Music Program and Dean of the College Present
Singing Social Harmony in Georgian England
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Blum N217
5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Lecture by Dr. Bethany Cencer
In Georgian England, the concept of harmony was itself a rich fugue intertwining the musical, social, civic, religious, and gendered facets of English identity. Within this context of associational culture, the phrase “social harmony” was often used to foreground communities exemplifying economic and political stability, morality, and peace. Moral philosophers such as Adam Smith often employed musical terms to endorse such visions, as in his theory of the “invisible hand” overseeing capitalist concord. While social harmony is often contextualized within the philosophies or socioeconomics of cultural production, one obvious connection remains underexamined: the prevalence of a cappellapartsong in English musical life. What sorts of social harmony were created when people sang together?
Using a material studies approach, I address this question through two common sites of communal music-making in eighteenth-century England: the vocal club and the home. The Noblemen and Gentlemen’s Catch Club met weekly in a London tavern to sing catches, canons, and glees. Between 1763 and 1794 their secretary curated an annual publication featuring those genres. During the 1780s George Smart issued two collections of music, both titled The Vocal Pocket Companion. Unlike the Catch Club collection, these were printed in an unconventional format resembling a deck of playing cards and were dedicated to wives of prominent Parliamentarians. Each of these oeuvres embraces the concept of social harmony—lyrics frequently extol the value of communal singing, while composers use homorhythm and polyphony for rhetorical and collective effect. Following the work of Kate van Orden, Kathleen Wilson, and others, I consider how the concept of harmony propagated in performance and on the printed page refracted contemporary issues of citizenship, colonialism, and gender. I also address the performativity of performance and the ways in which scientific discovery, music aesthetics, and moral philosophy shaped the act of harmonized singing.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Time: 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Location: Blum N217