Singing for the Million

Joseph Mainzer (1801–51), priest, music teacher and composer, had an important influence on the development of the choral movement in the first half of the nineteenth century. Forced to flee his native Germany in 1833 because of his political views, he arrived in London in 1839 via Brussels and Paris, where his singing classes for labourers were immensely successful. Although his musical compositions are largely forgotten, his mission to bring singing to the masses is not: he published a number of works on the subject and established Mainzer's Musical Times, which later became The Musical Times. First published in 1841, this short singing textbook for an English audience is a classic resource in music education, presenting the basics of the fixed sol-fa system together with a generous quantity of musical examples. Mainzer's 1848 work, Music and Education, has also been reissued in this series.