Music hall
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The Old Bedford Music Hall, by Walter Sickert, circa 1885
Music hall is a form of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to
- A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts. British music hall was similar to American vaudeville, featuring rousing songs and comic acts, while in the United Kingdom the term vaudeville referred to more lowbrow entertainment that would have been termed burlesque in the United States.
- The theatre or other venue in which such entertainment takes place;
- The type of popular music normally associated with such performances.
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[edit] Origins and Development
Music hall in London had its origins in entertainment provided in the new style saloon bars of public houses in the 1830s. These venues replaced earlier semi-rural amusements provided at traditional fairs and suburban pleasure gardens such as Vauxhall Gardens and the Cremorne Gardens. These latter became squeezed out by urban development and lost their former popularity.
The saloon was a room where for an admission fee or a higher price at the bar, singing, dancing, drama or comedy was performed. The most famous London saloon of the early days was the Grecian Saloon in The Eagle, City Road, which is still famous these days because of an English nursery rhyme, with the somewhat mysterious lyrics:
- Up and down the City Road
- In and out The Eagle
- That's the way the money goes
- Pop goes the weasel.
Other such "song and supper" rooms included Evan's in Covent Garden, the Coal Hole in The Strand, the Cyder Cellars in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden and the Mogul Saloon in Drury Lane.
The music hall as we know it developed from such establishments in the 1850s and were built up in and on the grounds of public houses. Such establishments were distinguished from theatres, by the fact that in a music hall you would be seated at a table in the auditorium and could imbibe liquid refreshment of an alcoholic nature whilst watching the show. In a theatre, by contrast, the audience was seated in stalls and there was a separate bar-room. A strange exception to this rule was the Britannia Theatre, Hoxton (1841) which somehow managed to evade this regulation and served drinks to its customers. Though a theatre rather than a music-hall this famous establishment later hosted music-hall variety acts. It was destroyed by enemy action in (1940).
Famous Music Halls built in this era include:
- The Middlesex, Drury Lane (1851) - built up on the site of the Mogul Saloon. Demolished in 1965. The New London Theatre stands on its site.
- The Canterbury, 143 Westminster Bridge Road, Lambeth (1852). Built by Charles Morton, afterwards dubbed "the Father of the Halls", on the site of a skittle alley next to his pub, the Canterbury Tavern. It was destroyed by bombing in 1942.
- Wilton's Music Hall, Wellclose Square in the East End (1856). Still extant (see below).
- The London Music Hall aka The Shoreditch Empire, 95-99 Shoreditch High Street, (1856-1935). The theatre was rebuilt in 1894 by Frank Matcham, the architect of the Hackney Empire.
- Weston's Music Hall, High Holborn (1857) - built up on the site of the Six Cans and Punch Bowl Tavern by the licensed victualler of the premises, Henry Weston. In 1906 it was renamed as the Holborn Empire. It was closed as a result of enemy action in the Blitz on the night of 11-12 May 1941 and the building was pulled down in 1960.
- The Alhambra, Leicester Square (1860), in the former premises of the London Panopticon. Demolished in 1936.
- The Old Bedford, 123-133 High Street, Camden Town] (1861). Built on the site of the tea gardens of a pub called the Bedford Arms. The Bedford was a favourite haunt of the artists known as the Camden Town Group headed by Walter Sickert who featured interior scenes of music-halls in his paintings, including one entitled 'Little Dot Hetherington at The Old Bedford'. The Old Bedford was demolished in 1969.
- The Oxford, 14/16 Oxford Street (1861) - built up on the site of an old coaching inn called the Boar and Castle by Charles Morton, the pioneer music hall developer of The Canterbury, who with this development brought music hall to the West End. Demolished in 1926.
- The London Pavilion (1861). Facade of 1885 rebuild still extant.
- Deacons in Clerkenwell (1862).
- Collins in Islington (1862). Building still extant (see below).
- The Royal Cambridge Music Hall, 136 Commercial Street (1864-1936). Destroyed by fire in 1896, then rebuilt in 1897 by Finch Hill, the designer of the Britannia Theatre, in nearby Hoxton.
