Music and dance over time
Medieval and Religious Music
The dominant musical tradition of medieval Europe was plainchant, also known as Gregorian chant after Pope Gregory I, who is traditionally credited with organising the repertoire in the late sixth century. Sung by monks and clergy in Latin, plainchant was the foundation of liturgical worship in monasteries and churches across England. It was not entertainment in a modern sense, but it shaped the entire musical culture of the medieval period.
Outside the monastery, travelling musicians — known as minstrels or jongleurs — provided entertainment at feasts, fairs and markets. They sang ballads and narrative songs, played instruments such as the lute, viol and pipe, and accompanied dancing. Music was inseparable from dance in the medieval period: communal dance was a feature of village festivals, wedding celebrations and harvest feasts.
Tudor Courtly Music and the Reformation
Under the Tudor monarchs, courtly music flourished. Henry VIII was himself a musician and composer, credited with composing “Pastime with Good Company.” Courtly music at the Tudor court included polyphonic vocal compositions, lute songs, and dance music for the consort. Professional musicians held court appointments and were among the best-paid royal servants.
The Protestant Reformation of the 1530s and 1540s had profound effects on English musical culture. The dissolution of the monasteries removed the institutional basis of plainchant. Protestant worship emphasised congregational singing in English rather than Latin choir music. Thomas Cranmer’s first Book of Common Prayer in 1549 standardised English liturgical practice and eventually gave rise to new traditions of hymn singing.
The eighteenth century saw the development of orchestral and classical music as a public entertainment. George Frideric Handel, a German-born composer who spent much of his career in London, was central to English musical life. His oratorios — including Messiah, first performed in Dublin in 1742 — attracted large audiences and established a tradition of choral performance that has continued ever since. Public concerts in purpose-built venues, subscription series and music rooms became fashionable from the 1720s and 1730s.
Pleasure gardens such as Vauxhall Gardens in London provided outdoor musical entertainment for mixed social audiences. Orchestral performances, fireworks, illuminations and popular songs all featured. The pleasure garden combined the social functions of the park, the concert hall and the theatre in a single venue.
Brass bands became a major form of communal musical culture in nineteenth-century industrial Britain, particularly in the north of England and Wales. Colliery bands, factory bands and Salvation Army bands provided music at community events, competitions and religious gatherings. The first Brass Band Championship was held in 1853.
The Radio Age and Popular Music
The BBC began regular radio broadcasts in 1922, transforming how ordinary people listened to music. For the first time, professional music performances could reach the entire country simultaneously without the audience leaving home. Jazz was introduced to British audiences partly through radio and partly through American musicians touring Britain in the 1920s. Dance halls playing jazz and big band music became enormously popular: the Hammersmith Palais, which opened in 1919, was one of hundreds of dedicated dance venues that opened across Britain in the interwar years.
Rock and roll arrived in Britain from America in the mid-1950s. Bill Haley and His Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock” reached the UK charts in 1955 and was associated with a new youth culture — the teenager. Elvis Presley’s recordings reached British audiences from 1956. British musicians quickly created their own rock and roll: Tommy Steele was one of the first successful British rock performers from 1956.
In 1964, the Beatles toured the United States and triggered what became known as the “British Invasion” — a wave of British pop and rock acts that dominated American charts, including the Rolling Stones, the Kinks and the Who. British pop music had become a globally significant cultural export. The transistor radio, cheap and portable, had made pop music accessible anywhere; teenagers in the 1960s carried music with them in a way that earlier generations could not.
The 1970s brought punk rock as a reaction against mainstream pop; the 1980s saw synthesiser-based pop and the rise of MTV; the 1990s produced Britpop acts including Oasis, Blur and Pulp. Each decade’s popular music reflected social and economic conditions. By the 2000s, digital downloading and then streaming via services like Spotify (launched 2006, available in UK from 2008) had fundamentally changed how music was distributed and consumed.
How people listened to music changed dramatically across the twentieth century: BBC radio (1922) brought professional music into the home; the transistor radio (1950s–1960s) made listening portable; the record player and LP allowed home listening on demand; digital streaming from the 2000s gave instant access to millions of tracks. Each technology both democratised music and changed its commercial structure.