Composers active in the middle of the eighteenth century, not only in Britain, have suffered neglect relative to the giants of ‘late baroque’ and late-century ‘classicism’. None of these giants was British, and while London visits contributed significantly to the careers of Handel, Gluck (a partial exception to mid-century neglect), Mozart, and Haydn, it was not necessarily native composers who affected them: Gluck and Haydn were impressed by Handel's oratorios, and the child Mozart learned much from ‘the London Bach’, Johann Christian. Other German immigrants (Pepusch, Lampe) contributed to popular types of opera in English, while visiting Italians (Bach notwithstanding) dominated opera under royal and noble patronage and in the person of Geminiani and others were a strong presence in instrumental music-making and publishing. Volume 4 of Burney's General History of Music devotes a whole chapter to ‘Italian opera in England [sic]’, disproportionate both to his discussion of opera elsewhere and to his relatively cursory treatment of native composers of his own time. Yet it would have been surprising if the wealthy nation that had recently produced Henry Purcell should lack competent composers with at least some flares of originality. Fine tunes for the period survive in popular esteem, but ‘Heart of oak’, ‘Tom Bowling’, ‘Cherry ripe’, and ‘The Ploughboy’ are perhaps perceived as ‘popular’ rather than composed.

The cloud covering eighteenth-century British composers is now clearing, thanks to enterprising performers and publishers, the Musica Britannica edition among them. The Royal Musical Association (RMA), instituted in 1874, declared no special interest in the music of any one period or nation. In late Victorian Britain at that time, outside Anglican traditions, patrons and public in theatres and concert halls were still prone to favour imported music over works by native composers. Yet the winds of change often referred to as the ‘English [sic] Musical Renaissance’ were already stirring, and by the mid-twentieth century the RMA undertook to publish, again with no stated preference for any one period, what were at first to be called ‘classics of English music’ – an Anglo-centric phrase that was fortunately short-lived. In 1976, after debate about its relationship with the RMA, Musica Britannica became a separate trust, but in practice it had operated independently from the start. Work was initiated by an editorial sub-committee appointed by the RMA in 1949, but by 1950 ‘Royal Musical Association’ had already been dropped from the headings of the (handwritten) minutes, and the body became, and remains, the ‘Editorial Committee of Musica Britannica’.

Harry Johnstone is one of our most distinguished scholars of music in eighteenth-century Britain. Canadian by birth, he studied at the Royal College of Music, London, and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was organ scholar. His musicological interests were encouraged by Walter Emery, the great Bach scholar, who became his scholarly mentor in the late 1950s. Subsequently, he took as the subject of his doctoral work at Oxford the composer Maurice Greene, who, though now recognized as one of the most gifted English musicians of his day, was then a decidedly unfashionable topic for scholarly research. English music of the period, long considered to have been in the doldrums by comparison with the European mainstream, has since revealed its considerable riches, in no small part thanks to the work of Harry and other pioneers in the field.

Harry was a lecturer at the University of Reading before returning, in 1980, to Oxford, as a university lecturer (later Reader) and Fellow (now Emeritus) at St Anne's College. There, in addition to his teaching and administrative duties, he was involved in practical music-making, an aspect of his professional life that at both Oxford and Reading saw him conduct rare performances of some of the English music that so interested him. He participated in the ceremonial aspects of the university calendar. As Dean of Degrees, begowned and declaiming in Latin, he would present successive cohorts of students for the conferral of their degrees at the Sheldonian Theatre. That Handel too had in 1733 played to an audience in that very room is a happy coincidence.

Highly regarded for his research into Handel's English contemporaries, Harry has also made notable contributions to our knowledge of music in the late seventeenth century, and his publications reveal his particular interests in the history, performance practice, and sources of music that shaped British musical culture of the era. As co-editor, he brought to fruition volume 4 of The Blackwell History of Music in Britain, which had been planned by the late Roger Fiske. The resulting book, published in 1990, was the first to treat the eighteenth century as a whole, and its comprehensive coverage and extensive bibliography remain a starting point for researchers. He is the author of numerous book chapters and articles, and he has written entries for all the major reference works.

The work of Harry Diack Johnstone has changed the landscape of studies in seventeenth-and eighteenth-century British music. This volume of essays on topics picked from within that period is a tribute by friends, colleagues, and former students, with an epilogue that reflects Harry's long tenure of a job no less demanding than his university career and personal research, that of General Editor of Musica Britannica. Our tribute is not a history; at least for the eighteenth century, Harry Johnstone has already supplied one. As is normal for a Festschrift, the pickings from the landscape he has done so much to illuminate are focused on areas of particular interest to our contributors, who shed light from many angles on the production, performance, and publication of music.

Our title includes the word ‘institutions’, for which we have in mind a wider definition than might seem obvious. ‘Institutions’ might embrace, among other things, musical societies, theatres, educational institutions, and religious institutions: the kinds of organizations and bricks and mortar establishments that most immediately come to mind. But our more inclusive understanding of the term also covers the less tangible, though no less important, associations that helped to underpin musical life (professional and amateur) such as patronage, trade, private education (including the institution of the ‘grand tour’), and families. All these can be said to have, within the social structures of the time, an institutional aspect if one considers the traditions and extensive supporting networks that enabled them to become such a powerful force in musical society.

Musicians, perhaps more in the past than now, needed institutional affiliation of some sort to pay the rent and feed their families, even when it did not amount to formal employment. London was the capital of a trading nation with a good deal of wealth in private, but not necessarily aristocratic, hands, but it was not alone in allowing space for self-employed musicians whose connection to established institutions – church, court, theatre – was sporadic. However, in a less tightly defined sense, the community of freelance artists forms a kind of institution within society, and receives due recognition here. It is hardly news that many musicians working in London came from abroad. Most of these, and native musicians, were both composers and performers; they were often related, so the institution of the family also finds its place, in which sons (it was usually sons) followed their father's profession.