Men, Women and Guitars in Romantic England
Harmony in the Lowest Home: The Guitar and the Labouring Poor by Professor Christopher Page. By the 1830s, guitars could be bought very cheaply at pawnbrokers' shops, market stalls and the humblest of the 'musical repositories' that sprang up in response to the spread of musical amateurism. For the first time in the history of western music, the working classes, and even some members of the labouring poor - never able to afford a piano, harpsichord or harp, but only a flute or fiddle - found themselves with a fully harmonic instrument and sometimes with ambitions to match. This development, often cruelly satirised is an unwritten chapter in the history of working-class self-improvement that comprehends the rise of the mechanics' institutes and the spread of working people's access to newspapers and conversation in the urban coffee shops. (from gresham.ac.uk)
| Harmony in the Lowest Home: The Guitar and the Labouring Poor |
Go to the Series Home or watch other lectures: