10 - Fashions in Music

Summary

Arts School?, Cambridge, January 1871?

Introduction

It appears that no art can be exempt from the powerful influence of fashion – I use the word in its old sense. Barely has any artist been able to resist the accepted fancies of his day.

In all arts ‘conventionality’ will be found. You will notice how the poets of a certain time could not commence a work without an invocation to the muse, or a grand compliment to a patron. To find a similar mannerism in another art – sculpture – pay a visit to Westminster Abbey and look at the works of sculptors who lived in the same period. My duty however is with music, and I wish to say a few words & mention a few examples to show how musicians, and some of the greatest, have been influenced by the fancies of the day.

Let me at once give you an example of what I am trying to do. What could have suggested to Handel to introduce a minuet into the oratorio of Samson? and yet there you find it! It is true that Samson is not strictly a sacred oratorio, not being entirely written to sacred words, but the reason of Handel having introduced the minuet is not to be traced to this. It is to be accounted for by the fashion of the day which could scarcely get on without this sort of movement.

In making a short enquiry into the subject of musical form, I shall not go back farther than to the time of Bach & Handel, for at this period music began to assume a definite shape.

What was the design of the time?

Instrumental music had made so far a stride as to present a boldly constructed first movement. This movement, according to the fashion of the day and for many a day afterwards, consisted of an introductory slow or ‘grave’ movement followed by a fugue. These movements were supplemented by a series of [pieces of] dance music, and such was the fashion that no composition would be agreeable to the ears of the public of that day unless built upon the form I have described.