‘See, the conquering hero comes! Sound the trumpets, beat the drums’: music and sport in England, 1880–1939

Abstract

This study provides a broad overview of the key synergies between the fields of music and sport between 1880 and 1939. It demonstrates that sport formed a common topic within commercial popular music, especially the music hall, a reflection both of sport's central position within society and the music industry's acute understanding that engagement with it generated a sense of modernity. The presence of sportsmen as popular entertainers also helped cement this relationship. With regard to the role of music in sport, it is shown to have been useful for fund raising and as a vehicle for the entertainment and self-entertainment of spectators and has served as a significant force in the construction and articulation of a variety of self- and collective identities. It is argued that, in comparison with the period from the late twentieth century, the relationship between music and sport was largely natural and unforced and showed relatively little of the self-consciousness that so typifies much recent practice. Sport and music did not so much ‘crossover’ as draw from a common cultural pool.

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