of Holland Baroque and the Butter Quartet, and has performed with groups including the Handel and Haydn Society, Pacific Musicworks, Henry Purcell Society of Boston, Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado, Luthers Bach Ensemble, Collegium Ad Mosam, and Arcadia Players. Chloe currently studies at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague with Kati Debretzeni and Walter Reiter. She holds a degree from Willamette University, where she was a Phil Hanni scholar and studied principally with Anthea Kreston and Daniel Rouslin.

Types of Concerts

Subscription Concert Series

The subscription series developed as a way to carefully curate a devoted and high-class audience. It was often only possible to purchase tickets as a subscription for the entire season, therefore limiting the audience to only those who could afford the full subscription, which varied depending on the series1. The more high-priced the tickets, the more highly sought-after and curated the audience. In fact, the aim of the ticket prices of subscription concerts were not so much to make money for the organizing party or the musicians, but to control who had access to attendance of the concerts. If a member of the royal family attended the series, for instance the Prince of Wales, who often attended many concerts, this meant the ultimate in exclusivity and societal desirability. On the performer's side, there were sometimes part of a musician's contract that kept them from performing at lowerclass venues2. However, this was not a foolproof system, as it was sometimes possible to also acquire single tickets through other sources, sometimes through the bookseller Thomas Hookham or through certain newspapers3.

Oratorio Series

The oratorio series was similar in many ways to the subscription series but with a more narrow range of repertoire, only showing oratorios during Lent. It had a lower price range, which allowed a greater range of audience members, but was still, “too exorbitant to be afforded by the generality of the Frequenters of Playhouses”4. Because it was more affordable, the very upper reaches of society generally looked down upon oratorio series as below their class, except for one particular series that took place at Drury Lane as it was often attended by the royal family.

By the 1780’s, it became harder to sell tickets for the full oratorio series’ and it is possible these would have died out all together if not for the Handel Commemoration in 1784. Handel, who pioneered the English oratorio as a theatrical genre, had always been a favorite of the English people and his music was often played in oratorio series even after his death and on the occasion of his commemoration thousands of people attended the concerts in Westminster Abbey and the Pantheon5. This commemoration included five performances over the course of a week in which mostly selections of oratorios and anthems were played in the first, second, and fourth concerts and the entire Messiah was performed for the third and fifth concerts6.

Benefit Concerts

It was quite common in the 18^th century for benefit concerts to be held for a specific musician themselves or for the Fund Established for the Support of Decayed Musicians and their Families, which was administered by the Society of Musicians7. For individual highly respected musicians, it was standard for these benefit concerts to take place once a year. The concerts provided a significant supplementary income for musicians who otherwise might be struggling to pay off debts, support their families, or if they were foreigners, send money back home. Haydn was one of these8, as was Antonín Kammel, a well-known Bohemian violinist and composer who lived much of his life in London and wrote about the advantages of benefit concerts. In a letter to his Bohemian employer, Count Vincent Ferrerus Waldstein, he wrote on July 21^st 1768,

[…] It is true that I make each year more than 6 to 7,000 guldens, but the expenses are very high, everybody appreciates me, everybody likes me, and this is why I have such a quantity of good friends, which I can’t fully describe to your Excellency. […] my [benefit] Concert […] was the best one, I had there more than 500 friends, my profit was 350 guineas, I have never seen so much money together in my life.9

Not only did these concerts give musicians the income they needed, but they also served as advertising and exposure and as a way for the audience to feel that they were connecting with and directly supporting a musician they knew and cared about. It was also a chance for the audience to hear music by certain musicians that they loved and wanted to hear again. In one of Haydn’s benefit concerts, the program included the same symphony that was heard in his first concert in London in 179110. It wasn’t uncommon for pieces to be played in concert many times if they were popular; audiences loved hearing their favorites over again and this could only be done in concert settings, since recordings were obviously not available.

Academy of Ancient Music

The Academy of Ancient Music was also a series in which subscriptions were required, but the series came about from different origins and was focused on specific music. As it was the fashion to play only the newest music11, it was quite extraordinary to have a group dedicated to playing relatively older music. This was at least in part as an ideal to conserve the national taste of the past, so the music played was predominantly English. It began in 1776 by instigation of the Earl of Sandwich as a gentlemen’s club that met fortnightly12, and though it evolved to become a fully functioning concert series with high level professionals instead of amateurs, it retained some of the subtle underlying tendencies of its origins. Ladies were not allowed to subscribe in the beginning, though this changed by 1790, but specific ladies tickets were usually available per concert13. Unlike the subscription and oratorio series, which were typically produced by the venues' proprietors, the Academy of Ancient Music was run entirely by the musicians themselves. Musicians were also allowed membership, though they were not the only ones who subscribed. Because it was more popular to listen to the newly composed music of the time, there was disdain from some towards this series with its focus on music that had been written more than twenty years earlier14.

Opera

The opera was a crucial place to meet, mix, and impress for people across the social strata. Operas were the combination of music and theatre, which was historically more available to a wide range of classes, and this led to a high level of attendance by many people of varying social standing, especially because there were degrees of physical separation between those who could afford box seats, and those who attended by sitting or standing in different spots throughout the opera house15. Besides wanting to be seen out at the opera, audiences also had favorite singers that they would go to see, often many times to the same opera. These famed singers held a level of stardom that garnered them the freedom to move seamlessly between classes as well16.

Gardens

The pleasure gardens, most notably Vauxhall, were places to go and listen to music outside in the summertime while enjoying the indulgences of food and drink and company in a beautiful landscape. It was a very low price, just 10 shillings for the bandstand, and all classes of society attended17. More of these gardens existed in other towns throughout the country18.

Musical Clubs and Festivals

These types of concerts, while a vital part of concert life of the time, will play a less significant role in this research. Musical clubs had a higher level of amateur players and were not seen as quite as respected as other forms of concerts.19 Festivals often took place in the early autumn in provincial towns before the London season began.20

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For an idea of the scope of the amount of concerts happening throughout London in one season, below is a table of concerts from the 1789-1790 season of London’s principal organizations21.

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