Scholarship concerning the importance of understanding audiences and venues for music has developed a great deal over the last two decades. This thesis examines one element of this research: the importance of the venue as a space for culture. The Royal Albert Hall, a world-famous but little- understood venue, acts as case study for this text. Through a mixed-methods approach, this thesis seeks to answer four questions concerning the relationship between a public space and the events it hosts in the case of the RAH explicitly: What factors have affected the identity of the RAH as a public venue? How have these changed during the Hall's existence? How do these factors affect the events which the Hall hosts? Does a space affect what happens inside it? These questions will allow us to gain a deeper understanding of how a fixed cultural space can be repeatedly reshaped by multiple, often overlooked, factors as well as the extent to which these factors can affect the identity of a venue.

In recent decades, historical concert programmes have emerged as a fascinating resource for cultural study. As yet, however, little detailed work has been done on the programme notes that these booklets contained. This thesis concentrates on the notes written for the Crystal Palace Saturday Concerts between 1865 and 1879. The series held an important place in London concert life during this period, and featured a number of influential authors in the programmes, such as George Grove, August Manns, James William Davison, Edward Dannreuther, and Ebenezer Prout. Grove in particular made use of his notes as part of entries in the first edition of the Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Close critical readings of the Saturday Concert booklets illustrate the complex combination of context, content, and function that the programme notes represented. These readings are supported by short histories of the series, the programme note, and the various authors, along with a study of the audience through booklet construction and advertising. A database covering the repertoire performed and programme note provision during the case-study period is included on the attached CD. Programme notes that outlined pre-existing or newly-invented plots make it clear that one of their functions was to give music a narrative. Even notes that did not contain stories per se were filled with material that served a very similar purpose. The most obvious examples were explanations of how the work was created, and it's place in history. However, all of the language used to describe a piece could signal wider meanings, which then became part of the story being told. References to gender, families, education, morality, religion, politics, or race imbued the works with a wide variety of pre-existing 'texts' (in the broadest sense of the word), and formed social and cultural narratives for music.

Throughout the eighteenth century Italian violinists were praised and admired by London audiences. Though never as feted as the Italian castrati and sopranos, the Italian violinists in eighteenth-century London played a prominent role, featuring as leaders and soloists in every context where music was required. This dissertation focuses on the role the 'Solo' played in the careers of these Italian violinists, and how these artists and this genre fitted in socially, culturally and aesthetically. The 'Solo' was an important tool for them in promoting their careers: it was the repertoire they performed and subsequently published in order to enhance their fame. As a genre, the 'Solo' was uniquely suited to exploring a violinist's artistic invention. Exploring the repertoire provides a new understanding of these artists and the important role they played in eighteenth-century London. First, the Italian violinist is considered through a discussion of the historical and cultural context of eighteenth-century London into which these artists arrived. The cultural scene (including the Italian Opera, the theatres and the emerging public concert scene) is studied, as are various forms of patronage and the tradition of private pupils. The prominence and longevity of the 'Solo' is examined through a consideration of surviving catalogues from the publishers active in London during the century. Concert and publication advertisements support the argument. To understand further why the 'Solo' and the Italian violinist were appreciated, eighteenth-century treatises on aesthetics and musical performance are discussed, exploring the concept of 'Good Taste' and in the process revealing the 'aesthetic of moderation'. Finally, the Solo repertoire itself will be explored, focusing both on contemporary aesthetics and performance practice issues. This will be done both through a general survey of the Solo genre as well as a couple of case studies.

This thesis explores how voice, the body, and gender interact to characterise the eponymous leading roles in Richard Strauss's Salome (1905) and Elektra (1909). Approaching the vocality of the two title characters from the perspective of a performer, I use vocal line as notated in the score as a basis for exploring constructions of women at the time these two operas were composed. Because these operas were created during the fin-de-siècle, they occupy a crucial transitional point between Romantic and Modern vocal writing, when, in contrast to the practices of the bel canto era, the singer was expected to demonstrate ever-greater fidelity to the notated score. Therefore, the voice is largely manipulated by another (the composer) to perform sounds that construct her identity, and hence, her gender. I expand upon this absolute to show how in these operas, gender performativity is manifested in the musical notation. The operatic soprano voice, when manipulated for certain effects, performs 'conventional' aspects of a female character's gender (for example, its pitch range), but I argue it also has the ability to communicate something more visceral, something that transcends gender norms, and also language itself. Building on a wide range of analytical and critical discourses ranging from gender theory to vocal technique, my thesis explores how a soprano singer navigates the extreme vocality present in these two operas, and in the process articulates a range of constructions of identity of women in the fin-de-siècle. In analysing the vocal writing of these two works, it becomes apparent that gender dichotomies are effectively voided in passages within these seminal operas, which nevertheless comment directly on fin-de-siècle 'femininity' or 'masculinity'. My research analyses vocal gestures from a technical standpoint and, in so doing, suggests that gender norms become obsolete at those crucial moments in which voice and body are pushed to physical and expressive limits.