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→The Development of Modern Music Festivals
In the Medieval era, most of the music that took place we would perhaps today classify as folk music or local music from regions that would involve common instruments rather than regal or more formal instruments that would have developed and became popularized in the early Modern Era after the 16th century. In the 19th century, the Bayreuth Festival, in 1876 in Baveria, became one of the first formal and annual festivals dedicated specifically to music and patronized at the highest level of government. This festival was patronized by Ludwig II and was attended to by other royalty from Europe and elsewhere. The festival began as an occasion to promote Richard Wagner, who wanted to popularize his music. The festival was effective in achieving this, as Wagner did become a well-known artist from the period. Furthermore, the festival continues until today, where it is the best-known festival dedicated to Wagner's music. For later festivals, this showed artists that music festivals could be highly effective to promote their work.
In the 20th century, Jazz was perhaps the first genre to take advantage of music festivals. There were smaller venues and festivals throughout the United States and Europe in the early 20th century. Most festivals did not have financial backing the enabled them to last beyond one year or organize such that they could draw in hundreds of thousands of people. The Bayreuth Festival was effectively an exception, and mostly because it had royal support. However, in the 1950s larger events began to be organized. At first, it was the Newport Jazz Festival in 1954 that began a trend of larger venues, mainly focusing on Jazz. The movie <i>Jazz on a Summer's Day</i> in 1958 popularized the festival and this arguably began a trend for audiences wanting more festivals. In 1961, what would ultimately become of the UK's biggest music festivals originated as the National Jazz and Blues Festival, which would later become the Reading Festiva.l As Jazz helped develop what would become Rock music, many early artists began to use Jazz festivals, in the US and UK, to showcase Rock music. This trend continued throughout most of the 1960s when larger rock bands, by now well established, still used Jazz festivals to play their music. This included Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull.
==Today's Music Festivals==
