Music, Morality and Social Reform in Nineteenth-Century Britain

A pioneering work which delves into and reveals the links between music, moral instruction and social reform. This book discusses the role of music in programmes of personal improvement and social reform in nineteenth-century Britain. The pursuit of morality through music was designed not just to improve personal and communal character but to affect social change and transformation. The book examines the musical education of children, women and men through a variety of literature published for various educational settings including mechanics' institutes. It also considers the role of music in narratives of social programs and community-building projects that sought to promote utility, well-being and freedom from the strictures of Christianity as the dominant moral and cultural force. The first book to connect the threads between music, moral instruction and social reform across the educational life cycle in nineteenth-century Britain, it shows how these threads are found in unlikely places, such as games, manners books, economics treatises and short stories. It deftly illustrates the links between everyday life, popular culture and discourses of morality and social reform of the period.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction Part 1 Morality 1. Elementary Instruction 2. Manners and Etiquette 3. Mechanics' Institutes Part 2 Social Reform 4. Political Economy - William Stanley Jevons 5. Philanthropy - Hannah More and Octavia Hill 6. Utopia - Auguste Comte and Malcolm Quin Afterword Bibliography Index

About the Author :
PAUL WATT is Adjunct Professor of Musicology in The University of Adelaide. He is the author of Ernest Newman: A Critical Biography (The Boydell Press, 2017) and editor of The Symphonic Poem in Britain, 1850-1950 (with Michael Allis) (The Boydell Press, 2020).

Review :
Overall, this is a very welcome and engaging study and there is a great deal to take forward from Watt's work, both from an academic research perspective and with respect to our enhanced understanding of the role of music in society. A rich and practical collection of well-organised sources that shed light on music's role in expressions of morality, both in private and public spheres. Watt is a careful guide, situating his work among the wealth of literature on cultural and social expressions of morality. [The book] succeeds in presenting an original, sensitive, and nuanced elucidation of the complex relationships between music and ideas of morality, and how they functioned as part of a broader sweep of nineteenth-century social development. The book contains much of value. Watt covers a wide range of subjects. His findings are considered and balanced, with constant emphasis on the ways gender and place led to a multiplicity of approaches to moral and social reform, even within similar publications or institutions. Seeking musical pastures new, he has deepened our knowledge of the component parts he studies and, in that sense, our wider understanding of music and morality in Victorian Britain.