The Ballad-Singer in Georgian and Victorian London
Cambridge University Press, 2/18/2021
EAN 9781108830560, ISBN10: 1108830560
Hardcover, 340 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
For three centuries, ballad-singers thrived at the heart of life in London. One of history's great paradoxes, they were routinely disparaged and persecuted, living on the margins, yet playing a central part in the social, cultural, and political life of the nation. This history spans the Georgian heyday and Victorian decline of those who sang in the city streets in order to sell printed songs. Focusing on the people who plied this musical trade, Oskar Cox Jensen interrogates their craft and their repertoire, the challenges they faced and the great changes in which they were caught up. From orphans to veterans, prostitutes to preachers, ballad-singers sang of love and loss, the soil and the sea, mediating the events of the day to an audience of hundreds of thousands. Complemented by sixty-two recorded songs, this study demonstrates how ballad-singers are figures of central importance in the cultural, social, and political processes of continuity, contestation, and change across the nineteenth-century world.
List of Figures
List of Musical Examples
List of Recordings
List of Tables
Acknowledgements
Note on the Text
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Representations
Seeing the Singer
Interlude I. 'Oh! Cruel'
2. Progress
Ancient Custom in the Modern City
Interlude II. 'Lord Viscount Maidstone's Address'
3. Performance
The Singer in Action
Interlude III. 'The Storm'
4. Repertoire
Navigating the Mainstream
Interlude IV. 'Old Dog Tray'
Conclusion
Bibliography.