Review of Christina Bashford. 2007. The Pursuit of High Culture: John Ella and Chamber Music in Victorian London. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell

Abstract

Christina Bashford has titled and subtitled her new book appropriately: although it takes the overt form of a biography of Victorian musical entrepreneur John Ella, it is also a much broader project concerning musical life, repertory, and audiences in nineteenth-century Britain. Ella is a perfect embodiment of the century’s larger trends, as well as the social and cultural background, as Bashford explains. Bashfords book concentrates a great deal on repertory and on the meaning and implication of repertory choices. She is admirably self-conscious about the questions of method of analysis, however, and explains her choices.