A noted music hall entrepreneur of this time was Carlo Gatti who built a music hall, known as Gatti's, at Hungerford Market in 1857. He sold the music hall to South Eastern Railway in 1862, and the site became Charing Cross railway station. With the proceeds from selling his first music hall, Gatti acquired a restaurant in Westminster Bridge Road, opposite The Canterbury music hall. He converted the restaurant into a second Gatti's music hall, known as "Gatti's-in-the-Road", in 1865. It later became a cinema. The building was badly damaged in the Second World War, and was demolished in 1950. In 1867, he acquired a public house in Villiers Street named "The Arches", under the arches of the elevated railway line leading to Charing Cross station. He opened it as another music hall, known as "Gatti's-in-The-Arches". After his death his family continued to operate the music hall, known for a period as the Hungerford or Gatti's Hungerford Palace of Varieties. It became a cinema in 1910, and the Players' Theatre in 1946.
[edit] Variety Theatre
A new era of 'variety theatre' was signalled by the rebuilding of the London Pavilion in 1885. According to Charles Stuart and A.J. Park in their classic The Variety Stage (1895):
- Hitherto the halls had borne unmistakeable evidence of their origins, but the last vestiges of their old connections were now thrown aside, and they emerged in all the splendour of their new-born glory. The highest efforts of the architect, the designer and the decorator were enlisted in their service, and the gaudy and tawdry music hall of the past gave way to the resplendent 'theatre of varieties' of the present day, with its classic exterior of marble and freestone, its lavishly appointed auditorium and its elegant and luxurious foyers and promenades brilliantly illuminated by myriad electric lights
One of the grandest of these new halls was the Coliseum Theatre built by Oswald Stoll in 1904 at the bottom of St Martin's Lane. This was followed by the London Palladium (1910) in Little Argyll Street. Both were designed by the prolific Frank Matcham. As Music Hall grew in popularity and respectability, the original arrangement of a large hall with tables at which drink was served, changed to that of a drink-free auditorium. The acceptance of Music Hall as a legitimate cultural form was sealed by the first Royal Variety Performance before King George V in 1912 at the Palace Theatre. However, in keeping with this new respectability the greatest music-hall star of the day, Marie Lloyd, was not invited, being deemed too 'saucy' for the eyes and ears of monarchy.
The rise of syndicates controlling a number of theatres, such as the Stoll circuit, led to increased tensions between employees and employers. Musicians, stage hands, and artistes went on strike in 1907 in London for almost two weeks in the Music-Hall war, a strike which became extremely well known. The strike ended in arbitration which saw most of the main demands satisfied, including a minimum wage and maximum working week for musicians. Several music hall stars such as Marie Lloyd and Gus Elen were enthusiastic supporters of the strike, though they themselves earned enough not to be personally concerned in a material sense.
The pressure for greater rewards for music hall songwriters led to the application of copyright law to musical compositions. This in turn boosted the music publication industry, and the sale of music in printed form. The term Tin Pan Alley, for the music publication industry gained currency from the practice of rival publishers of banging together pots and pans in order to disrupt their competitors' musical auditions. The music publishers at the time (Feldman, Francis and Day...) were large, extremely profitable companies. They sold the right to sing songs to particular artists, and no other person had the right to sing the songs in public.
World War I is considered by many to have been the high-water-mark of music hall popularity. Music hall artists and composers threw themselves into rallying public support and enthusiasm for the war effort. Patriotic music hall compositions like Keep the Home Fires Burning, Pack up Your Troubles, It's a Long Way to Tipperary and We Don't Want to Lose You (but we think you ought to Go), were sung by the soldiers in the trenches and by audiences at home. Singers like Marie Lloyd went even further, singing lyrics like "I didn't like you much before you joined the army, John, but I do like yer cockie now you've got your khaki on."
Many songs aimed at recruitment ("All the boys in khaki get the nice girls"); others satirized particular elements of the war experience. "What did you do in the Great war, Daddy" criticized profiteers and slackers; Vesta Tilley's "I've got a bit of a blighty one" showed a soldier delighted to have a wound just serious enough to be sent home. The forced rhymes give a sense of black humour (When they wipe my face with sponges/ and they feed me on blancmanges/ I'm glad I've got a bit of a blighty one.)
Music hall continued through the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, but no longer as the single dominant form of popular entertainment in Britain. The arrival of radio, and the cheapening of the gramophone damaged it enormously. It now had to compete with Jazz, Swing and Big Band dance music, as well as with cinema. Even so, it gave rise to such major stars as George Formby, Gracie Fields, Max Miller, and Flanagan and Allen during this period.
