Imperialism and Music: Britain 1876-1953

Music played a major role in the life of a global ideological phenomenon like the British Empire. This book demonstrates that music has to be recognized as one of the central characteristics of the cultural imperialism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The book discusses the music composed for or utilized by official occasions: coronations, jubilees, exhibitions, tattoos, Armistice Day and Empire Day. Community singing was also introduced at the Aldershot Military Tattoo in 1927, sponsored by the Daily Express. The book examines the imperial content of a range of musical forms: operetta and ballet, films, music hall songs, ballads, hymns and marches. There were two staples of song in the second half of the nineteenth century: the drawing-room ballad and the music-hall song. The book concludes with a discussion of practitioners of imperial music: the divas Emma Albani, Nellie Melba and Clara Butt, and the baritone Peter Dawson.