Description: There are many misinformed opinions about nineteenth-century England, but some of the more regrettable ones concern music, where the use of the word 'Victorian' is still usually pejorative. In most cases any such opinion is a received one-relatively few people have actually listened to more than a few fragments of 'Victoriana' though the tendency to ridicule the style and much that its period apparently represents may seem natural to anyone performing it today. Yet if the practice of 'early music' teaches us one thing, it should be to approach the music of the past on its own terms and with reference to the cultural climate that nurtured it.

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