After World War II, competition from television and other musical idioms, including Rock and Roll, led to the slow demise of the British music halls, despite some desperate attempts to retain an audience by putting on striptease acts. The final blow came when Moss Empires, the largest British Music Hall chain, closed the majority of its theatres in 1960. Stage and film musicals, however, continued to be influenced by the music hall idiom. Oliver!, Dr Dolittle, My Fair Lady, and many other musicals continued to retain strong roots in music hall. The BBC series The Good Old Days, which ran for thirty years, recreated the music hall for the modern audience, and the Paul Daniels Magic Show allowed several speciality acts a television presence from 1979 to 1994. Aimed at a younger audience, but still owing a lot to the music hall heritage, was the Muppet Show.
[edit] History of the songs
The musical forms most associated with music hall evolved from traditional folk song, becoming by the 1850s a distinct musical style. Subject matter became more contemporary and humorous, and accompaniment was provided by larger house-orchestras as increasing affluence gave the lower classes more access to commercial entertainment and to a wider range of musical instruments, including the piano. The consequent change in musical taste from traditional to more professional forms of entertainment arose in response to the rapid industrialisation and urbanisation of previously rural populations during the industrial revolution. The newly created urban communities, cut off from their cultural roots, required new and readily accessible forms of entertainment.
Music halls were originally bar rooms which provided entertainment, in the form of music and speciality acts, for their patrons. By the middle years of the nineteenth century the first purpose-built music halls were being built in London. The halls created a demand for new and catchy popular songs that could no longer be met from the traditional folk song repertoire. Professional songwriters were enlisted to fill the gap.
The emergence of a distinct music hall style can be credited to a fusion of musical influences. Music hall songs needed to gain and hold the attention of an often jaded and unruly urban audience. In America from the 1840s Stephen Foster had reinvigorated folk song with the admixture of Negro spiritual to produce a new and vibrant form of popular song. Songs like Golden Slippers and The Old Folks at Home spread round the globe, taking with them the idiom and appurtenances of the minstrel song. Other influences on the rapidly-developing music hall idiom were Irish and European music, particularly the jig, polka, and waltz.
Typically a music hall song consists of a series of verses sung by the performer alone, and a repeated chorus which carries the principal melody, and in which the audience is encouraged to join.
In Britain, the first music hall songs often promoted the alcoholic wares of the owners of the halls in which they were performed. Songs like Glorious Beer, and the first major music hall success, Champagne Charlie, in 1854, had a major influence in establishing the new art form. Champagne Charlie is often credited with inspiring an exasperated William Booth to form the Salvation Army, eliciting his famous quotation: "Why should the devil have all the good tunes?"
By the 1870s the songs had cut themselves free from their folk music roots, and particular songs also started to become associated with particular singers, often with exclusive contracts with the songwriter, just as many pop songs are today.
Towards the end of the style the music became influenced by ragtime and jazz, before being overtaken by them.
Music hall songs were often unashamedly aimed at their working class audiences, reflecting the experiences and humour in their daily lives. Songs like My Old Man (Said Follow the Van), Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road, and Waiting at the Church, expressed in melodic form situations that the urban poor were very familiar with. Music Hall songs could be romantic, patriotic, humorous or sentimental, as the need arose. The most popular Music Hall songs became the basis for the Pub songs of the typical Cockney "knees up".
[edit] Music hall songwriters
- Harry Wincott, writer of "The Old Dun Cow"
- George Le Brunn, writer of "Oh! Mr Porter!"
- Harry Champion, composer of "Boiled Beef and Carrots", performer of "I'm Henery the Eighth, I Am"
- Harry Dacre, composer of "Daisy Bell"
- Noel Gay, writer of "Lambeth Walk", "There's Something About a Soldier", "Leaning on a Lamppost".
- Harry Lauder, writer of "Stop your Tickling Jock", "I Love A Lassie".
- Fred Gilbert, composer of "The Man that Broke the Bank At Monte Carlo".
- Fred W Leigh, composer of "Don't Dilly Dally" and "The Army of Today'"
- Arthur Lloyd, over 100 songs.
- Lionel Monckton, composer of "Moonstruck", "Soldiers in the Park", "The Pipes of Pan".
- Felix Powell, writer of "Pack up Your Troubles".
- Joseph Tabrar, writer of "Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow Wow".
