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A ‘Gigantic and Popular Place of Entertainment’: Granville Bantock and Music-Making at the New Brighton Tower in the Late 1890s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Abstract

In 1897, the New Brighton Tower and its Gardens opened for business. This vast leisure precinct attracted millions of visitors each year and provided a host of leisure activities including ballroom dancing, acrobatics, exhibitions of foreign and exotic cultures and orchestral concerts. This article focuses on the first four years of the orchestra's life when it was conducted by Granville Bantock, the only period of the orchestra's history for which many programmes have survived and from which a detailed reconstruction of the orchestra's repertory and programming can be made. The article discusses how class division, press propaganda, moral panics and commercial imperatives affected the programming of so-called ‘serious’ or classical music.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 2009

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Footnotes

1

I am indebted to Suzanne Cole, Rachel Cowgill, Margaret Kartomi, Bronia Kornhauser, Leanne Langley and Alison Rabinovici who provided invaluable feedback on earlier drafts of this article. I am especially grateful to Alison for sharing the fruits of her own research on the nineteenth-century leisure and tower industry and for sending me copies of articles and illustrations from engineering journals. Thanks are also due to the Mersey and Western Cheshire Network of the Institute of Civil Engineers (particularly Bob Horsley) who kindly announced the detail of my project in the Network's May 2007 bulletin that facilitated a number of e-mails from various practising engineers and historians who offered their knowledge and memories of New Brighton Tower's history. I thank Jenny Done of the Wallasey Central Library for her assistance and hospitality on my visit there in June 2007. I am extremely gratefully to the School of Music—Conservatorium, Monash University, which granted me study leave in mid-2007 to complete the research.

References

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4 See Miller, Geoffrey, The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (Sherborne, 1970). Other sources include an unsigned article entitled ‘Dan Godfrey and Bournemouth’, Musical Times, 57 (February 1916), 74–6 and ‘Sir Dan Godfrey and Music in Bournemouth’, signed ‘W. McN’, Musical Times, 75 (September 1934), 785–94.Google Scholar

5 Concerts at New Brighton are given a brief overview in ‘Appendix A: Granville Bantock's New Brighton Concerts’, in Stainton de B. Taylor, Two Centuries of Music in Liverpool: A Scrap-Book of Information Concerning Musical Activities both Professional and Amateur (Liverpool, c.1974), 119–22. A more detailed picture of New Brighton is given in a historicalsociological study: Michael Winstanley, ‘Conflicting Responses to New Brighton's Role as a Popular Seaside Resort, 1896–1914‘, M.A. thesis, University of Lancaster, 1973.Google Scholar

6 The programme notes, though incomplete, form part of the Granville Bantock Collection in the Special Collections Department at the University of Birmingham (Catalogue number MS533/2/1/13). These papers also contain correspondence between Granville Bantock and Newman (and others) that give an insight into the administration of the concerts (Catalogue number Acc 2000/70.) This collection comprises thirty-eight letters from Bantock to Newman, though according to Myrrha Bantock, her father had in his possession ‘at least seventy’ letters from Newman but they were sold on 9 April 1968. See Bantock, Myrrha, Granville Bantock: A Personal Portrait (London, 1972), 179. Programmes of the first concerts and the Sacred Ballad series are housed at the Worcestershire Record Office (Ref. 705:462 BA 4664/14). The programmes (or, more accurately, list of repertoire) are partially reconstructed in Trevor Bray, ‘Granville Bantock: His Life and Music’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1972, vol. 1, Appendix 2, 245–85. Further programmes are held at the Wallasey Central Library Reference Division. Details of the accounts of the New Brighton Tower are brief and are scattered in some twenty-five volumes containing thousands of press cuttings, and other information about the Tower, at the Wallasey Central Library. The ‘New Brighton History Site’ is at <www.merseyside.net/newbrighton>..>Google Scholar

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8 This study is certainly one of re-construction. The secondary literature sometimes contradicts press reports; and the press reports themselves are often tainted by spin and hyperbole, no doubt generated by the PR arm of the Tower's management. There are many gaps in the narrative and, consequently, there are many events, or sequences of events, over which the uncertainty of speculation inevitably hangs.Google Scholar

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22 The first quotation is an unnamed source in Miller, The Inviting Shore vi, although Miller quotes it again on page 229 which he explains is a quotation from a local physician sourced from ‘Hunt op. cit., p. 20‘ but there is no first reference to this publication. The second quotation is Miller, The Inviting Shore, vi.Google Scholar

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59 Anderton, Bantock, 45; Taylor, Two Centuries of Music in Liverpool, 119. In the second prospectus, Ybarrando is listed as a committee member, not the chair.Google Scholar

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61 Cycling competitions were a big draw-card at New Brighton. The Tower and Recreation Company proposed the track ‘the finest in the world‘—as well as the fastest—and was designed after the Calford cycling track in London: Birkenhead News, 25 July 1896.Google Scholar

62 Dunedin is a major New Zealand city and the troupe is more likely to have come from there rather than Australia.Google Scholar

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66 A chamber music series ended the season on 23 October. Most of the programmes for 1898 are held at the Wallasey Central Library, but they are incomplete so it may be possible that the chamber music series, or, perhaps a winter miscellaneous concert series continued until December when Messiah was performed on 15 December. It is also possible that ballroom dancing continued in the winter months, for which no programmes have survived.Google Scholar

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68 Programmes or works lists do not exist for the period 9 July–13 August. It is possible, though unlikely, that the series was suspended because in their place, announced in the programme of 8 July was ‘dancing every Saturday afternoon from 3 to 5’). But this arrangement was shortlived since the Saturday afternoon concerts returned on 13 August.Google Scholar

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71 The Liverpool Mercury, 5 June 1897 also reported that the ballroom could accommodate 4, 000 people.Google Scholar

72 The Liverpool Courier, 3 April 1899, explained the ‘comparative smallness of the audience [for the sacred concerts on Friday and Saturday] was doubtless due to the dull and threatening weather’.Google Scholar

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74 The presence of French and Belgian artists in New Brighton is pronounced and warrants further study, particularly as the Musical Standard, on 18 January 1896, noted that many Belgians and pianists had ‘passed through Liverpool the last few years’.Google Scholar

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78 Holbrooke's work was premiered at his initiative, not Bantock's. Holbrooke apparently wrote to Bantock seeking its premiere. After a meeting (presumably their first) Bantock agreed to perform the work and a life-long friendship between the pair was formed. See Lowe, George, Joseph Holbrooke (London, 1920), 1213.Google Scholar

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138 Anderton, Granville Bantock, 65. According to Taylor, the Tower went into liquidation, but a date is not provided. If financial troubles beset the Tower in the late 1890s, Ybarrando's resignation from the board may be linked to these fiscal difficulties.Google Scholar

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174 This list is a reconstruction from programmes, advertisements and prospectuses. The original nomenclature is retained: spellings of composers' names and works and their English translations have not been standardised or made consistent, with modern renderings. Maximum capitals in titles have been adopted for the sake of consistency in orchestral works, but minimum capitals for songs. Performers' names are given when listed only in advertisements.Google Scholar