NEWCASTLE'S MUSICAL HERITAGE AN INTRODUCTION By ...

1826. According to Mackenzie’s 1827 historical account of Newcastle this society
consisted of 100 ordinary members, who paid 4s each every month, and
received three tickets of admission, and 36 honorary members, or performers,
who were presented with two tickets. The audience usually consisted of about
340 persons, excluding performers and with the ladies all dressed to pleasing
effect. The band was made up of amateurs and performed gratis. Concerts were
held in the Turk’s Head Hotel, Long Room in the Bigg Market. A press review of
their first concert on 29 th November 1826 firstly introduces the society ‘a society
of gentlemen in this town who entitle themselves the “Phil-Harmonic Society”,
and goes on to say that the music was both vocal and instrumental but it was not
a concert on which criticism could be employed with the same freedom which
would be called for in a public exhibition but it was justice to say that as a whole
the singing and the oratorios were such as to reflect great credit on the
respective parties. The reader is then informed that it was emphatically a dress
concert and attended by upwards of 300 persons of respectability. The review
ends with the following paragraph, which both points to the exclusivity of these
concerts and to the entirely different approach our forefathers had to concert
going:
‘A correspondent suggests the propriety of having a ball at the end of the Phil-
Harmonic Society‘s concerts. We have ourselves repeatedly suggested the
establishment of tradesmen’s dancing assemblies in this town and we should be
happy to see this affair taken up by the subscribers to the Phil-harmonic Society,
or by a distinct set of gentlemen. Assemblies for the trading part of the
community are certainly much wanted, and if properly conducted could not fail to
meet with adequate support.’
The Phil-Harmonic Society concerts and their after-concert entertainments
became very popular and continued into the 1850s. Some twenty years earlier
they had had to move into the Large Assembly Rooms to accommodate the
growing numbers and in 1851 a letter to the Gazette suggested the society
rename itself the Terpsichorean Club. However, their success did not go down
well with everyone as a letter to the Editor of the Tyne Mercury in April 1837
shows.
‘Sir,
The Standard newspaper has been made the vehicle of an attempt to ridicule
the Concerts of this Society, the leader and the committee knowing well and
thoroughly the contemptible little catiff from whom these puny dribblings of tap
house wit have emanated. The committee can laugh at his puny malice, and
even afford to wish that he may be able to muster a more numerous list of
subscribers when he brings forward his threatened opposition, than he did the
last time he failed in this creditable manoeuvre. But his brutal attack upon a
talented amateur deserves and will receive from every right-minded person the
most unqualified reprobation. Had it been in his power to injure his own lost
character in this town, this would have furnished the coping-stone to the column
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