NEWCASTLE'S MUSICAL HERITAGE AN INTRODUCTION By ...

1890 –1915 were, Edward Lloyd, Madame Albani, Clara Butt, Andrew Black,
Carrie Tubb, Gervase Elwes and Agnes Nicholls who was accompanied by her
husband, Hamilton Harty. Harty, listed today as organist, pianist and conductor
was one of the first conductors from the British isles to win international fame and
in 1920 rescued a floundering Halle Orchestra and turned it into a first class
ensemble, although at the turn of the century he was only a concert accompanist.
These well-attended annual concerts took place mostly in the Town Hall and The
Olympia on Northumberland Road, a general purpose hall opened in 1893.
Open air band concerts where a prominent feature of Victorian and Edwardian
life and continued up to the outbreak of the Second World War. Two early
examples were the concerts put on by the Electrical and General Engineering
Trades Industry and Art in 1897 featuring the Royal Marines Light Infantry
Band that played music by Sousa, selections from Gilbert and Sullivan operas,
and Wagner and in 1906, The Northern Counties Trades/Arts and Industries
Exhibition in Leazes Park that went on for two months and had music performed
by the String Band of the Royal Artillery every afternoon and evening. It seems
odd that Newcastle City Council haggled over spending money on the People’s
Concerts in the Town Hall but seemed to have no problem with allocating money
for music in the parks. Many of the town’s parks had bandstands (a beautiful
example is still to be seen in Exhibition Park) and on Sundays and Bank Holidays
they attracted large numbers of people, who sat around on chairs or benches,
dressed in their Sunday best – men in their dark serge suits with starched collar,
tie and waistcoat – ladies wearing fashionable hats - enjoying the colourful
spectacle of the bandsmen in their pseudo-military uniforms, and the selections
they played of well known operatic airs and popular pieces of light music. From
1900 until the 1930s .the Council presented Parks’ Promenade Concerts in the
City’s main parks. Large format programmes provided the audience with a list
from which the concert selection would be chosen.
Military Band style concerts were a colourful phase in the history of music in
Newcastle but appeared to go out of fashion with the Second World War.
However, Brass Bands, which initially had a much lower profile and attracted less
attention were an important development in the social as well as the musical
history of the town. Like the Music Hall they were part of working class culture
but unlike Music Hall the movement was never infiltrated and remained solid
working class to the core. It grew from strength to strength over the years. Today,
whilst these bands are fewer in number it is now a national movement. How it all
started no one is really sure and like the Tyneside Music Hall its origins are
vague. It may have been that these bands were founded as an imitation of the
many army, militia or volunteer bands that were around during the period of the
Napoleonic Wars, 1793 –1815. And/or they may have come about when ex
military bandsmen took their musical skills home with them from the army. On the
other hand, they may simply have arisen from a desire to make a sound on crude
locally manufactured instruments. But what seems fairly certain is that with the
introduction of valved wind instruments in the 1840s, which facilitated their
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