Music and musicians on the London stage, 1695-1705 / Kathryn Lowerre.

Music and musicians on the London stage, 1695-1705 / Kathryn Lowerre.

Farnham, England ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate, ©2009.

xvi, 412 p. : ill., music ; 24 cm

Performance in the long eighteenth century

From 1695 to 1705, rival London theater companies based at Drury Lane and Lincoln's Inn Fields each mounted more than a hundred new productions while reviving stock plays by authors such as Shakespeare and Dryden. All included music. Kathryn Lowerre charts the interactions of the two companies from a musical perspective, emphasizing each company's new productions and their respective musical assets, including performers, composers, and musical materials. Lowerre also provides rich analysis of the relationship of music to genres including comedy, dramatick opera, and musical tragedy, and explores the migration of music from theater to theater, performer to performer, and from stage to street and back again. As Lowerre persuasively demonstrates, during this period, all theater was musical theater.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [393]-399) and indexes.

Prologue : rival crews : music and musicians in the London theaters
The place and function of music in dramatic productions
Musical approaches in comedy
Musical tragedy and dramatick operas
Music and musicians in theatrical competition
Initiation, 1695-1697
Competition, 1697-1700
Power shift, 1700-1703
Realignment, 1703-1705.

Performance in the long eighteenth century.

Great Britain -- England.

ML1731.8.L7 L69 2009

268441