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John Marsh and Provincial Music Making in Eighteenth-Century England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Brian Robins
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Extract

During the past few years the extensive manuscript journals of the Georgian amateur composer and musician John Marsh (1752–1828) have become increasingly recognised as valuable source material which provide a unique insight into provincial musical making in the southern counties of England. For long known only in the heavily abridged (by Marsh's youngest son Edward Garrard) and incomplete version in the Pendlebury Library, Cambridge, the emergence of the original version in 1990 has brought about a substantial re-evaluation of Marsh's career and personality. Subsequently sold at Christie's in December of that year, the original is now housed in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California. The complex history and a description of the journals and their contents can be found in an article by the present writer in the Huntington Library Quarterly, an issue which also includes an article on the social importance of the journals by William Weber. My purpose here is to provide an introduction to Marsh's experiences as a concert manager and leader in the cities in which he was resident.

Type
Articles
Information
Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle , Volume 29 , 1996 , pp. 96 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1996

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References

1 Cambridge University Library, Add. MS 7757. It is no longer quite as incomplete: one of the missing volumes (No. 14) has recently come to light in New Zealand, where it was found in the possession of a distant descendant of Marsh's by marriage; it has now been given to Cambridge University Library.Google Scholar

2 ‘History of my Private Life’, Huntington Library MS 54457.Google Scholar

3 Huntington Library Quarterly, 58/4 (1997).Google Scholar

4 Mention must also be made of the pioneering work done by Charles Cudworth and Stanley Sadie in this field. In particular the latter's article ‘Concert Life in Eighteenth Century England’ (PRMA, 85 (1958), 17–30) made an early and important contribution to the subject.Google Scholar

5 ‘History’, v. 87–8. ‘Mrs M’ is Marsh's wife Elizabeth (née Brown); Marsh uses the, by then, old-fashioned term ‘ripieno’ frequently.Google Scholar

6 For an account of James Harris's musical activities in Salisbury see Clive T. Probyn, The Sociable Humanist (Oxford, 1991), 209–16.Google Scholar

7 See Fawcett, Trevor, Music in Eighteenth-Century Norwich and Norfolk (Norwich, 1979) for an account of concert life in Norwich.Google Scholar

8 ‘History’, viii, 148.Google Scholar

9 ‘History’, ii, 126–7.Google Scholar

10 ‘History’, v, 82.Google Scholar

11 ‘History’, xi, 131.Google Scholar

12 ‘History’, vi, 124–5. ‘Mr Earle’ can be identified as William Benson Earle (1740–96), a wealthy amateur musician who took over management of both the festival and subscription concerts in Salisbury after the death of James Harris in 1780. Gabriele Piozzi (1740–1809) was an Italian music-master who had established himself in Bath, but is best remembered today as the man who married the widowed Mrs Thrale, an event which incurred the wrath of her long-standing friend, Dr Samuel Johnson. Tewksbury was a dancing-master from Wincanton in Somerset who led the Salisbury concerts for some years; he died in 1780.Google Scholar

13 ‘History’, xviii, 51.Google Scholar

14 ‘History’, vi, 79–80.Google Scholar

15 ‘History’, xxv, 85–6.Google Scholar

16 See the Appendix for other performances. Most of the other works included in this concert can be identified: ‘You gave me your heart’ by the elder Samuel Webbe won a Catch Club prize in 1776. ‘The Prince unable to Complain’ was one of four songs contributed by Thomas Arne to An Hospital for Fools, first produced at Drury Lane in 1739. The Corelli is the Concerto Grosso in D, Op. 6 No. 4. ‘Braghela’ (O strike the harp) was composed by R.J.S. Stevens in 1794 (Recollections of R.J.S. Stevens, ed. Mark Argent (London, 1992), 109–11). The tenor aria ‘But thou didst not leave’ (Messiah, Part II) was presumably transposed for treble. William Shield's successful ballad opera Rosina was first produced at Covent Garden in 1782; it included several popular songs for the eponymous heroine. ‘The Witches’ was a popular glee by Matthew Peter King (1733–1823).Google Scholar

17 ‘History’, xxx, 13.Google Scholar

18 ‘History’, ii, 66–7.Google Scholar

19 ‘History’, xii, 106–7.Google Scholar

20 Fawcett (op. cit., 49) has drawn attention to the remarkable ubiquity of Haydn's works in Norwich concert programmes during the 1780s.Google Scholar

21 ‘History’, vii, 178. The Haydn symphony is No. 44 in E minor ‘Trauersinfonie’.Google Scholar

22 ‘History’, xi, 143.Google Scholar

23 ‘History’, viii, 148–9. ‘Tenor’ refers to the viola; again Marsh is using the old-word, a practise he maintained throughout his life.Google Scholar

24 ‘History’, viii, 152–3.Google Scholar

25 ‘History’, xxiii, 91–2.Google Scholar

26 ‘History’, viii, 153–4. Henry Harington (1727–95), an MD and sometime mayor of Bath was also a highly successful composer of glees and catches.Google Scholar

27 ‘History’, xvi, 86–7.Google Scholar

28 Marsh makes it clear on a number of occasions that some of the gentlemen players were unquestionably of a calibre fully equal to their professional colleagues.Google Scholar

29 ‘History’, xii, 124.Google Scholar

30 ‘History’, xi, 132–3.Google Scholar

31 ‘History’, xv, 45.Google Scholar

32 ‘History’, xv, 48.Google Scholar

33 ‘History’, xix, 99.Google Scholar

34 Instructions and Progressive Lessons for the Tenor (Goulding, 1821). The above extract is abridged from an excerpt quoted in Charles Cudworth, ‘Notes and Queries’, Galpin Society Journal, 19 (1966), 133–4.Google Scholar

∗ The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Hinrichsen Foundation in his continuing work on the John Marsh Journals. Thanks are also due to Simon McVeigh for his helpful comments on the original draft.Google Scholar