[edit] Music hall comedy
The typical music hall comedian was a man (much less commonly a woman), dressed in a striped suit or other attention-attracting garb, perhaps in a double act and interrupted by another. The phrases 'I don't wish to know that!' and 'kindly leave the stage!' come from this period. Stand-up comedy started in this period, and many of today's habits such as heckling, finishing on a song, as well as character comedy, date back to music hall. Early radio programmes such as The Goons made extensive use of the tradition. The television variety show picked up some of the pieces, but at a time when music hall was already on its last legs.
[edit] Speciality acts
Besides straightforward music and comedy, a plethora of weird and wonderful acts were commonly enjoyed in Music Halls. These were known collectively as speciality acts, and included:
- Lions Comiques: essentially, men dressed as a 'toff', who sang songs about drinking champagne, going to the races, going to the ball, womanising and gambling, and living the life of an Aristocrat.
- Male and female impersonators, perhaps more in the style of a pantomime dame than a modern drag queen. Nevertheless these included some more sophisticated performers such as Vesta Tilley, whose male impersonations communicated real social commentary.
- Aerial acts, of the sort usually seen at the Circus
- Adagio: essentially a sort of cross between a dance act and a juggling act, consisting usually of a male dancer who threw a slim, pretty young girl around. A lot of the moves in modern choreography were evolved in Adagio acts.[citation needed]
- Magic acts and escapologists, such as Harry Houdini.
- Cycling acts: again, a development of a Circus act, consisting of either a solo or a troupe of trick cyclists. There was even 7 piece a cycling band called Seven Musical Savonas, who played 50 instruments between them, and Kaufmann’s Cycling Beauties, a troupe of girls in Victorian swim wear.
- Ventriloquists, or Vent acts as they were called in the business.
- Electric acts, using the newly discovered phenomena of static electricity to produce tricks such as lighting gas jets and setting fire to handkerchiefs through the performers fingertips.
- Knife throwing and sword swallowing. The most spectacular of its time was the Victorina Troupe, who swallowed a sword fired from a rifle.
- Juggling and plate spinning acts. Another variation was the Diabolo.
- Fire eaters and other eating acts, such as eating glass, razor blades, goldfish etc.
- Mentalism acts. Commonly a male mentalist, blindfolded on stage, and an attractive female assistant passing among the audience. The assistant would collect objects from the audience, and the mentalist would identify each by 'reading' the assistants mind. This was usually accomplished by a clever system of codes and clues from the assistant.
- Mime artists and impressionists.
- Balloon modelling acts.
- Trampoline acts.
- Animal acts: Talking dogs, Flea circuses, and all manner of animals doing tricks.
- Stilt walkers.
- Puppet acts, including human puppets and living doll acts.
- Comic pianists.
- Cowboy/wild west acts.
[edit] Music hall performers
- Arthur Askey
- Fred Barnes
- Kate Carney
- Harry Champion
- Charlie Chaplin (more famous as a silent film star)
- Sydney Chaplin
- Albert Chevalier
- G. H. Chirgwin
- Charles Coborn
- The Cox Twins
- Daisy Dormer
- Clive Dunn
- Gus Elen
- Gracie Fields
- Flanagan and Allen
- Florrie Forde
- George Formby Senior
- George Formby
- Harry Fragson
- Will Hammer (more famous as the founder of Hammer Films)
- Jenny Hill
- Fred Karno
- Marie Kendall
- Hetty King
- Harry Lauder
- Stan Laurel (more famous as a Hollywood star)
- Dan Leno
- Jules Léotard
- George Leybourne
- Cecilia Loftus
- Violet Loraine
- Little Tich
- Arthur Lloyd
- Marie Lloyd
- G. H. McDermott
- Max Miller
- Denise Orme
- Arthur Roberts
- George Robey
- Ronnie Ronalde
- Mark Sheridan
- Stainless Stephen
- Eugene Stratton
- Harry Tate
- Vesta Tilley
- Peter Ustinov
- Alfred Vance
- Vesta Victoria
- Max Wall
- H. Vernon Watson (performing under the sobriquet Nosmo King)
- Daisy Wood (and the Sisters Lloyd)
- Billy Williams http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Williams_%28music_hall_performer%29
- Wilson, Keppel and Betty
[edit] Music hall in literature, drama, and screen
The music hall has been evoked in many films, plays, TV series and books.
A music hall provides a pivotal plot device in the classic 1935 Hitchcock thriller The 39 Steps.
The Victorian era of music hall was celebrated by the 1944 film Champagne Charlie.
