Introduction

Summary

THIS book presents a new critical biography of Sir George Thomas Smart (1776–1867), a significant musical animateur and, arguably, Britain's first professional conductor, but it is also a contextual history of London concerts in the early decades of the nineteenth century, a subject that has largely escaped academic study until very recently. Smart earned his living as a conductor and musical director, not as an instrumental performer, composer, or writer about music: he established successful and pioneering concert series, was a prime mover in the setting up of the Philharmonic Society, and taught many of the leading singers of the day. He conducted opera at the Covent Garden Theatre and introduced significant new works to the public – most notably he was an early champion of the music of Beethoven. His journeys to Europe, and his contacts with the leading European musical figures of the day, were crucial to the direction music was to take during the nineteenth century in Britain. He was, in short, a strong-willed individual who influenced the course of art music in London during these years. What changed during his lifetime was the structuralisation of the musical profession, which began to assume a new integrity through the development of professional practice, and through the founding of institutions to protect and promote professional interests. By the middle of the 1830s Smart was a pillar of the post-Reform establishment, at a time when Britain needed to prove its cultural credentials. This study provides a detailed commentary on the evolution of musical culture in London during the first forty years of the nineteenth century, seen through the example of his life, and set within the context of a wider European musical culture. It demonstrates that music in England was far from the cultural backwater that commentators in the early twentieth century suggested. During a long career, Smart witnessed at first hand the dying embers of the Baroque, the high points of the Classical, and the early achievements of the Romantic era of musical composition. He lived through the upheavals of the Napoleonic age and yet lived long enough to take an active part in the Great Exhibition of 1851 and to see Richard Wagner conducting a season of concerts at the Philharmonic Society in 1855.