Promenade concert

Although the term promenade concert is often associated today with the Proms summer classical music concert series founded in 1895 by Robert Newman and the conductor Henry Wood, the term originally referred to concerts in the pleasure gardens of London, where the audience could stroll about while listening to the music (French se promener = to walk).

Pleasure gardens, which levied a small entrance fee and provided a variety of entertainment, had become extremely popular in London by the eighteenth century. Music was provided from bandstands (known as ‘’orchestras’’) or more permanent buildings, and was generally of the popular variety: ballroom dances, quadrilles (), cornet solos etc. Other entertainments would have included fireworks, masquerades and acrobatics. There were 38 gardens which are known to have provided music. Perhaps the most famous of these were Vauxhall Gardens (1661-1859), south of the Thames. Known at first as New Spring Gardens this was the favourite haunt of diarists Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn. The music of Handel was very popular here in the eighteenth century, and in 1738 there was even a statue erected of Handel playing the lyre. The Gardens were described as fashionable in the late 18th and early 19th century by Fanny Burney and William Thackeray. and royalty mingled with the ordinary folk. On 21 April 1749 twelve thousand people paid 2s 6d each to hear Handel rehearsing his Music for the Royal Fireworks in Vauxhall Gardens, causing a three-hour traffic jam on London Bridge. The music had been commissioned by the king in celebration of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. The performance six days later in Green Park was even more spectacular, especially when the building caught fire. The composer Dr Thomas Arne was appointed composer of Vauxhall Gardens in 1745. It was here that many of his songs achieved their great popularity. The musicians were housed in a covered building while the audience strolled outside. In the nineteenth century Sir Henry Bishop was the official composer to the Gardens. Many of his songs, which include Home! Sweet Home!, were performed there. Vauxhall Gardens remained a national institution until 1859.

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