Sound of Body: Music, Sports and Health in Victorian Britain
ABSTRACTThis article explores ways in which music intersected with the growth of sports in Victorian Britain at the end of the nineteenth century. Although there have been valuable studies of music and sports recently, their main emphasis has been on popular music and contemporary sporting events; a study of the period when playing and watching sports began to acquire its present-day shape has yet to be undertaken. This article moves towards that by examining connections between music and sports through broader social and cultural developments, in particular new ideas about morality, health and physical fitness. It situates commentaries about the healthfulness of music in relation to nineteenth-century discourses about sport, in addition to contextualizing notions of singing and health in the increasing professionalization of Victorian medicine. Finally, this article extends and relocates early twentieth-century encapsulations of singing as physical exercise in the context of concern over degeneration in national fitness.