The Pursuit of High Culture

<p>This monograph investigates the promotion and consumption of high musical culture among leisured society in Victorian London by focusing on the activities of the concert manager John Ella and his Musical Union [1845-81] an eminent long-lived institution for chamber music much fêted across Europe in its day. It combines a biography of Ella with a social-economic history of the Musical Union its players repertoire and audiences and sets them against the gradually shifting contexts for London concerts chamber music and cultural life. Ella's extraordinary life story which began in provincial artisan-class obscurity and ended in the upper echelons of London society shapes the narrative. Such themes as entrepreneurship concert management taste shaping music appreciation and elite social networks are discussed throughout as is the curious interplay between the desire to 'sacralize' chamber music especially Beethoven's on the one hand and the need to survive amid the increasing commercial imperatives of London concert life on the other.</p><p>CHRISTINA BASHFORD is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.</p><p> </p>