10 styles · 24 venues · 11 bands and companies · 14 artists · 47 songs
Britannia is loud with music, and a traveller hears it long before he understands it: bells that order the day, psalms in cold naves, shift songs at the change of the bell, ballads that carry the news faster than the papers, and in the cellars the Gloam at its wildest, which the Crown has outlawed.
The oldest sound of the realm is the bell. Parish peals divide work from prayer, mark a death, call out the able for flood or fire, and in Oxford a stranger soon learns to read the hour, the office and a funeral from the towers alone. After the bells come the Church's psalms and offices, and after them everything else: the songs of work, of the taproom, the fair and the road, and newest and most argued over, the songs of the stage.
None of these worlds is sealed from the others. A country refrain comes up to London with a wagon band, gains an edge in the city and goes home with a chorus the village cannot remember adding. A Sarrum shift song is cheered in a London hall by an audience that misses its point. And everywhere, songs carry news: do something memorable in the realm and it will very likely be sung about.
Musical Styles
The kinds of music the realm knows, from the nave to the Gloam, and who sings each.
Venues
Where the music is heard: the great houses, the halls, the inns, the quays and the cellars.
Bands and Companies
The bands, choirs and travelling companies, and the players in them.
Artists and Songs
Every singer with a portrait, a voice and songs to play.
Night Districts
Where the realm goes after dark, town by town: the stages, taverns, card rooms, pits, pleasure houses and Gloam holes of each quarter.
