Explores the breadth, diversity and significance of the commercial music trade and its communities across Britain during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Adding to the existing scholarship on music publishers and instrument makers, mostly based in London and the university cities, the collection challenges this historiography by offering the first collective narrative for the commercial trade in musical goods and services - including the printing, publishing and sale of printed music, the sale of manuscript music, musical instruments and related wares, and the tuning and general maintenance of musical instruments such as organs and pianos.
Contributions draw on evidence from across the country of the trade's activities, networks and communities, and recognize the significance of small cities, market towns and regional hubs in cultural dissemination. The Music Trade in Regional Britain therefore contributes to a growing body of work offering a nationwide account of musical culture. It foregrounds a trade that was far more geographically dispersed, economically significant and culturally broad than has previously been acknowledged.
CONTRIBUTORS: Stephanie Carter, Simon D.I. Fleming, David Griffiths, Nancy A. Mace, Martin Perkins, Christopher Roberts, Roz Southey, Matthew Spring, Robert Thompson
List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
1. London and Beyond: Rethinking a Nation's Trade in Music - Stephanie Carter
and Simon D.I. Fleming
2. Musick's Hand-maid in Westmorland: A Story of the Music Trade in Early
Modern England - Stephanie Carter
3. Rul'd paper for Musick': How long was the reach of the Playfords? - Robert
Thompson
4. The Music Trade in York, 1650-1800: Proprietors and Purchasers - David
Griffiths
5. Joseph Barber of Newcastle upon Tyne and William Flackton of Canterbury:
Booksellers, Music Publishing and the Subscription Market in
Eighteenth-Century Britain - Simon D.I. Fleming
6. Distributing Irish Reprints in England: The Activities of Liverpool's John
Bridge Pye - Nancy A. Mace
7. Edward Miller of Doncaster: The Composer and the Music Trade - Christopher
Roberts
8. Thomas Underwood and his Successors: The Music Shops of Eighteenth-Century
Bath- Matthew Spring
9. Thomas Bewick's Dealings with North-Eastern Musicians, 1770-1800 - Roz
Southey
10. Makers, Repairers, Teachers, Dealers and Printers: The Music Trade
Network in Late Eighteenth-Century West Midlands - Martin Perkins
11. 'Quacks in the Musical ... Science'? The Curious Case of Stephen Moore,
Piano Maker, and the Organ of St Paul's Chapel, Aberdeen - Simon D.I.
Fleming
Select Bibliography
Index
Dr STEPHANIE CARTER is a Research Associate on 'Music, Heritage, Place: Unlocking the Musical Collections of England's County Records Offices', an AHRC-funded collaborative project between Royal Holloway, University of London, and Newcastle University. Her research focuses on musical culture in early modern England, particularly around music ownership, circulation and trade. She is also Archivist/Librarian at Carlisle Cathedral. Dr SIMON D.I. FLEMING is a Durham-based musicologist with an interest in eighteenth-century British music. He worked extensively with subscribers' lists which led to the formation of the Dataset of Subscribers (https://musicsubscribers.co.uk/) and the joint editing of a multi-author book, Music by Subscription: Composers and Their Networks in the British Music-Publishing Trade, 1676-1820 (2022). ROZ SOUTHEY is a music historian and novelist.
