Supervisor: Dr Stephen Rose 

Institutional email:   Peter.Neale.2012@live.rhul.ac.uk

This dissertation will uncover the musical worlds of those in domestic service in England between 1714 and 1819 - servants of the gentry, tradesmen and artisans. The long eighteenth century is marked by profound changes to musical culture, but also to economic and social relations between employers and employees.  As a key moment in the development of industrial capitalism it is a particularly fruitful area for sociological and cultural study; as practices of concert-giving in London and cathedral towns established a nascent classical canon, the period is also of great importance to musical history.  Servants (especially servants of the gentry) occupied a complex liminal position regarding social class – often with privileged access to elite culture resulting from their close proximity to their masters, but conditional and unstable access. Their relationships with their nominal equals and betters were defined situationally, and through conflict. This ambiguous and multivalent status within the broader fabric of London society was expressed spatially, and can be geographically and architecturally mapped. Even those serving poorer masters often had this liminal social position, not least because of their disproportionate disposable income.  Thus servants’ musical culture was hybridised, with elite and popular musics appropriated to form a rich and historically hidden tradition of amateur musicmaking. Their musical culture also extended to watching Handelian opera from the gallery, eavesdropping on and participating in their employers’ amateur domestic chamber music, and simultaneously becoming actors within the complex sonic worlds of poor communities.  This interdisciplinary study will combine a geographical examination of the spaces servants moved through with a social and cultural examination of the music in their lives. Such an approach will not only throw cultural relationships between socio-economic classes into sharp relief, but also show music’s role in constituting, maintaining and even disputing social roles and spaces.