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Empiricism, Ideology and William Crotch's Specimens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2013

Howard Irving*
Affiliation:
University of Alabama at Birmingham Email: irving@uab.edu

Abstract

William Crotch's Specimens of Various Styles of Music Referred to in a Course of Lectures Read at Oxford and London was a remarkable new type of score anthology when it first appeared in three volumes published between 1807 and 1810. Many anthologies in this period effectively serve as memorials to an earlier classical tradition, but Crotch compiled the Specimens with an almost museum-like detachment and intended it only for the practical pedagogical purpose of tracing the evolution of music. Crotch's empirical, dispassionate, and one might say scientific approach in the Specimens mirrors a turn in British culture generally around the turn of the century toward empiricism, a shift that has been discussed at length in connection with the painter John Constable and his circle. Crotch himself was, not coincidentally, a significant landscape painter and a friend of Constable during the years in which the Specimens were published.

Crotch's relatively objective approach to criticism in the Specimens is most noticeable in his treatment of so-called “national” music. In this area his remarks are strikingly different from the criticism of contemporaries, especially Charles Burney. In connection with concert music, however, Crotch is less successful at pursuing a programme of value-free criticism. In some cases he clearly selects examples with the goal of influencing a composer's reception and stresses qualities that are in line with his developing conception of what might be called “classical music”.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

1 On the back cover of these ‘Observations etc. on Dr Crotch's Works on Music’, which is catalogued by the Norfolk Record Office as NRO MS 11099, is written ‘B.C. Bertie Ch. Ch. Oxford 1838’. This is presumably Brownlow Charles Bertie (born 1819), grandson of the better known Willoughby Bertie, 4th Earl of Abingdon and significant figure in eighteenth-century music. According to Alumni Oxonienses Brownlow Charles Bertie matriculated at Christ Church 11 May 1837 at the age of 17 and died in 1852.

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16 NRO MS 11228. Some of the lectures in this manuscript are dated, and the dates vary widely. The presumptive early date suggested here is based on a letter from Crotch to his mentor the Rev. Dr Joseph Jowett dated 24 January 1805 (NRO MS 11214). In the letter, which concerns his first lecture series in London, Crotch describes a lecture he had already read elsewhere (presumably Oxford) that combined music by Mozart and Pleyel in the manner that NRO MS 11228 does.

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23 NRO MS 11232.

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41 NRO MS 11063.

42 NRO MS 11063.

43 Burney to Walker, 13 October 1796.

44 NRO MS 11066.

45 Violations of harmonic laws he thinks fundamental in early polyphony provoke a crisis for Burney in General History I:557, and cause him to despair that since ‘there is a mode and fashion to Harmony, as well as Melody, which contribute to render the favour of musical compositions so transient’ then ‘little hope can remain to the artist that his productions, like those of the poet, painter, or architect, can be blest with longevity!’.

46 NRO MS 11228.

47 Dissi a l'amata mia lucida stella, Specimens II:15, Bow thine ear, Specimens II:16.

48 ‘Josquin chant’ Specimens II:4, Palestrina Deposuit potentes, Specimens II:12, We have heard (recomposed by Aldrich), Specimens II:13. The actual composer of the ‘Josquin chant’ has not been identified. By ‘chant’ Crotch seems to mean in this case the chordal style of English plainchant. He discusses the harmony of this example in his Substance of Several Courses of Lectures (Clarabricken, Co.Kilkenny: Boethius Press, 1986), 81.

49 Tallis, Gloria Patri, Specimens II:14, Byrd, Non nobis [Domine], Specimens II:17.

50 NRO MS 11064.

51 NRO MS 11064.

52 NRO MS 11231.

53 Specimens III:1.

54 NRO MS 11228.

55 NRO MS 11233.

56 NRO MS 11233.

57 Sonata no. 1 Op. 12, Specimens III:25.

58 NRO MS 11230.

59 NRO MS 11229.