Goldsmiths - University of London

Professor Simon McVeigh

Simon McVeigh is a musicologist specialising in London concert life, 1700-1945, and in violin music and performance practices of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  Following doctoral studies at Oxford University he took up a lectureship at the University of Aberdeen before joining the Music Department at Goldsmiths in 1980. He was appointed Professor of Music in 1997 and was Head of Department from 1997 to 2000. Since 2001 he has been a member of the College’s Senior Management Team, overseeing research and business strategies as Pro-Warden (Research and Enterprise) and leading on China collaborations. 

In 1998 he co-founded the seminar series Music in Britain: A Social History Seminar held at the Institute of Historical Research. 

Former editor of the RMA Research Chronicle, he has served on numerous AHRC panels and is a member of the Music sub-panel for RAE 2008.

In addition he is a violinist, baroque violinist and conductor, directing the London Mozart Players and the Hanover Band in concerts and recordings. He was a governor of Trinity College of Music from 1998 to 2005, and was made an honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Music in 2007.

Academic qualifications

Areas of supervision

Current PhD students

Stephen Foster: Historical Musicology: 'To Entertain the Fancy: the orchestral concert song in England 1740-1800'

Margaret Gotoh - Musicology: 'The Reception of English Musical Culture in Germany in the Late Enlightenment'

Research interests

Following his widely-cited book on London concert life in the late eighteenth century (Concert Life in London from Mozart to Haydn) and the associated Calendar of London Concerts 1750-1800, he is now collaborating on an AHRC-funded project entitled The Transformation of London Concert Life, 1880-1914. He is also contributing to the Concert Life in Nineteenth-Century London database. Research on British music more generally is reflected in the edited collection Concert Life in Eighteenth-Century Britain; he is currently preparing an edition of Arne’s oratorio Judith for Musica Britannica and writing on the British symphony for The Eighteenth-Century Symphony (Indiana University Press).

The early eighteenth-century Italian concerto was the subject of a large-scale project with Jehoash Hirshberg (Hebrew University, Jerusalem), resulting in The Italian Solo Concerto 1710-1760: Rhetorical Strategies and Style History and an extensive programme of editing of violin concertos by Tessarini, Zani and others. A chapter on the eighteenth-century concerto will appear in the forthcoming Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Music, and he is currently writing on performance in the eighteenth century for the Cambridge History of Musical Performance.

Additional research

Simon McVeigh
Calendar of London Concerts 1750-1800
advertised in the London daily press

The database contains records of nearly 5,000 concerts, advertised in London daily newspapers from 1750 to 1800: subscription concerts, benefits, oratorio performances, meetings of musical societies, concerts at the principal gardens. For most of the period two titles were searched; for the later years many more were also consulted.

The database is essentially an index, with editorial standardization of names, genres and instruments. Searches can be made for specific items and also for more complex combinations: contact s.mcveigh (@gold.ac.uk).

The Transformation of London Concert Life, 1880-1914

Professor Simon McVeigh, Dr Leanne Langley, Eva Mantzourani, with the late Cyril Ehrlich

This project was initiated in 1999 by Simon McVeigh, Cyril Ehrlich and Leanne Langley, with funding for three years from the Arts and Humanities Research Board.

In the 35 years before the First World War, the concert industry in Europe and America underwent profound change, from a culture of near dearth to one of modern profusion. The patterns that emerged were to affect composers, performers, concert-goers and the packaging of musical events, within a truly international context, for most of the twentieth century. London was at the heart of this change, whose first evidence was a meteoric rise in the public demand for music entertainment but whose ultimate outcome, oversupply, led to a glut in concert provision. What happened in between - the drive to create orchestras, shape programmes, finance seasons, attract and train audiences - is the subject of the project. The research is particularly focussed on the decade around 1900, during which period the Queen’s Hall and the Bechstein (later Wigmore) Hall were established as London’s premier venues, enabling a year-round schedule of high-class orchestral and chamber concerts (including the summer Proms) for the first time.

Selected publications

Books
Concert Life in London from Mozart to Haydn (Cambridge University Press, 1993)

Concert Life in Eighteenth-Century Britain, co-edited with Susan Wollenberg (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004)
 
The Italian Solo Concerto 1700-1760: Rhetorical Strategies and Style History, with Jehoash Hirshberg (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004)

Recent articles
 ‘The Modernisation of London’s Concert Life around 1900’, in The Business of Music, ed. Michael Talbot (Liverpool, 2002), pp. 96-120

‘An Audience for High-class music’: Concert Promoters and Entrepreneurs in Nineteenth-century London’, in The Musician as Entrepreneur, 1700-1914: Managers, Charlatans and Idealists, ed. W Weber (Indiana University Press, 2004)

‘Viotti and London Violinists during the 1790s: A Calendar of Performances’, in Giovanni Battista Viotti: A Composer between the Two Revolutions, ed. M Sala (Turnhout, 2006), pp. 87-119

‘A Free Trade in Music: London during the Long 19th Century in a European Perspective’, Journal of Modern European History, 5 (2007), 57-93

Additional Research Related Publications Include

Simon McVeigh and Leanne Langley
London Concert Life, 1880-1914: A Social and Cultural History (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)

Cyril Ehrlich
‘The First Hundred Years’, in Wigmore Hall 1901-2001: a Celebration, ed. J MacRae (London, 2001), pp. 31-65

Simon McVeigh and Cyril Ehrlich
‘The Modernisation of London’s Concert Life around 1900’, in The Business of Music, ed. M Talbot (Liverpool, 2002), pp. 96-120

Simon McVeigh
‘ “An Audience for High-class Music”: Concert Promoters and Entrepreneurs in Nineteenth-century London’, in The Musician as Entrepreneur, 1700-1914: Managers, Charlatans and Idealists, ed. W Weber (Indiana University Press, 2004), pp. 162-82

‘A Free Trade in Music: London during the Long 19th Century in a European Perspective’, Journal of Modern European History, 5 (2007), 57-93

Leanne Langley
‘Roots of a Tradition: The First Dictionary of Music and Musicians’, in George Grove, Music and Victorian Culture, ed. M Musgrave (London, 2003), pp.168-215

‘Building an Orchestra, Creating an Audience: Robert Newman and the Queen’s Hall Promenade Concerts, 1895-1926’, in The Proms: a New History, ed. J Doctor, D Wright and N Kenyon (London, 2007), pp. 32-73

‘Agency and Change: Berlioz in Britain, 1870-1920’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 132 (2007), 306-47