Victorian England: an Age of Expansion

Abstract

With the Royal Jubilees of 1887 and 1897 in Britain came the selfconsciousness of a ‘Victorian Age’: prosperous, successful, confident, innovatory and leading the world in many areas of human endeavour. Apart from the continuity provided by the monarch herself, there was some substance to this image, for British society had pursued its own path largely untrammelled by the effects of violent divisions of revolutionary fervour or the fervid attempts to create a unified national consciousness that were characteristic of other major European societies. Such an outcome could hardly have been foreseen in 1848, however, when suffrage and corn laws were still perceived as potentially destabilizing national issues. Many people, including musicians, fled to Britain from the consequences of the 1848 revolutions elsewhere and, as had been the case with the famous French Revolution half a century before, there was little confidence that London would not see a similar turbulence. Even the Great Exhibition of 1851, which symbolizes the prosperity and stability of mid-Victorian society, was darkened by official fears (unrealized in practice) that the gathering of the people might be the excuse for some threatening disturbance. Stability and confidence were achievements, not inborn characteristics, of Victorian Britain, and they were accompanied by realistic recognition of limitations and doubts.KeywordsMusical TrainingMusical ActivityTown HallSymphony OrchestraMusical ProfessionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.