In this important study, Dave Russell explores a wide range of Victorian and Edwardian musical life including brass bands, choral societies, music hall and popular concerts. He analyzes the way in which popular cultural practice was shaped by and, in turn, helped shape social and economic structures. Critically acclaimed on publication in 1987, the book has been fully revised in order to consider recent work in the field.

Russell's discussion reflects the broad categories of popular music activity during this period. His first section describes the musical activity generated by moral crusaders, philanthropists, educationalists, and reformers who sought to use music as a method of instilling habits of mind and body in the English working classes. The second studies the musical forms developed by entrepreneurs, particularly in the music halls. The third section focuses on the music and musical institutions produced by the community, illustrating the popular capacity for making as well as enjoying music. Perhaps most important, in this first thorough social history of popular music Russell shows how ideas and experiences gained through various forms of popular musical activity influenced popular political life.

The rise of the brass band in 19th-century Britain is a historical, social and cultural phenomenon which represents the foundation of the modern international brass band movement. Authors such as Trevor Herbert, Arnold Myers and Roy Newsome mention and acknowledge the relevance of the Distin Family brass ensemble; however, extensive research has produced new information. This book examines the various Distin projects as the main reason why brass bands of today are established in their current form.

Using a collection of over one thousand popular songs from the war years, as well as around 150 soldiers’ songs, John Mullen provides a fascinating insight into the world of popular entertainment during the First World War. Mullen considers the position of songs of this time within the history of popular music, and the needs, tastes and experiences of working-class audiences who loved this music. To do this, he dispels some of the nostalgic, rose-tinted myths about music hall. At a time when recording companies and record sales were marginal, the book shows the centrality of the live show and of the sale of sheet music to the economy of the entertainment industry. Mullen assesses the popularity and significance of the different genres of musical entertainment which were common in the war years and the previous decades, including music hall, revue, pantomime, musical comedy, blackface minstrelsy, army entertainment and amateur entertainment in prisoner of war camps. He also considers non-commercial songs, such as hymns, folk songs and soldiers’ songs and weaves them into a subtle and nuanced approach to the nature of popular song, the ways in which audiences related to the music and the effects of the competing pressures of commerce, propaganda, patriotism, social attitudes and the progress of the war.

With the exception of the occasional local case study, music-hall history has until now been presented as the history of the London halls. This book attempts to redress the balance by setting music-hall history within a national perspective. Kift also sheds a new light on the roles of managements, performers and audiences. For example, the author confutes the commonly held assumption that most women in the halls were prostitutes and shows them to have been working women accompanied by workmates of both sexes or by their families. She argues that before the 1890s the halls catered predominantly to working-class and lower middle-class audiences of men and women of all ages and were instrumental in giving them a strong and self-confident identity. The hall's ability to sustain a distinct class-awareness was one of their greatest strengths - but this factor was also at the root of many of the controversies which surrounded them. These controversies are at the centre of the book and Kift treats them as test cases for social relations which provide fresh insights into nineteenth-century British society and politics.

Using a collection of over one thousand popular songs from the war years, as well as around 150 soldiers’ songs, John Mullen provides a fascinating insight into the world of popular entertainment during the First World War. He considers the position of songs of this time within the history of popular music, and the needs, tastes and experiences of their working-class audiences. He assesses the different genres of musical entertainment which were common in the war years and presents a subtle and nuanced approach to the nature of popular song, the ways in which audiences related to the music and the effects of the competing pressures of commerce, propaganda, patriotism, social attitudes and the progress of the war.

Once musicians such as Mozart were little more than court servants; now they are multimillionaire superstars wielding more power than politicians. How did this extraordinary change come about? Tim Blanning's brilliantly enjoyable book examines how everything from the cult of the romantic to technology and travel all fed the inexorable rise of music in the West, making it the most dominant and ubiquitous of the art forms. Encompassing balladeers, the great composers, jazz legends and rock gods, this is an enthralling story of power, patronage, creativity and genius.