Thomas Busby, in his A Complete Dictionary of Music (1801), described a music seller as ‘not only … dealing in printed music, but likewise all kinds of musical instruments[. It is] an extensive, complex, and mysterious trade, and requires a capital, and a stock of information and experience’. The ‘extensive, complex, and mysterious’ nature of Britain's commercial music trade is adeptly described in an advertisement by Newcastle-based stationer and music dealer John Atkinson in 1777 as incorporating:

Stationary Goods of all Kinds; Books of different Sorts … Music, Operas, Songs, Sonatas, Duetts, Solos, Symphonies, Minuets, Country Dances, Single Songs, Books of Instruction for most Instruments, ruled Paper and Books for Music, of various Sorts; All new Music, Songs, &. as soon as published: musical Instruments, &c. viz. Violins, Violoncello, Guittars, French Horns, Trumpets, Hautboys, Clarinets, German Flutes, Common Flutes, Fifes, Pitch Pipes, Mouth Pieces for the easy sounding of German Flutes; best Roman Strings, Violin, Bass and Tenor Bows, Bridges, Mutes, Pegs, Rosin Boxes, Music Desks, Tuning Forks, Hammer for tuning Harpsichords, Wire for ditto, of all Kinds Hautboy and Bassoon Reeds, and every other Article in the musical Way.

Eighty years earlier, music publisher and instrument seller John Carr had advertised ‘all sorts of Musical Instruments and Strings, all sorted of Ruled Paper, Ruled Books of all sizes, and all sets of MUSICK, and Single SONGS and TUNES fairly Prick’d’. Throughout the period of this study – 1650–1800 – commercial music traders dealt in a broad range of goods, services and activities to supply Britain's music-making.

As seen in Chapter Three, the general condition of cathedral music at the end of the eighteenth century was at one of its lowest points, while at parish level the developments of country psalmody had certainly enlivened music in rural churches, even if it was strongly disapproved of by many clergy and professional musicians. Meanwhile, most town churches still relied on local charity children to support their music, although voluntary mixed choirs were appearing in some more adventurous parishes. By the end of the nineteenth century a major transformation had taken place, particularly in parish churches where what we have come to consider as the typical church choir emerged. The cathedrals had begun to awake from their somnolent state, and both Nonconformist and Roman Catholic churches also developed choral cultures. In the course of that change, various issues would periodically arise. One of the most significant was the relationship between choir and congregation, which confronted not only parishes, but on occasions the cathedrals too, as their Sunday congregations grew. The question of female participation, whether as sopranos or contraltos, produced an assortment of practices, both within the Church of England, as the divisions of churchmanship became more pronounced, and in the Roman Catholic Church.

Standards of church music in the early decades of the century were probably no worse than in the preceding period, but its plight was heightened by the increased amount of criticism that began to make its way into print. In 1831 John Antes La Trobe began his idiosyncratic survey The Music of the Church by stating, ‘It is impossible for a man of observation to flatter himself, that our church-music is in a healthful and vigorous condition.

Although the Piano Trio was successful, Smetana felt that his efforts did not receive enough appreciation to encourage further compositions. However, a significant mark of respect came in January 1856, when he was chosen over the famous Alexander Dreyschock to perform Mozart's Piano Concerto in D minor at the composer's centennial celebration. Despite this recognition and a substantial income from his institute and private lessons, Smetana was keenly aware that the artistic, political, and social climate for Czech cultural life was bleak. In the same year, Josef Kajetán Tyl—a popular dramatist, author of the national anthem's lyrics, and tireless promoter of Czech theater—passed away. Soon after, Smetana's friend Havlíček—the first liberal leader of the Czechs, a poet, and author of biting epigrams—died as well, indirectly tortured to death by Austrian authorities. The restrictions of Czech cultural and political activities continued to intensify.

When Alexander Dreyschock returned to Prague from his concert tour in Scandinavia, he recounted his triumphs and mentioned being asked to recommend a skilled piano teacher for Göteborg, Sweden. Smetana decided to try his luck in the Scandinavian city. Contrary to previous beliefs, it is now evident that he had not secured a definite position before his arrival. However, it was known that Mrs. Dickson, the wife of a wealthy Göteborg businessman, had asked Dreyschock to find someone capable of raising the standard of piano performance and enriching the city's musical life. Acting entirely on his own initiative and without any commitments, Smetana accepted the challenge. There were rumors suggesting that Dreyschock might have sought to eliminate a potential rival—a notion Smetana himself hinted at, possibly fueled by the common jealousy among virtuosi.

Aesthetic and Political Controversies

Pivoda

The younger generation, which would later witness Smetana's posthumous rise to fame, found it perplexing that František Pivoda, an educated man, could shift from being an ardent supporter of Smetana to becoming one of his most vocal adversaries. Details about this change are scarce, with only Hostinský briefly addressing it. In his last years, Pivoda, who died in 1898, supposedly dictated memoirs to justify his actions. Recently, musicologist Mirko Očadlík has shed some light on this matter.

Pivoda, born just six months after Smetana, hailed from a small Moravian village and started his musical journey as a vocalist in the Brno cathedral at the age of fourteen. After completing teachers’ college, he pursued music studies in Vienna. Following experiences singing in Italy and teaching music in aristocratic households, he settled in Prague in 1860. With a solid education, a rich tenor voice, fine diction, and knowledge of Moravian dialects, he founded a prestigious singing school in Prague. Although his theater ambitions were curtailed by limitations in his voice and physique, Pivoda excelled as a concert singer and pedagogue, providing the theater with outstanding singers.

