Rotunda Music in Eighteenth-Century Dublin.
Author: BOYDELL, Brian.
Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1992. 240 pages. Illustrated. Hardback.
This book is concerned with the promotion of an annual season of concerts organised for the benefit of the Dublin Lying-in Hospital, which came to be known as ‘The Rotunda’. These concerts, instituted in 1749, took place three times a week during the five summer months for the greater part of forty years. They provide an uninterrupted span of musical activity during the time when the baroque styles typified by Handel, Corelli and Vivaldi were giving place to the new classical idioms of the Mannheim composers and, eventually, Haydn. It was also the period when Dublin’s cultural reputation was second only to London’s in these islands.
An element of unusual interest in a survey of these concerts is supplied by the detailed accounts of the Register of the Hospital, which are complete for the period 1760-84, Thus, the economics of concert promotion, including the fees demanded by the singers and instrumentalists, and the box-office receipts for each individual concert, provide an additional dimension to the social and musical aspects of the Dublin conceit scene.
 Following on the author’s A Dublin Musical Calendar, 1700-1760 (1988), this book virtually completes a survey of Dublin musical life during the eighteenth century. Unlike the previous publication, which is primarily a book of reference, it provides a readable and entertaining account of a scene enlivened by changing fashions in taste and many eccentric and notorious characters. Rotunda Music will be enjoyed by the non-specialist reader interested in Dublin and eighteenth-century life; additionally it provides (in factual appendices) a great deal of information of value to those engaged in eighteenth-century studies.
ISBN: 0716524872
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