Ladies, Ledgers, Concertinas, 19th C.

[allan atlas]

GOOD FOLKS: for those who might be interested. . . . . .my article "Ladies in the Wheatstone Ledgers: The Gendered Concertina in Victorian England, 1835-1870," has just been published in Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, vol. 39 (2006), pp. 1-234. . . . .

 

thanks to the generosity of the RMA, we hope to have the article available on Bob Gaskins' "Concertina Library" website: www.concertina.com around the first of the new year. . . . .

 

basically, the article draws upon the Wheatstone sales ledgers now housed in the Horniman Museum, London. . . .and let me say that without Bob's having provided a digitized version of the ledgers, which permitted me to go back to the ledgers time after time while sitting in my own little study, the article would either never have been written or would have taken much, much longer than the three years that it did take. . . .

 

the main inventory lists every entry (there are 1,769) for every woman (there are 978), the women arranged in alphabetical order (obviously, i try to identify as many of these women as possible, place them in demographic groups, point out family relationships, student-teacher relationships, etc.). . . .three appendices rearrange the inventory by date, serial number of instrument, and price paid for the instrument. . . . . .the inventory is preceded by a 71-page essay that tries to put all the data into a musical-sociological context. . . . .

 

let me also take this opportunity to thank a few people -- in full view of the concertina community -- for the help and support that they provided during the course of the study: Bob Gaskins, Wes Williams, Stephen Chambers, Chris Algar, and Randy Merris. . . .in fact, the article bears a dedicatation to them............Allan

Edited October 8, 2006 by allan atlas

[asdormire]

Sounds quite prestigeous. Congratulations.

 

Alan

[allan atlas]

THANKS. . . but i don't know that there's anything particularly "prestigious" about it.........allan

Edited October 8, 2006 by allan atlas

[Lyn Law]

 

Hi

 

Thanks indeed to the RMA and to Allan and all the other people who have put together this marvellous resource.

 

I have been looking at it with reference to the clergy who bought concertinas. I play for West Gallery music groups (ie Gerogian and early Victorian psalmody) on a Wheatstone baritone and have sometimes felt that the authentic music purists have felt that I and others similarly equipped have been cuckoos in the nest. Critics of the original quires (singers with instrumentalists) were not backward in offering scathing comment on the instruments and musicianship. The Rev D E Ford wrote in the 1820s:

 

“The highest ambition of many country quires is to make a great noise. To accomplish this, the first step is to muster as many hands as possible. Every man in the village who has a flute or a fiddle, a clarionette or a bassoon, a hautboy or a vox-humana, must bring it with him to church; although, perhaps, he hardly knows the scale of the instrument and is quite incapable of producing one good tone upon it.” “The stringed instruments flatten, and the wind instruments sharpen… though, to the annoyance of half the congregation, the performers have spent ten minutes tuning their instruments.”

 

Just as the right sound comes out of a harmonium or organ when the right key is pressed, so it is with a concertina. It was very cheering to read the quotation from George Case, writing in 1857 and confirming that the concertina was "frequently used .. in small country churches". One clergyman's daughter is on record as saying that the quire was so bad that she was "put to the harmonium", a dreadful-sounding fate. One can only guess how many of the Wheatstone ladies were likewise "put to the concertina." Or did the parson summon one of his flock and command him to come to the vicarage on Tuesday evenings to learn to play the new tenor, baritone or whatever? I'd love to know more.

[JimLucas]

One clergyman's daughter is on record as saying that the quire was so bad that she was "put to the harmonium", a dreadful-sounding fate.

I can think of more than one interpretation of that anecdote. One is that the girl was so poor at keeping pitch with her voice that she was required to play an instrument instead. The other -- and the one I think more likely -- is that the harmonium was used to play the same notes that the singers were to sing, constantly directing them back into the correct musical path. In my experience, such accompaniment-as-a-safety-harness is more common than not with choirs and choruses today.

[d.elliott]

Hi Lyn,

 

a personal aside, and off topic but

 

Its good to see you join the forum!

 

I hope you are managing Ok, Di sends her best wishes

 

best regards

 

Dave Elliott