Music and the Benefit Performance in Eighteenth-Century Britain

In the early eighteenth century the benefit performance became an essential component of commercial music-making in Britain. Benefits adapted from the spoken theatre provided a new model from which instrumentalists singers and composers could reap financial and professional rewards. Benefits could be given as theatre pieces concerts or opera performances for the benefit of individual performers; or in aid of specific organizations. The benefit changed Britain''s musico-theatrical landscape during this time and these special performances became a prototype for similar types of events in other European and American cities. Indeed the charity benefit became a musical phenomenon in its own right leading for example to the lasting success of Handel''s Messiah. By examining benefits from a musical perspective - including performers audiences and institutions - the twelve chapters in this collection present the first study of the various ways in which music became associated with the benefit system in eighteenth-century Britain.