Shortly after Smetana's return from Sweden, Pivoda collaborated with him in concerts, both as a singer and composer. Pivoda, with his charming personality, was beloved by his students—many fell in love with him. Gabriela Roubalová (“La Boema”) famously wrote him passionate love-letters from Italy. When Pivoda joined her, their eventual separation left her heartbroken. He took great care of his students, helping them secure teaching positions and theater appointments, and even offering financial assistance.

The plot of Richard E. Grant's 2005 autobiographical film Wah-Wah was detailed by the writer-director himself in his initial pitch to obtain backing for the project to his potential producer Hilary Heath at a lunch meeting at London's entertainment-industry watering hole, The Ivy, on October 14, 1999.

Matthew Paris was the literary heir of Roger of Wendover, whom he spent around a decade with at St Albans.1 Matthew inherited Roger's view of the vassalage, his use of parallels and contrasts, and his inclination towards exaggeration and the use of hyperbole. However, Matthew was far more than a mere successor and continuator. He extended the condemnation of the papacy and the English clergy well beyond Roger's scope. Matthew's condemnation of the nature of the Anglo-Papal relationship reached unprecedented heights, and his view of King Henry III bordered on the treasonous.

All this came to the forefront as Matthew reported on the reception of Legate Otto de Tonengo, cardinal-deacon of S. Nicola in Carcere. Otto arrived in England in the summer of 1237, and did not depart until January 1241. Matthew viewed the mere anticipation of Otto's arrival as a catalyst for the kingdom becoming ‘divided and dismantled’ (‘divisum et dissipatum’). However, Matthew did not only blame the papacy for this rupture; forces within England shared in the blame.

Matthew viewed the reception of the legate from the point of view of the English dissidents – those who declined to welcome the legate and to acknowledge his authority. This, as will be seen below, was likely an illusion, in the sense that Matthew employed the dissident perspective to engineer a division within the English community that did not exist or only existed on the fringes of the English polity. This dissident perspective facilitated his attack on the king and the English prelates, whose acceptance of the legate he regarded as a voluntary act of unnatural submission.

IT IS OFTEN said that the Ring was written backwards and composed forwards. This is not far from the truth, but the reality is, as always, more complicated than the quip. It is true that Wagner originally wrote the text for a single opera, Siegfrieds Tod, the first version of what would ultimately become Götterdämmerung. He then realized that Siegfrieds Tod could not stand alone, so he wrote a prequel, Der junge Siegfried, which in its final form became Siegfried. That did not solve the problem, either. Audiences would still have needed a good deal of background information to make sense of what was going on, and imparting this verbally was apt to be confusing or tedious and would carry too little emotional weight; as Wagner wrote to Liszt, “a work of art … can only make its rightful impression if the poetic intent is fully presented to the senses in every one of its important moments.”1 Events conveyed through narrative would not work well with Wagner's evolving language of musicaldramatic motifs and their development, either, as Carl Dahlhaus explains:

As a consequence of setting itself up as a bountiful smuggling warehouse, the Isle of Man, by association, was embroiled in another questionable trade, that of slavery. Both these contentious enterprises needed to be fully addressed before the Island could move towards a more befitting future. As a result, by the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth it had been through major reforms and restructuring. It was at a crossroads in its economic history. With changes being needed, there were new and welcome monetary benefits coming from two different but innovative revenue drivers – new residents and summer visitors – which would give a considerable boost to the local commerce and the British government's exchequer.

Throughout this time any attempts for fiscal or political reforms from the Manx citizens’ perspective were firmly rejected. Constitutional issues inevitably went hand in hand with financial ones, and Britain was concerned that any alteration to the establishment of the self-elected House of Keys would lead to requests for local control of public finances as well. Indeed, the Keys themselves were not prepared to alter their ancient self-elected status. And there was always the fear of possible total annexation by Britain which acted as a restraint on any agitation for revolutionary modifications. But there were emerging demands for financial protection and political remodelling. Through the well-co-ordinated work of two very different sets of activists there would be the beginnings of a conservative determination to protect the pockets of consumers of taxed luxury goods taking place alongside a radical determination to bring about the greatly needed reform of the House of Keys.

In colonial Africa, coffee was generally a smallholder crop, grown by peasant households on communally owned or, sometimes, privatized land. Angola was among the few African countries where coffee became a settler crop grown on medium and large estates. The reasons for smallholder dominance were fundamentally economic. Coffee production on estates involved expensive overheads and salary costs but offered few economies of scale. Meanwhile, smallholders required very little capital, as they had access to land at little or no cost, could rely on unpaid family labour, and used cheap hand tools to grow and process coffee (see Chapter 2). In many African regions, settlers played a role in the early development of coffee cultivation, often experimenting with imported arabica cultivars. But for political, environmental, or economic reasons they often withdrew from coffee growing before African production became globally significant. As William Clarence-Smith has explained, settlers were typically ‘opportunistic producers, most likely to turn away from coffee when expenditure was especially high’, as happened when coffee prices fell or when colonial governments banned compulsory labour, forcing planters to pay market-rate wages to plantation workers. However, in settler-elite economies like Angola, the Belgian Congo, and Kenya, colonial governments proved willing to intervene in African land and labour markets to ensure the survival of a foreign planter class.

Tis chapter analyses the twentieth-century transition from smallholding to settler agriculture in northern Angola, where the share of European estates in coffee production jumped from at best one-quarter in 1900 to approximately two-thirds in 1958.