WILD AMBITIONSLOUIS JULLIEN AND HIS MUSICAL

CIRCULATING LIBRARY

20th April - 7th June

Jerwood Library of the Performing Arts

1 | WILD AMBITIONS: LOUIS JULLIEN AND HIS MUSICAL CIRCULATING LIBRARY

Louis Antoine Jullien

April 2012 marks the bicentenary of the birth of Louis Antoine

Jullien (1812-1860), a French-born conductor and composer who

revolutionized concert going in mid-nineteenth century Britain.

Arriving in London in 1840, he proceeded over the next two

decades to monopolize the concert scene, popularizing promenade

concerts and appearing throughout the country with his eclectic

band of musicians. His performances were known for their

ambitious programming, vast forces and dance music for every

occasion, much of which Jullien wrote himself. To critics his

concerts were vulgar and devoid of artistry but throughout the

country audiences flocked to hear them in great numbers. To some

he was a showman and eccentric; Berlioz described him more

plainly as a madman.1

Jullien and the Jerwood Library

In the Jerwood Library’s Bridge collection (the historic library of the

college) we hold around 250 bound volumes once belonging to

‘Jullien’s Royal Conservatory of Music’. This institution, founded

by Jullien, had premises at 214 Regent Street and combined in

typically ambitious style a publishing house, music school and a

circulating library. The collection at Trinity is this circulating library

and deserves notice as one of very few such libraries to have

survived from this period.

19th Century Music Circulating Libraries

Circulating libraries were a crucial method of disseminating music

to the public in the nineteenth century when the costs of printing,

and therefore acquiring, music were considerable.2 By the mid-

nineteenth century London was home to an impressive number, all

competing for custom.3 Jullien boasted on his bookplates that his

library formed ‘the most complete and extensive collection of

Musical Works ever classed together for Library Circulation’ but

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this was either sales rhetoric or a product of Jullien’s fantastical

imagination. Although the collection is no longer complete, it

would have been considerably smaller than, for instance, Joseph

Dale’s library which in 1786 advertised a catalogue of more than

100,000 volumes.4

Jullien’s Library

The library at 214 Regent Street came into existence quite soon after

Jullien’s arrival in England, and certainly by 1846. It was to have a

chequered history. Between 1847 and 1848 Jullien got into financial

difficulties, losing £15,080 (equivalent to over £880,000 in today’s

money) in one season at Drury Lane. Berlioz was hired to conduct

and later described the experience in his Memoirs:

I was engaged by Jullien, the celebrated director of the

promenade concerts, to conduct the orchestra of a Grand

English Opera, which he had the wild ambition of

establishing at Drury Lane Theatre. Jullien, in his

incontestable and uncontested character of madman, had

engaged a charming orchestra, a first-rate chorus, a very

fair set of singers; he had forgotten nothing but the

repertory. The sole work he had in view was an opera he

had ordered from Balfe, called The Maid of Honour, and he

proposed to open his series with an English version of

Lucia de Lammermoor […] Balfe’s opera was only a

moderate success, and in a very short time Jullien was

utterly ruined. I never touched a penny beyond my first

month’s salary.5

Jullien was forced to sell the business at Regent Street to help cover

his losses but was nevertheless soon declared bankrupt.6

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Jullien’s bankruptcy was not however the end of his circulating

library. By 1853 he was back in Regent Street advertising ‘Jullien

and Co.’s Musical Presentation and Circulating Library

Combined’.7 This seems to have been a re-launch of an earlier idea

to offer three guineas’ worth of music as a gift to subscribers in

addition to their borrowing rights. That the subscription cost was

also three guineas suggests that, once again, Jullien’s imagination

triumphed over his business sense.

Music

The music within Jullien’s library reflects the popular musical tastes

of the early to mid-nineteenth century. There is a preference

towards light operatic music with many familiar works by

Donizetti, Rossini and Bellini. Other inclusions are less well known

today and include those by continental composers Friedrich von

Flotow (1812-1883), Frédéric Berat (1801-1855) and Etienne Arnaud

(1807-1863). British music of this period is also represented with,

amongst other items, operas by Michael William Balfe (1808-1870)

and William Michael Rooke (1794-1847), and glees and other songs

by John Wall Callcott (1766-1821) and Henry Rowley Bishop (1786-

1855). Many works in the collection are now scarce in the UK.

