During the long nineteenth century, operatic narratives, music and performance styles had a rich secondary life in fantoccini puppet shows, ballet, tableaux vivants and magic lantern shows. The intersection of ballet with opera is well known, but operatic material was also adapted by these other genres that, in turn, were often chosen as the vehicle for discrete sequences within operas. Opera thus achieved a presence in many genres during the century that only disappeared as it neared the twentieth. This cross-pollination disturbs the categorizations of high and low art, and challenges the assumption that street artforms only engaged with opera on parodic or satirical levels. The article contextualizes this cross-pollination within society’s acceleration towards mass-literacy in the second half of the nineteenth century. As Britain’s performance culture shifted to reflect increased literacy, new stage languages emerged in each of these genres along with innovations in storytelling, and this separated them from the proto-literate traditions which had facilitated their cross-pollination in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Exemplifying Kress and Leeuven’s interpretation of advanced literacy as multi-modal, where media other than text shape communication, performances became more instrumentally-supported, more visual, faster paced, physically active and audience comprehension became more instant. Older styles of external interpreters and heavy expositions came to an end. In the process, opera lost a valuable conduit in other performance genres.

While Manchester enjoyed a thriving chamber music culture at the outset of the twentieth century, signs of decline were already evident in the years leading up to the First World War. The outbreak of war in August 1914 proved agential in the need to rethink the existing models of concert-giving, not least the pre-war reliance on a predominantly Austro-German canonic repertoire and the substantial support it received from Manchester’s large and often prosperous German community. It also faced more practical challenges in the unavailability of male performing artists. The important role of organist and composer Sydney Nicholson in the establishment of Manchester’s Tuesday Mid-day Concerts in 1915 is discussed, arguing that their innovative format, together with the opportunities they offered both for the introduction of newer repertoire and as a platform for local performers, positioned them as one of the most significant but still undocumented legacies of Manchester’s wartime music making.

This study of Manchester conservatoire training during and immediately after the Great War is an outcome of the research project ‘Making Music in Manchester’, which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and was a collaboration between the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) and community partners, Manchester Central Library and the Hallé Concerts Society. It focuses on musical life and training at the Royal Manchester College of Music (RMCM) to consider the extent to which the war made a difference to musical life at the College. The first part of this study examines the RMCM in the years leading up to the Great War, starting with the celebrations in the region to mark the twenty-first anniversary of the College in 1914 and examining the typical repertoire in the College’s public performances. Part two focuses on the impact of war on student numbers, gender balance, instruments played and any changes in repertoire. It discusses the conundrum of performing Wagner, on which perspectives differed sharply between Paris and Manchester. The final section examines the impact the temporary presence of ex-service students – who had been given Government grants to study music – had on the ecology of the RMCM and its mission to serve the North of England.

The first three of Fauré’s nine preludes (Op. 103), first published as Trois Préludes, were completed and dispatched ten days late. This article suggests that the deadline created a compositional strain by uncovering a range of phenomena, from copying errors to shared gestures and the mining of older works. Piecing together the web of self-quotation and associations found in primary and secondary sources of Fauré scholarship, it appears that Fauré’s first three preludes display not only a nocturnal arc, but also a vague relation to the three main heroines of his oeuvre, so that depictions of stars, spinning and flames intermingle. Additionally, Fauré’s compositional short-cuts, including self-borrowing and additive thematic development, are utilized over a pervasive earworm which slipped into the composer’s working memory through a score recently completed, the last song of La chanson d’Ève (op. 95): ‘Ô mort, poussière d’étoiles’. The combined discussion frames a self-referential story of the composer’s toil with his current deadline; although past deadlines – toiles and étoiles – resurface, Fauré emerges victorious with a completed score in hand.

At the outbreak of the First World War the Hallé Orchestra was entering a new phase. The retirement of Hans Richter as its Principal Conductor in 1911 had led to the appointment the following year of Michael Balling, a German who, like Richter, was associated with the Bayreuth circle. Although Balling had clear ideas as to the direction in which he wished to take the orchestra, the declaration of war against Germany in 1914 made his continued tenure impractical. Although the outbreak of war in 1914 initially appeared a major blow to the orchestra’s fortunes, the engagement during the war years of a number of interim conductors, not least Sir Thomas Beecham, ultimately enabled the Hallé’s programming to expand beyond its hitherto rather German-heavy repertoire. It also provided openings for women, previously unrepresented in the orchestra, to take the places of absent male players, thereby setting a precedent would ultimately to lead to women being offered permanent contracts. Sources in the Hallé Orchestra’s own archives and those at Manchester Central Library shed light on the issues faced by the Hallé Concerts Society in maintaining the orchestra’s important contribution to the musical life of Manchester during the war years.