Charlie Chaplin's 1952 film Limelight, set in 1914 London, evokes the music-hall world of Chaplin's youth where he performed as comedian before he achieved world-wide celebrity as a film star in America. The film depicts the last performance of washed-up music hall clown called Calvero at The Empire theatre, Leicester Square. The film premiered at the very same Empire theatre depicted on the screen, though now converted into a cinema.
J. B. Priestley's 1965 novel Lost Empires also evokes the world of Edwardian music hall just before the start of World War I; the title is a reference to the Empire theatres (as well as foreshadowing the decline of the British Empire itself). It was recently adapted as a television miniseries, shown in both the UK and in the U.S. as a PBS presentation. Priestley's 1929 novel The Good Companions, set in the same period, follows the lives of the members of a "concert party" or touring "Pierrot troupe."
The parodic film Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), based on the stage play by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop, featured the music hall turns and songs that had provided support for the British war effort in World War One.
Between 1978 and 1984 BBC television broadcast two series of programmes called The Old Boy Network. These featured a star (usually a Music Hall performer, but also some younger turns like Eric Sykes) performing some of their best known routines while giving a slide show of their life story. Artistes featured included Arthur Askey, Tommy Trinder, Sandy Powell, and Chesney Allen.
John Osborne's play The Entertainer portrays the life and work of a second-rate music hall comedian. A very brief impression of a "current" show can be obtained from the film The Fourth Angel, where Jeremy Irons' character uses a visit to a music hall show at the Players' Theatre Club to create an alibi.
Sarah Waters's book Tipping the Velvet revolves around the world of music halls in the late Victorian era, and in particular around two fictional "mashers" (drag kings) named Kitty Butler and Nan King.
[edit] Surviving music halls
London was the centre of Music Hall with hundreds of venues, often in the entertainment rooms of public houses. With the decline in popularity of Music Hall, many were abandoned, or converted to other uses, such as cinemas and their interiors lost. Some few purpose built survivors are :-
- The Hackney Empire, an outstanding example of the late Music Hall period (Frank Matcham 1901). This has been restored to its moorish splendour and now provides an eclectic programme of events from opera to "Black Variety Nights".
- A mile to the south is Hoxton Hall - an 1863 example of the saloon-style, unrestored but maintained in its original layout, and currently used as a community centre and theatre.
- Collins Music Hall (about 1860) still stands on the North side of Islington Green. It closed in the 1960s and currently forms part of a bookshop.
- The Grand, (1900 Grand Palace of Varieties) in Clapham, has been restored, but its interior reflects its modern use as a music venue and nightclub.
- Greenwich Theatre was originally (1855) the Rose and Crown Music Hall, later Crowder's Music Hall and Temple of Varieties. The building has been extensively modernised and little of the original layout remains.
- In the nondescript Grace's Alley, off Cable Street, Stepney stands Wilton's Music Hall. This 1858 example of the giant pub hall survived use as a church, fire, flood and war intact, but was virtually derelict, after its use as a rag warehouse, in the 1960s. The Wilton's Music Hall Trust has embarked on a fund-raising campaign to restore the building.
Many of these buildings can be seen as part of the annual London Open House event.
Outside London, surviving music halls include the following examples:
- Leeds City Varieties (1865) with a preserved interior.
- Alhambra Theatre, Bradford was built in 1914 for theatre impresario Frank Laidler, and later owned by the Stoll-Moss Empire'. It was restored in 1986, and is a fine example of the late Edwardian style. It is now a receiving theatre for touring productions, and opera.
- Grand Opera House (Belfast). Frank Matcham 1895, preserved and restored in the 1980s.
- Gaiety Theatre, Isle of Man. Another Matcham design from 1900.
- Britannia Music Hall (1857), Glasgow remains standing, with much of the theatre intact but in a poor state having closed in 1938. There is a preservation trust attempting to rescue the theatre.
One of the few fully functional music hall entertainments, is at the Brick Lane Music Hall in a former church in North Woolwich. For information. The Players' Theatre Club is another group performing a Victorian style Music Hall show at a variety of venues.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- The British Music Hall Society
- Remastered recordings of music-hall artists
- The "Entertainment" section of www.victorianlondon.org
- Your Very Own Music Hall Company
- Arthur Lloyd (performer) site links to transcriptions of historical sources on performances and venues
The term Music hall is also used to describe some large musical venues, such as the Paris Olympia, Radio City Music Hall, and Music Hall in Cincinnati, Ohio (see Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra).
