Favourite Songs

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We'd better bide a wee", "Crazy Jane", "The Lute Player" and "Always Alone": these and numerous other English songs by female composers were veritable bestsellers in the 19th and early 20th centuries, often advertised with adjectives such as "favourite" or "popular". They were regularly heard in the drawing rooms and parlours of bourgeois society, but also on concert stages. They were thus an important part of British musical culture and shaped everyday musical life, but are almost unknown today. Based on a large number of surviving printed music, this study makes visible those actions that contributed to the popularisation of the songs, but does not leave out those practices that have led to their decline in importance in music historiography. Following a cultural studies approach, the focus is not on the individual work, but rather on diverse questions about the processes of creation, performance, distribution and reception as well as the people involved. These are illuminated by means of plural methodological approaches ranging from musical analyses to biographical studies and various approaches to network research. In this way, a lively and multi-faceted impression of popular English music culture of the long 19th century is conveyed and, at the same time, an important contribution is made to researching the participation of women within this music culture.