Audience Makeup


   The 18th century saw the development and rise of a new middle-upper social class that referred to themselves most often as the beau monde1. This class was crucial to the rise of the public concert and made up much of the audience that attended concerts of all types throughout England. They wanted to be seen at all high-class music events. Members of the beau monde knew each other and were concerned with whom they saw at which concerts. In 1783, in a journal of a society woman named Lady Mary, more than 260 of the 350 box seats at Haymarket were named with specific people she knew and was concerned with seeing at the opera2. One of the interesting things about the beau monde was that it contained all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds who would not necessarily be socially acceptably mixing, as long as they had some financial prosperity and the ability to afford tickets. These people included doctors, financial agents, cultural entrepreneurs, elite prostitutes, and the high-level musicians and artists themselves3. This indicates that at least for the well-known musicians and composers who had a following, annual benefit concerts and an amount of prestige, the audience at much of their concerts consisted of a great range of people, including quite a few peers. Pastor Charles Moritz, who earlier described the views of Vauxhall, also gives an account of attending a concert in another pleasure garden.

 

   All around, under this gallery, are handsome painted boxes for

   those who wish to take refreshments: the floor was covered

   with mats, in the middle of which are four high black pillars;

   within which there are neat fire-places for preparing tea, coffee

   and punch; and all around, also, there are placed tables, set

   out with all kinds of refreshments.  Within these four pillars, in

   a kind of magic rotunda, all the beau-monde of London move

   perpetually round and round…I at first mixed with this

   immense concourse of people, of all sexes, ages, countries,

   and characters; and I must confess, that the incessant change

   of faces, the far greater number of which were strikingly

   beautiful, together with the illumination, the extent and

   majestic splendour of the place, with the continued sound of

   the music, makes an inconceivably delightful impression on the

   imagination; and I take the liberty to add, that, on seeing it

   now for the first time, I felt pretty nearly the same sensations

   that I remember to have felt when, in early youth, I first read

   the Fairy Tales.4

 

   Many musicians had private students as well, which paid off in multiple ways. These students not only provided more stable income, but also formed a part of the audience at concerts5. This meant that there was a level of familiarity not only with the music itself and the instruments and knowledge of what it meant to be a musical master, but also a familiarity with certain performers from working one-on-one with them on a regular basis. This is not so strange to us now either. Since I was a child, it has been a great part of my education to attend concerts given by my teachers, and I have also had the joy of having my own students of all ages attend concerts that I play. This creates its own sort of special community within the larger concert audience as a whole.

   However, audiences were not all made up of people with a high level of musical knowledge. Especially opera audiences were quite a mix of people, not only by class, but also by level of knowledge. Because opera is so theatrical, it was known to be widely attractive to those who were great aficionados, and those who attended purely for enjoyment without much outside knowledge. That said, the baseline of what most people would have known about music at the time is not clear. It is likely that much of the beau monde and certainly the top rung of society would have had some level of formal musical training. On top of this, the music that was being presented at the opera was at least some of the popular music of the day. It would seem that this would have led to at least a basic understanding of 18th-century music that perhaps not all of our 21st-century audiences have.

 

   It can greatly aid the enjoyment of a piece of music if one has an understanding of its context. With the advent of public concerts and the greater access to consumption of the music, so too the greater attendance by those who knew less about music than royalty and the other extreme elite. This was true in the world of theater as well. More people had access to seeing plays and even as early as 1702, the playwright John Dennis lamented the fact that fewer audience members had the ability to judge a play with any expertise, saying,

Besides, there are three sorts of People now in our Audiences, who have had no education at all; and who were unheard of in the Reign of King Charles the Second. A great many younger Brothers, Gentlemen born, who have been kept at home, by reason of the pressure of the Taxes, Several People, who made their Fortunes in the late War; and who from a state of obscurity, and perhaps misery, have risen to a condition of distinction and plenty.6

   With greater access comes greater variety of education. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, even in the early 18th century, John Dennis saw that less awareness of art in context of its place in the world can lead to less understanding from an audience. We have seen various educational barriers between our knowledgeable 21st-century musicians and our audiences who might have less knowledge and a different contextualization of classical music. It is likely that people in the western world have encountered classical music through cartoons or other forms of media and technology, some through some sort of formal training in school, and some of us through private instrument lessons and attendance of live concerts. Though of course there are countless ways of enjoying all kinds of music with any level of prior understanding, I believe Dennis makes a strong argument for the suggestion of audience education, which could aid the enjoyment of the listener.

