Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-gvh9x Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-20T01:01:40.060Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - James Lates of Oxford and his Sixteen Minuets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2022

Get access

Summary

James Lates (?c.1740–1777), performer, composer, and teacher, was well known in Oxford in and beyond his lifetime. His name surfaced occasionally in nineteenth-century reference literature. J.H. Mee, in his indispensable history of the Holywell Music Room, noting apropos the ‘little band of musicians who formed the staff of the Music Room’ in the early years of its existence that ‘occasional glimpses of individual musicians are to be had’, added discouragingly that ‘Some […] such as Lates, Lambourne, and Miss Reynolds, remain mere names.’ Lates has emerged from that obscurity since Mee's pronouncement. Stanley Sadie's special interest in eighteenth-century English chamber music secured a place for him in the New Grove (1980). His published opuses have been noted as contributing to the development of English string style, while his collection of ‘Sixteen Minuets for Violin’, apparently unpublished, and preserved in a manuscript copy acquired by the British Library in 1999, raises questions of genre and purpose. The main part of this chapter first examines aspects of Lates's life and work, and the factors that shaped the development of his career, in the context of musical life in eighteenth-century Oxford and its environs; and secondly considers the conundrum presented by his Sixteen Minuets.

Life of James Lates

The earliest sighting in the local press of Lates's activity as a musician is in 1757, when Jackson's Oxford Journal advertised a benefit concert ‘for Miss Lates’ (probably his sister), which was to be held on 8 November at the Town Hall in Abingdon. There would be ‘perform’d a Concert of Vocal and Instrumental Musick’, featuring ‘particularly Selected Concertos, Duets, and a Solo on French Horns’, ‘the vocal part (English and Italian) by Miss Lates’, and ‘the First Violin and Solo by Master Lates’. The concert was evidently to be a grand occasion followed by ‘a Ball and Cards’. Tickets could be obtained at the Globe Coffee House and the Town Hall in Abingdon, ‘and at Signor Lates's house in Friar’s-Entry, Oxford’. Lates's family background was in some respects relatively unusual for its time and place. His father, the scholar David Francisco Lates (or Lattes), was a Jewish convert to the Christian faith, who taught ‘not only Hebrew, of which he published a grammar at the Oxford University Press in 1758, but also modern languages and music’

Type
Chapter
Information
British Music, Musicians and Institutions, c. 1630-1800
Essays in Honour of Harry Diack Johnstone
, pp. 129 - 142
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×