Legacy

Little is known of the fate of the library immediately after Jullien’s

death in 1860. At some point it was acquired by Hammond & Co.

who sold it to Trinity in 1878, just six years after the foundation of

the college.8 Jullien’s circulating library thereby formed one of the

earliest and most extensive additions to the college library. It can be

searched via our online catalogue and is available for reference use

by appointment.

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1. La Lyre Francaise

London: Jullien, [1850?]

Jullien’s Royal Conservatory of Music, vol. 174

This collection of French songs was published by Jullien at 214

Regent Street and is indicative of his origins and musical interests.

It includes two pieces by Robert Stoepel who taught at the

conservatory.

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2. Louis Jullien, Excelsior Valse

London: Jullien & Co., [1857]

781.4 PIA

Jullien was a prolific composer but his works are not represented in

the circulating library. This item, also published at Regent Street, is

from another part of the Bridge collection. It is typical of the dance

music Jullien composed for his promenade concerts and Bal

Masqués.

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3. William Michael Rooke, Amilie, or the Love Test

London: Cramer, Duff & Hodgson; Addison & Beale, [1838]

Jullien’s Royal Conservatory of Music, vol. 1125

William Rooke composed this, his first, opera in 1818 whilst still

living in his home city of Dublin. Soon afterwards he moved to

England and Amilie was produced at Covent Garden Theatre in

1837. Rooke taught fellow Dubliner Michael Balfe who became the

most successful English-language opera composer of the nineteenth

century. Jullien championed Balfe’s music during his lifetime,

commissioning an opera from him and including several of his

works in the library.

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4. Freidrich Flotow, L’Ame en Peine

Paris: Bonoldi, [n.d.]

Jullien’s Royal Conservatory of Music, vol. 455

This opera, first performed in Paris in 1846, is another example of

the contemporary nature of Jullien’s library in the mid-nineteenth

century. Flotow was a German composer by birth but composed

many operas in French and in the mid-1840s was living in Paris.

Today he is best known for his comic opera Martha.

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5. Jullien’s Royal Conservatory of Music, vol. 307

[Various works by Czerny]

In most cases Trinity College bookplates were placed over those of

Jullien’s library. Here, the Trinity label has been damaged revealing

part of the original text. This includes the exaggerated claim that the

library was ‘the most Complete and Extensive Collection of Musical

Works ever classed together for Library Circulation’. The Trinity

bookplate dates from the time the college was known as Trinity

College London which was between 1875 and 1904.

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6. Trinity College London, Calendar

London: TCL, 1878-9

TCM 1/1

The purchase of Jullien’s library by Trinity in 1878 significantly

increased the college’s library holdings, so much so that Jullien’s

reference numbers were used as the basis for the organization of the

entire collection. Most of the items on the first page of this catalogue

are from Jullien’s library. In 1878 the college library held around

1,000 volumes; the Jerwood library today contains around 70,000

items.

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Notes1 Hector Berlioz, Memoirs of Hector Berlioz from 1803 to 1865 (New

York: Dover, 1960), p. 454.2 Hans Lenneberg, ‘Early Circulating Libraries and the

Dissemination of Music’, The Library Quarterly, vol. 52, no. 2 (1982),

122-130.3 Alec Hyatt King, ‘Music Circulating Libraries in Britain’, The

Musical Times, vol. 119, no. 1620 (1978), 134-135, 137-138.4 Charles Humphries and William C. Smith, Music Publishing in the

British Isles (Oxford: Blackwell, 1970), p. 126.5 Hector Berlioz, Memoirs of Hector Berlioz from 1803 to 1865, p. 454.6 ‘Mons. Jullien’s Bankruptcy’, Musical World, vol. 23, no. 34 (1848),

535-536; London Gazette, no. 20848 (21 April 1848), p. 1586.7 ‘Advertisement’, The English Review, vol. 19, no. 37 (1853), p. 2.8 Humphrey J. Stark, ‘Trinity College, London’, Musical Standard,

vol. 15, no. 729 (1878), 32-33 (p. 33).

Emma Greenwood

Librarian (Cataloguing and Enquiries)

Part-time (Thursdays and Fridays)

TRINITY LABAN CONSERVATOIRE

OF MUSIC AND DANCE

Trinity

King Charles Court

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Greenwich

London SE10 9JF

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