Music in Georgian Bath
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The musical history of Bath starts just a decade before the beginning of the Georgian Era. It went parallel to the development of the provincial spa town. As Master of ceremonies, Beau Nash played a paramount role in establishing Bath as a fashionable city, a resort where informal manners were de rigueur, allowing nobility and wealthy middle-class to mingle together.
Early in the development of the “new” Bath, Nash promoted a subscription for a band of five or six musicians paid a guinea a week. They first played in gardens but soon entertained patrons in the Pump Room itself. The band grew to seven players who performed in the Pump Room in the mornings and in the Assembly Rooms for the evening balls for two guineas a week.[1][2]
When the Georgian Era was drawing to a close other resorts, such as Brighton, had grown very fashionable and Bath’s pre-eminence was already declining, however as a spa it continued to attract international luminaries, and musicians to entertain them throughout and beyond the nineteenth century.[1]