Music Benefit Performance Eighteenth-Century Britain Hardcover 9781108492935

Cambridge University Press

Music and the Benefit Performance in Eighteenth-Century BritainAuthor(s): Matthew Gardner, Alison DeSimone\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9781108492935, 978-1108492935\nSynopsis\nIn the early eighteenth century, the benefit performance became an essential component of commercial music-making in Britain. Benefits, adapted from the spoken theatre, provided a new model from which instrumentalists, singers, and composers could reap financial and professional rewards. Benefits could be given as theatre pieces, concerts, or opera performances for the benefit of individual performers; or in aid of specific organizations. The benefit changed Britain's musico-theatrical landscape during this time and these special performances became a prototype for similar types of events in other European and American cities. Indeed, the charity benefit became a musical phenomenon in its own right, leading, for example,.