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Guitars in Romantic England: Music Lectures 2014-15 - An Introduction by Professor Christopher Page

1,477 views · Published 28 July 2014 · 5:09 · Indexed 29 October 2026

Channel: Gresham College · 2014 · Education

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Christopher Page introduces his upcoming series of free public lectures as Gresham Professor of Music: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/men-women-and-guitars-in-romantic-england

The guitar is arguably the most widely cultivated instrument in the world. At a time when fifty or more pianos are broken up for scrap in Britain every week – sad relics of Victorian parlour entertainment – sales of guitars have never been higher.

Nonetheless, it has been almost universally forgotten that there was an intense guitar craze in England between about 1800 and 1835, spanning the lifetimes of Keats, Byron, Shelley and Coleridge, and a craze whose history has never been traced. Histories of English music and society in the nineteenth century continue to be written as if it never happened, and yet the instrument was cultivated from the royal family in the person of Princess Charlotte (d. 1817) down to the poorest laundress.

This is much more than the story of an instrument and its music: the rise of romanticism, the creation of an urban poor hungry for self-improvement, the proliferation of newspapers, serialised fiction and printed sheet music, the social position of women and other aspects of English society and culture in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars all have a place within it.

Christopher Page is the Gresham Professor of Music. Information on his ongoing series of free public lectures is available here: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/men-women-and-guitars-in-romantic-england

More information on Professor Christopher Page can be found here: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/professors-and-speakers/professor-christopher-page

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 1,600 lectures free to access or download from the website.
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