The English glee is a musical genre which flourished in the latter half of the eighteenth century and through into the nineteenth century, enjoying tremendous popularity at the height of its fame. “Glees” are often found mentioned in diaries and novels of the period, constituting usually an all-male and largely bourgeois occasion of sometimes polite, but more often ribald, sociability.

In its purest form a “glee” is an unaccompanied part-song, usually scored for three or four voices, and those voices are usually male, making use of the distinctive sound of a counter-tenor on the top line. Its key musical features are: careful attention to the musical expression of the text in an attempt to capture the true ‘sentiment’—a word rather richer in intellectual weight than its vapid

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Citation: Price, Christopher. "The Literate Glee: Sociable Singing for the Bourgeoisie". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 May 2018 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=19519, accessed 23 April 2024.]