The year 1784 marks a turning point in the life of Cooke, the Academy, and the effective end to our story. For Cooke in particular it brought two severe personal setbacks, the first being the death of his wife, Mary Cooke, in March. In the context of this study, however, it is the second of these setbacks that concerns us most: the Academy’s move to Freemasons’ Hall, and with it the demise of the Academy as it had existed over the previous fifty-eight years. Although Cooke continued to compose interesting and imaginative music, after this time he produced no further extended works of the kind that have been considered in the previous two chapters.

As we saw in Chapter 3, it was in February of 1783 that the Academy met to examine its founding ‘Laws and regulations’ with a view to preparing a ‘new Code as agreeable to the original intention of its Founders as the present temper of the Times would admit’. Following confirmation of a new constitution by a general meeting in March, the Academy left the Crown and Anchor in 1784 to re-establish itself as a fully fledged concert society nearby on Great Queen Street in the larger and more imposing setting offered by Freemasons’ Hall. Although not a fashionable location, its spacious platform was ideal for choral performances whilst its austere neoclassical and masonic decor quite possibly resonated with more neoclassical elements of Academy thinking. (An organ was subsequently installed in 1786.) Most importantly, the venue could accommodate the increased numbers of subscribers through whom the Academy hoped to finance female soloists and fully professional performances comparable to those routinely offered at other concert series of the day. With the upper limit to the number of subscribers further increased in 1788 to 280 and, very significantly, the admission of ladies as subscribers, this transition must have seemed complete. For ladies of leisure, denied the stimulus of business activities or the conviviality of gentlemen’s clubs, fashionable subscription concerts had by this time become a firmly established component within the fashionable social calendar. Such was the Academy’s success in attracting this constituency that at a performance in 1792 there were reputedly ten ladies present to each gentleman.