Political Songs in Polite Society

This dissertation asks how the British anti-slave-trade movement permeated musical culture of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and how musical activities, in turn, were used to support the cause. It examines a group of newly discovered musical scores—described here as “serious antislavery songs”—that were published in the years between the founding of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1787) and the passage of the Slave Trade Act of 1807. Highlighting the inclusion of such scores in extant personal music collections of contemporary British women, the study explores both who used the scores and how they used them. The dissertation thus paints a detailed picture of musical abolitionism and argues that composing, collecting, practicing, and performing serious antislavery songs enabled female amateur musicians to promote opposition to human trafficking from their homes. The study joins close readings of ideas—found in letters, poems, and musical content—with analyses of activities, such as private musical practice and polite shopping. The first chapter discusses the music of Ignatius Sancho, who died before the start of widespread mobilization again