The Rise of a Northern Musical Élite

Abstract

NORTHERN MUSICIANS of national and international stature emerged on a proportionate scale quite abruptly in the nineteenth century. They rose on the back of unprecedented and spectacular technological and industrial advance. The North of England the third of the country beyond the Trent in terms of nationally recognized musical talent now at least 'punched its weight'. Sir Thomas Beecham and Sir Adrian Boult epitomize this rise. Both men were born in the North in the later nineteenth century, both received their musical education and made their careers mainly outside the North, and both came from wealthy urban-industrial families. Beecham's father was a manufacturing chemist (and mayor) at St Helen's, Boult's father, from a deep-rooted Chester family, made his fortune as an oil merchant in Liverpool. 1 Other northern musicians of distinction generally came from far less affluent families; but they rose against a background of immense and relatively recent regional prosperity and urban growth. It was not only 'elite' or classical musicians like Beecham and Boult who were now coming disproportionately out of the North: more popular music-makers and in particular the brass bands rose strongly in northern industrial society. The brass bands have been described as 'the most remarkable working-class cultural achievement in European history';2 but in spite of their wide geographical spread throughout England, they showed a marked northern concentration: 'It is undeniable that the movement was a northern phenomenon'. Certainly the prizewinning bands were disproportionately from the textile towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire.3 They rose with the great festivals of choral classical music in the southern Pennines (the first of Bradford's renowned musical festivals was held in 1853, and the Black Dyke brass band was formed in the neighbouring textile town of Queensbury the following year) and although their social-class base and musical style were sharply