Railways & Music
Julia Winterson
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When the Stockton & Darlington Railway opened in 1825, it was the first steam-powered railway to carry passengers. Since then there has been no shortage of music connected with trains and railways: orchestral pieces and popular songs describing railway journeys; those that celebrate the opening of a new line; worksongs and blues describing the hardship of building the railroads, even the first use of sampled music used railway sounds as its source. The railway has inspired countless pieces of music from the pastoral serenity of the Flanders and Swann song ‘Slow train’ to the shrieking horror of holocaust trains in Steve Reich’s Different Trains. This is the first book to give a comprehensive coverage of music connected with the railways. In the
nineteenth century, thousands of miles of railway lines transformed time, space
and distance. Across Europe composers celebrated with music such as waltzes and
polkas, cantatas, piano pieces and saucy music hall songs. Moving into the
twentieth century, iconic twentieth-century works, such as Britten’s Night Mail
and Honegger’s Pacific 231, captured the sounds of locomotives. Railways and
trains are so deeply ingrained in the popular imagination that they feature in
hundreds, possibly thousands, of popular songs. In North America, early railroad
songs told of hoboes, heroes, villains, and train wrecks and the sounds of the
railroad were heard in boogie-woogie, blues, gospel, jazz, and rock music. In
total, this book describes over 50 pieces of classical music and covers more
than 250 popular songs. |
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Details
Published Published By Pages ISBN DOI Chapters Jan. 31, 2022 University of Huddersfield Press 308 9781862182035 10.5920/railways.fulltext 23 Citation Winterson J. 2022. Railways & Music -
Chapters
Railways & Music has the following Chapters:
- Prelims
- Introduction
- 1 Broadside ballads, navvies on the line
- 2 Music hall and the railway
- 3 Railway works bands, choirs and musical societies
- 4 Gilbert and Sullivan and the railway
- 5 The coming of the railways to Austria, the Strauss family and railway music
- 6 The coming of the railways to Scandinavia, Hans Christian Lumbye and others
- 7 The coming of the railways to France, Charles-Valentin Alkan and Hector Berlioz
- 8 The coming of the railways to Belgium, Gioachino Rossini
- 9 The coming of the railways to Russia, Mikhail Glink
- 10 Three British railway pieces from the 1930s, Night Mail, The Way to the Sea and Coronation Scot
- 11 Railway music in Paris between the wars
- 12 Four pieces by Percy Grainger and Charles Ives
- 13 Railway music after World War II
- 14 A more experimental approach
- 15 The coming of the railroads to North America: work songs, hoboes, gospel music and the blues
- 16 Heroes and villains of the American railroads: John Henry, Casey Jones, Railroad Bill and Jesse James
- 17 Trains, lines and wrecks on the early American railroads
- 18 Sounds of the railroad in boogie-woogie, bluegrass, blues and jazz
- 19 A medley of popular songs
- General Index
- Select Bibliography
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