 

   Interestingly, though subscriptions were not necessarily allowed for women, they were often a large percentage of the audience. Subscriptions came with two tickets and though they often weren’t allowed to be sold to women in the first place, it was allowed for them to be transferred to women7. This meant that for the men who were performing, because it was standard for more men to be performing than women, their wives occupied large numbers of the audience as well as the other ladies brought along by the men in the audience. By allowing women attendance at concerts, it also became an easy way to control how rowdy and drunken a concert became8, ensuring a particular atmosphere.

   Sometimes, women were sent by their husbands if the men could not or would not attend a concert. In one case, there was a rivalry between a Mr. Spencer Cowper and John Garth who both ran subscription series in Durham. Mr. Cowper was too angry about this other series to attend, but also curious about how it ran and the quality compared to his own, so he sent his wife. Mrs. Cowper went and heard both a lunchtime rehearsal and the concert. While we don’t have her exact words about her experience, her husband wrote in a letter to his brother about the concert, saying,

The Subscription concert was open’d last Wednesday. 14 is the number of the Subscribers, but as they each had 4 tickets to be disposed of they had four times the number of Ladies; they ended with a Ball and made up a dance of about 18 couple, Mr W. Cowper, and some few other strangers being admited gratis. My Mrs Cowper and her Compy were there and brought me home this account, with the Bill of fare. The Musick was chiefly Instrumental performers at least equal to our own; but the choice of it wretched. It open’d with the Overture of Clotilda, an Opera many ages older than Camilla, and consisted of Concertos and solos from Rameau, Giardini, and Avison. Poor Corelli, and Handel were excluded almost Nem. Con. only one man amongst them pleaded hard that Corelli might conclude the affair, but he was only hooted at for his pains, and told that there was not one part of Corelli that the children in the streets cou’d not whistle from beginning to end, and their music was to be all New…I shall not fear that my Crowds will be injured in their Concert, whilst these adhere so closely to the having what is perfectly new.9

   This account brings up several interesting points. We see that an audience member attended a lunchtime rehearsal earlier the day of the concert. This is also mentioned by Haydn in an account of a concert where he listed the number of attendees at the rehearsal (800) and then at the concert (2000).10 Both of these mentions are written in such a way that makes the idea of attending a rehearsal sound like a normal occurrence. This would certainly increase the audiences’ understanding of the music. Just hearing pieces played multiple times makes them more familiar and automatically one hears different things each time one listens, regardless of experience. There is also a familiarity gathered by listening to musicians rehearse and hearing on what they are focusing and working. This bridges a possible gap between audience and performer by allowing the audience into a part of the musician’s working world and creating a more broad and contextualized environment of a concert.

 

   Another very interesting point brought up in this quote is one that I have not seen referenced anywhere else, and this is the admittance of audience members for free, though it is unclear the reason why. Were these ‘strangers’ just passersby? Were they friends or family of performers who were receiving what we would consider complimentary tickets? In addition, there is the mention of the larger number of women in the audience and then a description of a ball, showing us that there was sometimes dancing at concerts as well. The difference this makes in terms of audience engagement and participation could be enormous. The way a listener engages with a piece of music when they are dancing to it, whether a choreographed number or not, is much different than if they purely sit still and listen. No one can completely disengage, fall asleep, or ignore what is happening onstage if one is dancing.

Scene in a Tavern from A Rake's Progress by William Hogarth

The Morning Walk by Thomas Gainsborough